Date: August 31st, 2012
Title: Monthly News Roundup – Mars is the Star
Podcaster: Morgan Rehnberg
Links: MSL: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/
InSight: http://insight.jpl.nasa.gov/
NSF report: http://www.livescience.com/22506-iconic-telescopes-astronomy-funding-cuts.html
Discovery Channel Telescope: http://www.livescience.com/21804-discovery-channel-telescope-first-photos.html
http://www.lowell.edu/dct.php
Neil Armstrong: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/25/us-usa-neilarmstrong-idUSBRE87O0B02012082
Description: In this episode of the Monthly News Roundup, Curiosity lands safely on Mars and the next mission to the Red Planet is announced by NASA. The National Science Foundation proposes new cuts to public astronomy research and the private sector steps up with a new telescope of its own. Astronaut Neil Armstrong passes away as the age of 82.
Bio: Morgan Rehnberg is a graduate student at the University of Colorado – Boulder, where he studies the rings of Saturn under the direction of Dr. Larry Esposito. Morgan received his B.S. in Physics from Beloit College and is the developer of the PhAst software package for the viewing and manipulating of astronomical images.
Today’s Sponsor: This episode of 365 days of Astronomy is sponsored by iTelescope.net – Expanding your horizons in astronomy today. The premier on-demand telescope network, at dark sky sites in Spain, New Mexico and Siding Spring, Australia.
Transcript:
Our top story this month is the successful landing of the Mars Science Laboratory on the surface of Mars. Nicknamed “Curiosity,” the $2.5 billion rover touched down safely on August 6th following the most complicated landing ever attempted on Mars. Curiosity then paused for two weeks to undergo system diagnostics and capture detailed imagery of the landing site. These 360-degree, 3D panoramas depict a Martian surface that bears remarkable similarities to the Earth’s Mojave Desert.
On August 22nd, Curiosity took its first drive on Mars, traversing approximately 6 meters from its initial location. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has cleared the rover to begin it’s scientific mission, which will last at least two years. The mission has eight primary science objectives, including the search for chemical and biological signatures of life, the characterization of the effects of water on the Martian surface, and assessing the 4-billion-year evolution of the atmosphere.
If its predecessors, the Mars Exploration Rovers, are any indication, Curiosity may be able to look forward to a long life. The Opportunity rover recently eclipsed eight and a half years of active use on the surface of Mars. That’s more than 30 times its planned mission duration of three months. Larger and more powerful than it’s older siblings, Curiosity is well positioned to expand upon their groundbreaking scientific accomplishments.
As a tribute to the famous science fiction writer, NASA named the Curiosity landing site “Bradbury Landing” on the same day the rover set forth on its surface journey.
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Following the successful landing of the Mars Science Laboratory, NASA is already looking forward to the next Mars lander. On August 20th, the agency announced that the InSight mission has been scheduled for launch in 2016. InSight, which stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, will study the evolution of rocky planets by investigating tectonic activity and the Martian interior.
Presently, the Earth is the only planet whose interior has been studied in any detail. InSight seeks to determine the relationship between the core, mantle, and crust of Mars. One important question the lander will investigate is whether the core of Mars is solid or liquid. Scientists believe that Earth’s protective magnetic field is generated by our planet’s spinning core. Mars lacks a substantial magnetic field, and the lack of a molten, rotating core is often ascribed as the cause.
In order to increase reliability and reduce cost, InSight will use many of the same technologies employed in the successful 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers and 2008 Mars Phoenix Lander missions.
Although InSight will be the next mission to land on the red planet, it is not the next mission to Mars. The MAVEN mission is slated to enter Mars orbit in 2014 to study the planet’s atmosphere. The combined costs of these two missions is expected to be less than $1 billion.
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Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, the world’s largest collection of astronomical instruments, is facing the shutdown of its second- and third-largest telescopes as part of a new funding proposal by the National Science Foundation. The NSF’s Division of Astronomical Sciences’ report, released August 17th, compiles a list of suggested facility shutdowns over the next decade in an effort to match astronomy funding to a stagnating NSF budget.
Other facilities proposed for closure include the Robert C. Byrd Greenbank Radio Telescope in Virginia, the Very Long Baseline Array in New Mexico, and the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope, also located at Kitt Peak National Observatory.
The National Science Foundation is not only reacting to the global period of austerity and the ongoing debt problems in Washington, but also anticipating the construction of new, more advanced facilities, such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope in Chile and the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope in Hawaii. The report deems the $465 million Large Synoptic Survey Telescope especially important. When operational sometime this decade, it will have the unprecedented capability of imaging the entire southern sky every three nights.
The committee’s report is not an immediate death sentence for the condemned telescopes. If the report’s proposals are adopted, these facilities will be gradually shut down over the next five to ten years.
http://www.livescience.com/22506-iconic-telescopes-astronomy-funding-cuts.html
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In contrast to cuts at publicly-funded observatories, one of the largest private ventures in astronomy saw first light at the end of July. The Discovery Channel Telescope, a collaboration between the popular television channel and the famous Lowell Observatory, unveiled its first images on July 21st. Located near Happy Jack, Arizona, the Discovery Channel Telescope is a 4.3-meter observatory with a pricetag of $53 million, making it one of the largest telescopes in the continental United States.
After undergoing approximately eighteen months of preliminary testing, the telescope will begin its unique role as both an instrument of research and a tool for public outreach. Two early research focuses of the telescope will be the Kuiper Belt and dwarf galaxies. Researchers at Lowell plan to use the observatory to search for and better characterize the elusive objects which make up the Kuiper Belt, while the instrument’s unusually large field of view will also allow for deep images of nearby dwarf galaxies. Such observations will hopefully help to settle conflicting models of star formation in these tiny satellite galaxies.
For the less research-minded, the Lowell Observatory will document the ongoing operations of the facility in an online blog written for the public. The observatory’s design and construction will also feature in an upcoming documentary on the Discovery Channel.
http://www.livescience.com/21804-discovery-channel-telescope-first-photos.html
http://www.lowell.edu/dct.php
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[Neil Armstrong] “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Neil Armstrong’s first words upon stepping on the Moon are perhaps the most famous of the twentieth century. On August 25th, Neil Armstrong passed away at the age of eighty-two. Armstrong was an American hero of the highest order. At the age of twenty, he flew seventy-eight combat missions during the Korean War. After leaving the Navy, he joined the fledgling astronaut corps and as commander of Gemini 8 conducted the first ever docking between two spacecraft. As commander of Apollo 11, he became both the first person to land a spaceship on the moon, and the first to walk upon it.
But Armstrong was a reluctant hero – humble to his core. Made instantly the most famous person in the world, he shied away from the public eye, lifted up those around him, and remained true to his ideals. He later said, “I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer — born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in the steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace, and propelled by compressible flow.”
Armstrong was a great man who had preeminence thrust upon him. He was the sort of hero not found today: a man larger than life; secure in his accomplishments, yet humble in his patriotism. He will be grieved by his family and greatly missed by his country.
Neil Armstrong, aged eighty-two, is survived by by his two sons, a stepson and stepdaughter, 10 grandchildren, a brother and a sister.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/25/us-usa-neilarmstrong-idUSBRE87O0B020120825
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Thanks for listening to this episode of the Monthly News Roundup. You can contact me with comments and corrections at Morgan.Rehnberg@colorado.edu. See you next month!
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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