Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration - The Universe is Timeless

[Natasha Kerensky]

Sooo... NASA announced a press conference with high-ranking staff in attendance for monday, with a Big Scientific Find to be revealed. Apparently, this has geeks worldwide on the edge of their seats, expecting some groundbreaking news on extraterrestrial life...

It's just another finding regarding the "weeping" phenomenon seen in satellite photos of certain Mars craters and cliffs.  In the past, this has been cited as evidence of substantial underground water deposits that melt seasonally.  Others thought it was easier to explain as CO2 deposits.  A couple JPL researchers now think atmospheric water is the culprit.

[Sabelkatten]

According to my newspaper they've found solid evidence of liquid water. The article says that they've missed it before since the water only flows at night (I guess it has to do with the temperature differences) and the rovers do most of their work at daytime.

[kato]

Liquid evidence of solid water would be fine too.

[Sabelkatten]

Well, the evidence so far has been rather vaporous... ;)

[rebs]

All that fine red Martian dust tends to muddy the waters.

[rebs]

Well, New Horizons has a proposed new Kuiper Belt Object that it should rendezvous with in early January, 2019.  2014MU69 (what a lovely sounding name...) is a Cold Object that has likely never been warmed or jostled like Pluto and other object under the sway of Neptune.  As such, scientists are hoping that it will prove to be one of the primordial building blocks of the Solar System that  they have hypothesized for years, and can now get a good, close look at. 

I've read several articles about this - and likely, so have many of you - but this one is one of the better ones, so I thought I'd share.

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/kuiper-belt-target-picked-for-new-horizons-09032015/

Also, Planetary Society released an awesome super hi-res color image of Pluto.  It's 8000megapixels, so have at it! 

The social media-verse has already gotten a hold of this, and in many cases, users have created their own sub-images by focusing on specific areas, such as the one I've posted at the bottom of Pluto's northern hemisphere. 

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/09241425-lose-yourself-in-this-pluto.html

[Frabby]

Enjoying a clear starry night and a big red Blood Moon right now with my family.  :)

[worktroll]

Caught the full moon just over the horizon last night ... beautiful clear air, a mellow amber here O0

[BirdofPrey]

Oh my god Rebs, that image is HUGE.
I can't remember the last time I actually SAW an image load.

I'm glad to see it, though.  I am actually a bit tired of LORRI images.  They are neat and all that, but my modern monkey brain has an affinity for actual color pictures and all the pixels you can get.

[Frabby]

According to my newspaper they've found solid evidence of liquid water. The article says that they've missed it before since the water only flows at night (I guess it has to do with the temperature differences) and the rovers do most of their work at daytime.

Turns out that was it. Given that the Rovers' mission was to look for water, I'd chalk it up as a success. Go NASA! :)

[Weirdo]

Not to denigrate the rovers in any way, but I thought it was an orbital platform that found it?

[kato]

NASA rovers actually aren't allowed anywhere near water due to planetary protection procedures. Their nuclear batteries would heat their environment too much and thus possibly destroy local life.

[Wrangler]

NASA rovers actually aren't allowed anywhere near water due to planetary protection procedures. Their nuclear batteries would heat their environment too much and thus possibly destroy local life.

Curiosity sure, but the other surviving rover is solar powered.  Opportunity rover is still operating, it's not a nuclear power rover so it could go to a location with potential water without worrying about radiation. 

[Natasha Kerensky]

Curiosity sure, but the other surviving rover is solar powered.

Yes, but still has RHUs -- Radioisotope Heater Units.

I also doubt either rover was cleaned to the levels necessary to avoid forward contamination in a water-bearing environment, but don't know for sure.

[Natasha Kerensky]

Not to denigrate the rovers in any way, but I thought it was an orbital platform that found it?

Yes, it was sleuthing from MRO (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) photos and spectra.

Not to be a Debbie Downer, but I thought it was a disappointing discovery in terms of ability to easily sustain surviving Mars life (if any) or future Earth life (if ever).  Very little water in very salty environments with lots of perchlorate poisons.

[worktroll]

Plenty of extremophile bacteria on Earth that'd have no problems dealing with that.

One of my favourite moments, in David Attenborough's "Life" series. He's in the dry valleys of Antartica. They're amongst the most hostile environments on Earth - bone dry, freezing, in fact NASA tests its equipment there.

Attenborough picks up a rock at random, and cracks it open. Just under the surface is a thin greenish line, less than a millimeter thick. It's photosynthetic bacteria. They only "live" on the few days each year when the temperature rises marginally above freezing. They subsist on the tiny amounts of water that condense on the rock and the sunlight which penetrates just into the rock. But they live.

Then consider the thermophilic bacteria which live in hot smokers, the alkaliphiles which live in Death Valley salt pools, or the weird bacteria colonising the "Elephant's Foot" underneath what used to be Reactor 3 at Chernobyl.

[ANS Kamas P81]

the weird bacteria colonising the "Elephant's Foot" underneath what used to be Reactor 3 at Chernobyl.

That stuff is beyond weird.  It's a chlorophyll-style reaction, but instead of visible-light frequencies it converts gamma radiation into plant food.  And they starve if they're not in a super-high radiation environment (as in 500 times the norm) apparently.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMjQ3hA9mEA

[rebs]

Haha, that's us!  Always contributing to evolution in ways in which we were completely ignorant. 

Regarding Earth life proliferating, I've often wondered if we aren't supposed to be spreading it.  I understand the desire to not contaminate the environments of other planets so we might discover the existence of true extra-terrestrial life in one form or another, or not.  But beyond that, as living things, we're natural agents of life itself from this planet.  It might be exactly what we're supposed to do.

Not to cause a debate or argument.  Just something that occurs to me, as natural as any matter of survival.

[Natasha Kerensky]

Plenty of extremophile bacteria on Earth that'd have no problems dealing with that.

One of my favourite moments, in David Attenborough's "Life" series. He's in the dry valleys of Antartica. They're amongst the most hostile environments on Earth - bone dry, freezing, in fact NASA tests its equipment there.

Attenborough picks up a rock at random, and cracks it open. Just under the surface is a thin greenish line, less than a millimeter thick. It's photosynthetic bacteria. They only "live" on the few days each year when the temperature rises marginally above freezing. They subsist on the tiny amounts of water that condense on the rock and the sunlight which penetrates just into the rock. But they live.

Then consider the thermophilic bacteria which live in hot smokers, the alkaliphiles which live in Death Valley salt pools, or the weird bacteria colonising the "Elephant's Foot" underneath what used to be Reactor 3 at Chernobyl.

A better example would be the microorganisms surviving in the Atacama.  But even then, it's a huge leap from the Atacama Desert to the much drier, much saltier, much more irradiated, much colder, and much thinner atmosphere of Mars.

[Frabby]

And yet I wonder... it's one thing for life to evolve in earth's oceans and then adapt to such extreme circumstances; it's probably another thing for life to evolve under such circumstances in the first place.

[worktroll]

And of course they wouldn't have. Mars was much wetter, with a thicker atmosphere, in the distant past. Life would have evolved as rapidly in an energy-rich, comparatively resource-rich environment such as existed in the Nooachian phase (~4 billion years ago). As Mars lost its magnetic field, then most of its atmosphere, and as vulcanism declined with the loss of internal heat, bacteria could well have adapted slowly to increasingly harsher conditions.

Bacteria live in rocks deep under Earth's surface, under great heat & pressure. Everything we've found so far suggests where there's water, and shelter from hard radiation, there's life. But finding out for sure would be better than speculating.

[rebs]

Another interesting thing: From what I gather, the inner planets of our Solar System seem to have once had relatively thick atmospheres of primarily hydrogen.  Those atmospheres either escaped naturally, or were "blown off" a bit more dramatically by a younger and less stable Sun.

All of the gas giants detected around other stars in orbits similar to Earth and Venus seem to indicate that we were likely not that different.  Could life evolve under thicker, Jovian-style atmospheres?  I'm thinking it very well could be more than enough protection on Mars for life to evolve.  Atmospheric pressures similar or less than on Saturn, I would imagine, though I don't know, either.  It would fit what we know of simple life forms prior to the prevalence of oxygen and nitrogen in our modern atmosphere.

But still; speculation, as worktroll says, is inferior to knowing for certain.

[Natasha Kerensky]

Could life evolve under thicker, Jovian-style atmospheres?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uakLB7Eni2E

http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2013/04/life-as-we-dont-know-it.html

[rebs]

This is not directly related to our efforts at interplanetary exploration, but here's a link to an 8k+ megapixel shot of the open cluster NGC 3293 over at Astronomy Picture of the Day, one of the finest places on the web to procure desktop backgrounds. 

Look at all those blue stars, making the few red stars really stand out boldly.  I love seeing that effect in pictures. 

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150406.html

[rebs]

Here's a beauty of a shot of thin crescent Ceres.  Courtesy of NASA and the Dawn mission, and the Planetary Society.

A huge batch of data has finished being downloaded from the Dawn orbiter probe, and released to the public.  Our ninjas at the Planetary Society have gathered links to all the source material for examination by the interested parties.  I'll just leave that link right here.

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/10221314-dawn-data-from-ceres-publicly.html

[Wrangler]

I just wanted post this since it's not been mentioned yet.

Cassini pictures of the moon of Enceladus's northern pole.



Deep ravines there.

[rebs]

Yes!  I put that one up on my FB page a day or two back.  Very beautiful scenery, and good article, too.

[worktroll]

Ice. Telltale signs of ice, everywhere.

[rebs]

If we have ice, we have cold drinks.  Where there are cold drinks, there can be life.

Also, a shot of Callisto with prominent Valhalla showing nicely; a multi-ring impact structure representing violent force frozen in time.   At over 100 kilometers thick, the hard-frozen outer ice shell spidered like a car windshield, and held just the same.



This place would make a great base for human exploration of the Jovian system...

[Wrangler]

Exploration of the Jovian system would be dangerous for human unfortunately. Radiation coming from Jupiter would have long term health issues.

I hope someone is able to develop something to migrate or redirect that deadly energies around craft operating out there.  There was talk I read awhile ago by producing artificial magnetic field around a ship and also putting dense materials into the hull of manned spacecraft.  Given lack real development in manned spacecraft aside trying to get of the ground and getting money for it, i don't have high hopes in either development.