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As the skies darken during the total solar eclipse on Monday (April 8), onlookers in the path of totality will experience a wave of strange phenomena that could confuse and delight them.

Expedition 70 NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara gives a thumbs up inside the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft after she, Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, and Belarus spaceflight participant Marina Vasilevskaya, landed in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, Saturday, April 6, 2024. O’Hara is returning to Earth after logging 204 days in space as a member of Expeditions 69-70 aboard the International Space Station and Novitskiy and Vasilevskaya return after having spent the last 14 days in space.NASA/Bill Ingalls

NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara returned to Earth after a six-month research mission aboard the International Space Station on Saturday, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, and Belarus spaceflight participant Marina Vasilevskaya.

The trio departed the space station aboard the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft at 11:54 p.m. EDT on April 5, and made a safe, parachute-assisted landing at 3:17 a.m., April 6 (12:17 p.m. Kazakhstan time), southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan.

O’Hara launched Sept. 15, 2023, alongside Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub, who both will remain aboard the space station to complete a one-year mission. Novitskiy and Vasilevskaya launched aboard Soyuz MS-25 on March 23 along with NASA astronaut Tracy C. Dyson, who will remain aboard the orbiting laboratory until this fall.

O’Hara spent a total of 204 days in space as part of her first spaceflight. Novitskiy has logged a total of 545 days in space across four spaceflights and Vasilevskaya has spent 14 days in space as part of her first spaceflight.

Supporting NASA’s Artemis campaign, O’Hara’s mission helped prepare for exploration of the Moon and build foundations for crewed missions to Mars. She completed approximately 3,264 orbits of the Earth and a journey of more than 86.5 million miles. O’Hara worked on scientific activities aboard the space station, including investigating heart health, cancer treatments, and space manufacturing techniques during her stay aboard the orbiting laboratory.

Following post-landing medical checks, the crew will return to the recovery staging city in Karaganda, Kazakhstan. O’Hara will then board a NASA plane bound for her return to the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

With the undocking of the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft with O’Hara, Novitskiy and Vasilevskaya, Expedition 71 officially began aboard the station. NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, Matthew Dominick, Tracy C. Dyson, and Jeannette Epps, as well as Roscosmos cosmonauts Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebenkin, and Oleg Kononenko make up Expedition 71 and will remain on the orbiting laboratory until this fall.

Learn more about space station activities by following @space_station and @ISS_Research on X, as well as the ISS Facebook, ISS Instagram, and the space station blog.

-end-

Joshua Finch / Julian Coltre / Claire O’Shea
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov / julian.n.coltre@nasa.gov / claire.a.o’shea@nasa.gov

Sandra Jones
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
sandra.p.jones@nasa.gov

The Holy Stone HS360S is a budget sub-250 g drone with lots to like but weak camera performance.

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying three people, including the first female Belarusian in space, landed in Kazakhstan early this morning (April 6).

Since it began operations in July 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has fulfilled many scientific objectives. In addition to probing the depths of the Universe in search of galaxies that formed shortly after the Big Bang, it has also provided the clearest and most detailed images of nearby galaxies. In the process, Webb has provided new insight into the processes through which galaxies form and evolve over billions of years. This includes galaxies like Messier 82 (M82), a “starburst galaxy” located about 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major.

Also known as the “Cigar Galaxy” because of its distinctive shape, M82 is a rather compact galaxy with a very high star formation rate. Roughly five times that of the Milky Way, this is why the core region of M82 is over 100 times as bright as the Milky Way’s. Combined with the gas and dust that naturally obscures visible light, this makes examining M82’s core region difficult. Using the extreme sensitivity of Webb‘s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), a team led by the University of Maryland observed the central region of this starburst galaxy to examine the physical conditions that give rise to new stars.

The team was led by Alberto Bollato, an astronomy professor at the University of Maryland and a researcher with the Joint Space-Science Institute (JSSI). He was joined by researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA Ames, the European Space Agency (ESA), the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), the ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D), the Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie (MPIA), National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC-Caltech) and multiple universities, institutes, and observatories. Their findings are described in a paper accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.

Annotated image of the starburst galaxy Messier 82 captured by Hubble (left) and Webb’s NIRCam (right). Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Alberto Bolatto (UMD)

Their observations were part of a Cycle 1 General Observations (GO) project – for which Bollato is the Principal Investigator (PI) – that used NIRCam data to examine the “prototypical starbursts” NGC 253 and M82 and their “cool” galactic winds. Such galaxies remain a source of fascination for astronomers because of what they can reveal about the birth of new stars in the early Universe. Starbursts are galaxies that experience rapid and efficient star formation, a phase that most galaxies went through during the early history of the Universe (ca. 10 billion years ago). Studying early galaxies in this phase is challenging due to the distances involved.

Fortunately, starburst galaxies like NGC 253 and M82 are relatively close to the Milky Way. While these galaxies have been observed before, Webb’s extreme sensitivity in the near-infrared spectrum provided the most detailed look to date. Moreover, the NIRCam observations were made using an instrument mode that prevented the galaxy’s intense brightness from overwhelming the instrument. The resulting images revealed details that have been historically obscured, such as dark brown tendrils of heavy dust that contained concentrations of iron (visible in the image as green specks).

These consist largely of supernova remnants, while small patches of red are clouds of molecular hydrogen lit up by young stars nearby. Said Rebecca Levy, second author of the study at the University of Arizona in Tucson, in a NASA press release, “This image shows the power of Webb. Every single white dot in this image is either a star or a star cluster. We can start to distinguish all of these tiny point sources, which enables us to acquire an accurate count of all the star clusters in this galaxy.”

Another key detail captured in the images is the “galactic wind” rushing out from the core, which was visible at longer infrared wavelengths. This wind is caused by the rapid rate of star formation and subsequent supernovae and has a significant influence on the surrounding environment. Studying this wind was a major objective of the project (GO 1701), which aimed to investigate how these winds interact with cold and hot material. By a central region of M82, the team was able to examine where the wind originates and the impact it has on surrounding material.

The Cigar Galaxy (M82), a starburst galaxy with high star production. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

The team was surprised by the way Webb’s NIRCam was able to trace the structure of the galactic wind via emission spectra from very small dust grains known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) – a chemical produced when coal, wood, gasoline, and tobacco are burned. These emissions highlighted the galactic wind’s fine structure, which appeared as red filaments flowing from above and below the galaxy’s disk. Another surprise was the structure of the PAH emission, which was similar to that of the hot ionized gas in the wind. As Bollato explained:

“M82 has garnered a variety of observations over the years because it can be considered as the prototypical starburst galaxy. Both NASA’s Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes have observed this target. With Webb’s size and resolution, we can look at this star-forming galaxy and see all of this beautiful, new detail. It was unexpected to see the PAH emission resemble ionized gas. PAHs are not supposed to live very long when exposed to such a strong radiation field, so perhaps they are being replenished all the time. It challenges our theories and shows us that further investigation is required.”

The team hopes to further investigate the questions these findings raise using Webb data, which will include spectroscopic observations made using the Near-infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) and large-scale images of the galaxy and wind. This data will help astronomers obtain accurate ages for the star clusters and determine how long each phase of star formation lasts in starburst galaxies. As always, this information could shed light on how similar phases took place in the early Universe, helping shape galaxies like ours. As Bollato summarized:

“Webb’s observation of M82, a target closer to us, is a reminder that the telescope excels at studying galaxies at all distances. In addition to looking at young, high-redshift galaxies, we can look at targets closer to home to gather insight into the processes that are happening here – events that also occurred in the early universe.”

Further Reading: Webb Space Telescope, MPIA

The post Webb Sees a Galaxy Awash in Star Formation appeared first on Universe Today.

Earthquakes in the Northeast are usually too small to feel, but larger temblors like the 4.8 magnitude quake in New Jersey aren’t unheard of

Stephen Hawking and Jacob Bekenstein calculated the entropy of a black hole in the 1970s, but it took physicists until now to figure out the quantum effects that make the formula work

The region near the Milky Way’s centre is dominated by the supermassive black hole that resides there. Sagittarius A*’s overwhelming gravity creates a chaotic region where tightly packed, high-speed stars crash into one another like cars in a demolition derby.

These collisions and glancing blows change the stars forever. Some become strange, stripped-down, low-mass stars, while others gain new life.

The Milky Way’s supermassive black hole (SMBH) is called Sagittarius A* (Sgr. A*). Sgr. A* is about four million times more massive than the Sun. With that much mass, the much smaller stars nearby are easily affected by the black hole’s powerful gravity and are accelerated to rapid velocities.

In the inner 0.1 parsec, or about one-third of a light-year, stars travel thousands of kilometres per second. Outside that region, the pace is much more sedate. Stars beyond 0.1 parsec travel at hundreds of km/s.

But it’s not only the speed that drives the collisions. The region is also tightly packed with stars into what astronomers call a nuclear star cluster (NSC.) The combination of high speed and high stellar density creates a region where stars are bound to collide.

“They whack into each other and keep going.”

Sanaea Rose, Department of Physics and Astronomy, UCLA

New research led by Northwestern University simulated stars orbiting Sgr. A* to understand the interactions and collisions and their results. It’s titled “Stellar Collisions in the Galactic Center: Massive Stars, Collision Remnants, and Missing Red Giants.” The lead author is Sanaea C. Rose from UCLA’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. The research was also recently presented at the American Physical Society’s April meeting.

The researchers simulated a population of 1,000 stars embedded in the NSC. The stars ranged from 0.5 to 100 solar masses, but in practice, the upper limit was about 30 solar masses due to the initial mass function. Other characteristics, like orbital eccentricities, were varied to ensure that the sample caught stars at different distances from Sgr. A*. That’s necessary to build a solid understanding of the stellar collisions.

“The region around the central black hole is dense with stars moving at extremely high speeds,” said lead author Rose. “It’s a bit like running through an incredibly crowded subway station in New York City during rush hour. If you aren’t colliding with other people, then you are passing very closely by them. For stars, these near collisions still cause them to interact gravitationally. We wanted to explore what these collisions and interactions mean for the stellar population and characterize their outcomes.”

“Stars, which are under the influence of a supermassive black hole in a very crowded region, are unlike anything we will ever see in our own solar neighbourhood.”

Sanaea Rose, Department of Physics and Astronomy, UCLA

The stellar density in the inner 0.1 parsecs is nothing like our Solar System’s neighbourhood. The nearest star to our Sun is the low-mass Proxima Centauri. It’s just over four light-years away. It’s like having no neighbours at all.

But in the NSC, things are way different.

The Milky Way galaxy hosts a supermassive black hole (Sgr A*, shown in the inset on the right) embedded in the Nuclear Star Cluster (NSC) at the center, highlighted and enlarged in the middle panel. The image on the right shows the stellar density in the NSC. Image Credit: Zhuo Chen

“The closest star to our sun is about four light-years away,” Rose explained. “Within that same distance near the supermassive black hole, there are more than a million stars. It’s an incredibly crowded neighbourhood. On top of that, the supermassive black hole has a really strong gravitational pull. As they orbit the black hole, stars can move at thousands of kilometres per second.”

In a stellar density that high, collisions are inevitable. The rate of collisions is more severe the closer stars are to the SMBH. In their research, Rose and her colleagues simulated the region to determine the collisions’ effect on individual stars and the stellar population.

The simulations showed that head-on collisions are rare. So stars aren’t destroyed. Instead, they’re more like glancing blows, where stars can be stripped of their outer layers before continuing their trajectories.

“They whack into each other and keep going,” Rose said. “They just graze each other as though they are exchanging a very violent high-five. This causes the stars to eject some material and lose their outer layers. Depending on how fast they are moving and how much they overlap when they collide, they might lose quite a bit of their outer layers. These destructive collisions result in a population of strange, stripped down, low-mass stars.”

These stars end up migrating away from the SMBH. The authors say that there is likely a population of these low-mass stars spread throughout the galactic centre (GC.) They also say that the ejected mass from these grazing collisions could produce the gas and dust features other researchers have observed in the GC, like X7, and G objects like G3 and G2.

X7 is an elongated gas and dust structure in the galactic centre. The researchers suggest it could be made of mass stripped from stars during collisions between fast-moving stars near Sgr. A*. G3 and G2 are objects that resemble clouds of gas and dust but also have properties of stellar objects. Image Credit: Ciurlo et al. 2023.

Outside of the 0.1 parsecs region, the stars are slower. As a result, collisions between stars aren’t as energetic or destructive. Instead of creating a population of stripped-down stars, collisions allow the stars to merge, creating more massive stars. Multiple mergers are possible, creating stars more massive than our Sun.

“A few stars win the collision lottery,” Rose said. “Through collisions and mergers, these stars collect more hydrogen. Although they were formed from an older population, they masquerade as rejuvenated, young-looking stars. They are like zombie stars; they eat their neighbours.”

But after they gain that mass, they hasten their own demise. They become like young, massive stars that consume their fuel quickly.

This artist’s illustration shows a massive star orbiting Sagittarius A*. Post-collision, some stars gain mass and end up shortening their lives. Image Credit: University of Cologne

“They die very quickly,” Rose said. “Massive stars are sort of like giant, gas-guzzling cars. They start with a lot of hydrogen, but they burn through it very, very fast.”

Another puzzling thing about this inner region is the lack of red giants. “Observations of the GC indicate a deficit of RGs within about 0.3 pc of the SMBH,” the authors write, referencing other research. Their results could explain it. “We consider whether main-sequence stellar collisions may help explain this observational puzzle,” they write. “We find that within ~ 0.01 pc of the SMBH, stellar collisions destroy most low-mass stars before they can evolve off the main sequence. Thus, we expect a lack of RGs in this region.”

The region around the Milky Way’s SMBH is chaotic. Even disregarding the black hole itself and its swirling accretion disk and tortured magnetic fields, the stars that dance to its tune live chaotic lives. The simulations show that most stars in the GC will experience direct collisions with other stars. But their chaotic lives could shed light on how the entire region evolved. And since the region resists astronomers’ attempts to observe it, simulations like this are their next best tool.

“It’s an environment unlike any other,” Rose said. “Stars, which are under the influence of a supermassive black hole in a very crowded region, are unlike anything we will ever see in our own solar neighbourhood. But if we can learn about these stellar populations, then we might be able to learn something new about how the galactic center was assembled. At the very least, it certainly provides a point of contrast for the neighbourhood where we live.”

Note: these results are based on a pair of published papers:

• Collisional Shaping of Nuclear Star Cluster Density Profiles
• Stellar Collisions in the Galactic Center: Massive Stars, Collision Remnants, and Missing Red Giants

The post The Stellar Demolition Derby in the Centre of the Galaxy appeared first on Universe Today.

California’s rare sequoias rely on high heat to disperse their seeds, and efforts to reduce the size of wildfires may be damaging their ability to reproduce

One total solar eclipse changed physics forever – and even to this day these celestial phenomena are astonishing viewers and teaching us crucial lessons about the universe

At the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, an instrument with 5,000 tiny robotic eyes scans the night sky. Every 20 minutes, the instrument and the telescope it’s attached to observe a new set of 5,000 galaxies. The instrument is called DESI—Dark Energy Survey Instrument—and once it’s completed its five-year mission, it’ll create the largest 3D map of the Universe ever created.

But scientists are getting access to DESI’s first data release and it suggests that dark energy may be evolving.

DESI is the most powerful multi-object survey spectrograph in the world, according to their website. It’s gathering the spectra for tens of millions of galaxies and quasars. The goal is a 3D map of the Universe that extends out to 11 billion light-years. That map will help explain how dark energy has driven the Universe’s expansion.

DESI began in 2021 and is a five-year mission. The first year of data has been released, and scientists with the project say that DESI has successfully measured the expansion of the Universe over the last 11 billion years with extreme precision.

“The DESI team has set a new standard for studies of large-scale structure in the Universe.”

Pat McCarthy, NOIRLab Director

DESI collects light from 5,000 objects at once with its 5,000 robotic eyes. It observes a new set of 5,000 objects every 20 minutes, which means it observes 100,000 objects—galaxies and quasars—each night, given the right observing conditions.

This image shows Stu Harris working on assembling the focal plane for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 2017 in Berkeley, Calif. Ten petals, each containing 500 robotic positioners that are used to gather light from targeted galaxies, form the complete focal plane. DESI is attached to the 4-meter Mayall Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. Image Credit: DESI/NSF NOIRlab

DESI’s data creates a map of the large-scale structure of the Universe. The map will help scientists unravel the history of the Universe’s expansion and the role dark energy plays. We don’t know what dark energy is, but we know some force is causing the Universe’s expansion to accelerate.

“The DESI instrument has transformed the Mayall Telescope into the world’s premier cosmic cartography machine,” said Pat McCarthy, Director of NOIRLab, the organization behind DESI. “The DESI team has set a new standard for studies of large-scale structure in the Universe. These first-year data are only the beginning of DESI’s quest to unravel the expansion history of the Universe, and they hint at the extraordinary science to come.”

DESI measures dark energy by relying on baryonic acoustic oscillations (BAO.) Baryonic matter is “normal” matter: atoms and everything made of atoms. The acoustic oscillations are density fluctuations in normal matter that date back to the Universe’s beginnings. BAO are the imprint of those fluctuations, or pressure waves, that moved through the Universe when it was all hot, dense plasma.

As the Universe cooled and expanded, the density waves froze their ripples in place, and where density was high, galaxies eventually formed. The ripple pattern of the BAO is visible in the DESI leading image. It shows strands of galaxies, or galaxy filaments, clustered together. They’re separated by voids where density is much lower.

The deeper DESI looks, the fainter the galaxies are. They don’t provide enough light to detect the BAO. That’s where quasars come in. Quasars are extremely bright galaxy cores, and the light from distant quasars creates a shadow of the BAO pattern. As the light travels through space, it interacts with and gets absorbed by clouds of matter. That lets astronomers map dense pockets of matter, but it took over 450,000 quasars. That’s the most quasars ever observed in a survey like this.

Because the BAO pattern is gathered in such detail and across such vast distances, it can act as a cosmic ruler. By combining the measurements of nearby galaxies and distant quasars, astronomers can measure the ripples across different periods of the Universe’s history. That allows them to see how dark energy has stretched the scale over time.

It’s all aimed at understanding the expansion of the Universe.

In the Universe’s first three billion years, radiation dominated it. The Cosmic Microwave Background is evidence of that. For the next several billion years, matter dominated the Universe. It was still expanding, but the expansion was slowing because of the gravitational force from matter. But since then, the expansion has accelerated again, and we give the name dark energy to the force behind that acceleration.

So far, DESI’s data supports cosmologists’ best model of the Universe. But there are some twists.

“We’re incredibly proud of the data, which have produced world-leading cosmology results,” said DESI director and LBNL scientist Michael Levi. “So far, we’re seeing basic agreement with our best model of the Universe, but we’re also seeing some potentially interesting differences that could indicate dark energy is evolving with time.”

Levi is referring to Lambda Cold Dark Matter (Lambda CDM), also known as the standard model of Big Bang Cosmology. Lambda CDM includes cold dark matter—a weakly interacting type of matter—and dark energy. They both shape how the Universe expands but in opposite ways. Dark energy accelerates the expansion, and regular matter and dark matter slow it down. The Universe evolves based on the contributions from all three. The Lambda CDM does a good job of describing what other experiments and observations find. It also assumes that dark energy is constant and spread evenly throughout the Universe.

This data is just the first release, so confirmation of dark energy evolution must wait. By the time DESI has completed its five-year run, it will have mapped over three million quasars and 37 million galaxies. That massive trove of data should help scientists understand if dark energy is changing.

Whatever the eventual answer, the question is vital to understanding the Universe.

“This project is addressing some of the biggest questions in astronomy, like the nature of the mysterious dark energy that drives the expansion of the Universe,” says Chris Davis, NSF program director for NOIRLab. “The exceptional and continuing results yielded by the NSF Mayall telescope with DOE DESI will undoubtedly drive cosmology research for many years to come.”

DESI isn’t the only effort to understand dark energy. The ESA’s Euclid spacecraft is already taking its own measurements to help cosmologists answer their dark energy questions.

In a few years, DESI will have some more powerful allies in the quest to understand dark energy. The Vera Rubin Observatory and Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will both contribute to our understanding of the elusive dark energy. They’ll perform surveys of their own, and by combining data from all three, cosmologists are poised to generate some long-sought answers.

But for now, scientists are celebrating DESI’s first data release.

“We are delighted to see cosmology results from DESI’s first year of operations,” said Gina Rameika, associate director for High Energy Physics at the Department of Energy. “DESI continues to amaze us with its stellar performance and how it is shaping our understanding of dark energy in the Universe.”

The post A New Map Shows the Universe’s Dark Energy May Be Evolving appeared first on Universe Today.

Humans have been digging underground for millennia – on the Earth. It’s where we extract some of our most valuable resources that have moved society forward. For example, there wouldn’t have been a Bronze Age without tin and copper – both of which are primarily found under the ground. But when digging under the ground on celestial bodies, we’ve had a much rougher time. That is going to have to change if we ever hope to utilize the potential resources that are available under the surface. A paper from Dariusz Knez and Mitra Kahlilidermani of the University of Krakow looks at why it’s so hard to drill in space – and what we might do about it.

In the paper, the authors detail two major categories of difficulties when drilling off-world – environmental challenges and technological challenges. Let’s dive into the environmental challenges first.

One obvious difference between Earth and most other rocky bodies that we would potentially want to drill holes into is the lack of an atmosphere. There are some exceptions – such as Venus and Titan, but even Mars has a thin enough atmosphere that it can’t support one fundamental material used for drilling here on Earth – fluids.

The ocean on Europa is a common destination for a exploration mission that will require some drilling. Fraser explores how we would do it.

If you’ve ever tried drilling a hole in metal, you’ve probably used some cooling fluid. If you don’t, there is a good chance either your drill bit or your workpiece will heat up and deform to a point where you can no longer drill. To alleviate that problem, most machinists simply spray some lubricant into the drill hole and keep pressing through. A larger scale version of this happens when construction companies drill into the ground, especially into bedrock – they use liquids to cool the spots where they’re drilling.

That isn’t possible on a celestial body with no atmosphere. At least not using traditional drilling technologies. Any liquid exposed to the lack of atmosphere would immediately sublimate away, providing little to no cooling effect to the work area. And given that many drilling operations occur autonomously, the drill itself – typically attached to a rover or lander – has to know when to back off on its drilling process before the bits melt. That’s an added layer of complexity and not one that many designs have yet come up with a solution.

A similar fluid problem has limited the adoption of a ubiquitous drill technology used on Earth – hydraulics. Extreme temperature swings, such as those seen on the Moon during the day/night cycle, make it extremely difficult to provide a liquid for use in a hydraulic system that doesn’t freeze during cold nights or evaporate during scorching days. As such, hydraulic systems used in almost every large drilling rig on Earth are extremely limited when used in space.

Here’s a detailed look at a drill used on Mars by Smarter Every Day.
Credit – Smarter Every Day YouTube Channel

Other problems like abrasive or clingy regolith can also crop up, such as a lack of magnetic field when orienting the drill. Ultimately, these environmental challenges can be overcome with the same things humans always use to overcome them, no matter what planetary body they’re on – technology.

There are plenty of technological challenges for drilling off-world as well, though. The most obvious is the weight constraint, a crucial consideration for doing anything in space. Large drilling rigs use heavy materials, such as steel casings, to support the boreholes they drill, but these would be prohibitively expensive using current launch technologies. 

Additionally, the size of the drilling system itself is the limiting factor of the force of the drill – as stated in the paper, “the maximum force transmitted to the bit cannot exceed the weight of the whole drilling system.” This problem is exacerbated by the fact that typical rover drills are leveraged out on a robotic arm rather than placed directly underneath where the maximum amount of weight can be applied. This force limitation also limits the type of material the drill can get through – it will be hard-pressed to drill through any significant boulder, for example. While redesigning rovers with drill location in mind could be helpful, again, the launch weight limitation comes into play here.

Curiosity has a unique drilling technique, as described in this JPL video.
Credit – NASA JPL YouTube Channel

Another technological problem is the lack of power. Hydrocarbon-fueled engines power most large drilling rigs on Earth. That isn’t feasible off of Earth, so the system must be powered by solar cells and the batteries they provide. These systems also suffer from the same tyranny of the rocket equation, so they are typically relatively limited in size, making it difficult for drilling systems to take advantage of some of the benefits of entirely electric systems over hydrocarbon-powered ones – such as higher torque.

No matter the difficulties these drilling systems face, they will be vital for the success of any future exploration program, including crewed ones. If we ever want to create lava cave cities on the Moon or get through Enceladeus’ ice sheet to the ocean within, we will need better drilling technologies and techniques. Luckily, there are plenty of design efforts to come up with them.

The paper details four different categories of drill designs:

1. Surface drills – less than 10 cm depth
2. Shallow-depth drills – less than 1m depth
3. Medium-depth drills – between 1m and 10m depth
4. Large-depth drills – greater than 10m depth 

For each category, the paper lists several designs at various completeness stages. Many of them have novel ideas about how to go about drilling, such as using an “inchworm” system or using ultrasonics. 

CNET describes another Martian mission that used a drill – InSight.
Credit – CNET YouTube Channel

But for now, drilling off-world, and especially on asteroids and comets, which have their own gravitational challenges, remains a difficult but necessary task. As humanity becomes more experienced at it, we will undoubtedly get better at it. Given how important this process is for the grand plans of space explorers everywhere, the time when we can drill effectively into any rocky or icy body in the solar system can’t come soon enough.

Learn More:
Knez & Khalilidermani – A Review of Different Aspects of Off-Earth Drilling
UT – Drill, Baby, Drill! – How Does Curiosity ‘Do It’
UT – Cylindrical Autonomous Drilling Bot Could Reach Buried Martian Water
UT – Perseverance Drills Another Hole, and This Time the Sample is Intact

Lead Image:
Curiosity’s arm with its drill extended.
Credit – NASA/JPL/Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo

The post Why is it so hard to drill off Earth? appeared first on Universe Today.

Discovered by accident, this manuscript page

Travelling to Mars has its own challenges. The distance alone makes the journey something of a mission in itself. Arrive though, and the handwork has only just begun. Living and surviving on Mars will be perhaps humans biggest challenge yet.  It would be impossible to take everything along with you to survive so instead, it would be imperative to ‘live off the land’ and produce as much locally as possible. A new rover called AgroMars will be equipped with a number of agriculture related experiments to study the make up of the soil to assess its suitability for growing food. 

Growing food on Mars poses a number of challenges, chiefly due to the harsh environmental conditions. Not least of which is the low atmospheric pressure, temperature extremes and high radiation levels. To try and address these, new techniques have been developed in the fields of hydroponics and aeroponics. The key to these new techniques involves using nutrient rich solutions instead of soils. 

Special structures are build analogous to greenhouses on Earth with artificial lighting, temperature and humidity control. Genetic engineering too has played a part in developing plants that are more hardy and capably of surviving in harsh Martian environments. As we continue to explore the Solar System and in particular Mars, we are going to have to find ways to grow food in alien environments. 

The space station’s Veggie Facility, tended here by NASA astronaut Scott Tingle, during the VEG-03 plant growth investigation, which cultivated Extra Dwarf Pak Choi, Red Russian Kale, Wasabi mustard, and Red Lettuce and harvested on-orbit samples for testing back on Earth. Credits: NASA

Enter AgroMars. A space mission taking a rover to Mars to hunt for, and explore the possibility of establishing agriculture on Mars! The rover will be launched with similar capabilities to the likes of Perseverance or Curiosity. The rover will be launched to Mars by a Falcon 9 launch vehicle operated by Space X but this is some years off yet. The development phase has yet to start. In a paper by lead author M. Duarte dos San- tos the mission has been shaped, reality is a little way off. 

On arrival, AgroMars will use an X-ray and infrared spectrometer, high resolution cameras, pH sensors, mass spectrometers and drilling tools to collect and analyse soil samples. The samples will be assessed for mineralogical composition, soil texture, soil pH, presence of organic compounds and water retention capacity. 

To be able to assess the Martian soil the rover must possess advanced capabilities for collecting and analysing soil samples, more than before. The data will then be sent on to laboratories on Earth and it is their responsibility to interpret the information. The multitude of groups involved is a wonderful reminder how science transcends geographical borders. Working together will yield far better results and help to advance our knowledge of astrobiology and agriculture on Mars. 

‘Calypso’ Panorama of Spirit’s View from ‘Troy’. This full-circle view from the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit shows the terrain surrounding the location called “Troy,” where Spirit became embedded in soft soil during the spring of 2009. The hundreds of images combined into this view were taken beginning on the 1,906th Martian day (or sol) of Spirit’s mission on Mars (May 14, 2009) and ending on Sol 1943 (June 20, 2009). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University

This doesn’t come cheap though. The estimated cost of the mission is in the region of $2.7 billion which includes development, launch and exploration for the entire mission. 

The total cost of the mission is estimated to be around $2.7 billion, which includes $2.2 billion for the development and launch of the rover and $500 million for its exploitation during the entirety of the mission. Whether it – pardon the pun – gets off the ground is yet to be seen but if we are to explore and even establish a permanent base on Mars then we will have to gain a better understanding of the environment to feed and sustain future explorers. 

Source : AgroMars, Space Mission Concept Study To Explore Martian Soil And Atmosphere To Search For Possibility Of Agriculture on Mars.

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