Have Telescope, Will Travel

The Map is the Tale (WW103)

2012-03-11T16:24:00.003-07:00

Our third episode airs this Monday evening on AFM and features an interview with Phillip Stooke who sat down with producer and co-host Alyssa Gilbert. Stooke is one of several members of the Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration who is distinguished by having a namesake in orbit around the sun, asteroid 172996 Stooke. Stooke, a professor in the geography department at Western is known largely for his cartography. In particular, he enjoys combining his map making with a historical perspective, hence his 2007 map of lunar exploration and an upcoming map of Mars exploration, tentatively titled "From Spirit to Curiosity" with an anticipated release date of 2015. I'm very hopeful we can make his title a reality this summer with a successful landing of MSL!

It may surprise you to learn that Phil was the first professor at Western whom I met when I first showed up in December of 2010. When my supervisor was delayed by a meeting, I decided to go over to a lunch-time gathering to discuss images from other planets. I brought a couple of photos taken by Cassini of Iapetus with me that fooled a number of the other students there. They really do look a lot like a frosted Mars. But very little gets by Phil and he correctly identified the moon with his first guess.

Later, he was the subject of a very interesting PSERF where he discussed ancient mapmaking on the Earth. Many of the so-called T-and-O maps showed landmasses that didn't actually exist. The reason for this? An ancient greek belief that the moon was a mirror that reflected the geography of the Earth. Hence my title and quote for this week in which I emphasize the storytelling role of mapmaking. If ever you need proof, just walk down the street and think about what those names on the street signs represent.

As always, Phil tells a fascinating story and his interview is no different. I'll leave you with that and my recollection above to whet your appetite. As always, my introduction can be found beneath the cut.

The way one describes a story, to oneself or the world, is bytelling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accuratethe map, the more it resembles the territory. [...] The tale is the map that isthe territory. You’re listening to Western Worlds!

Hello and welcome back for another conversation here onWestern Worlds, an AFM*Original show heard right here on Astronomy.fm. My nameis Dr. John and I’m coming to you this week as every week from the Centre forPlanetary Science and Exploration at Western University located Just 2063 km fromthe Kennedy Space Centre in beautiful London, Ontario, Canada.

Tonight’s opening quote comes courtesy of the British ScienceFiction author Neil Gaiman and echoes the dictum of Alfred Korzybski that “theMap is not the Territory.” It is an important truth to understand that realitymay be different from the schematic you hold in your hands. But at the sametime, we need to recognize that the broad strokes of the story of distant landsand our relationship to them are right there on the page. That is especiallytrue of places so distant that we know them mainly through our surrogates oftelescopes and spacecraft.

For instance, even the history of science is written in the skyfor all to see. The constellations come from the Greeks, the earliestastronomers. The familiar names of the Planets are written in Latin, thelanguage of the conquering Romans. And what of the brighter stars such asAltair, Rigel or Vega? Their Arabic names preserve the history of the middleages when scientific knowledge was maintained and developed in north Africa andthe middle east. Closer to home, Valles Marineras on Mars, literally “MarinerValley” will ensure that the first extensive observer of that Planet, Mariner-9is not soon forgotten.

So our maps of other worlds also record little pieces ofourselves, and the culture and times in which we live. It’s a complexrelationship. For evidence of that, you need look no further thanthe anthropomorphic title of tonight’s music “Theme from Bitter Moon” byVangellis. But there is also a deeper level. The maps we make of the planetsunite multiple observations to give us a deeper understanding of the processesthat shaped the worlds we study. Thus we begin to piece together the story ofthe world itself, the creation of the territory, its present state and itsfuture, all through our mapmaking.

Tonight’s guest, a cartographer par excellence, has spent hisprofessional career telling that story. Philip Stooke is an associate professorin the department of geography at Western University. He sat down recently withour own Alyssa Gilbert to talk about his experiences in planetary mapping fromthe astronauts of the Apollo Era to today’s golden age of robotic explorationin our solar system.

Our Coy Mistress (WW102)

2012-03-05T06:31:00.000-08:00

Tonight's guest on Western Worlds is Paul Delaney. This time around, I had the pleasure of speaking with Paul in person. He and I go back a fair ways to the summer of 2009 when I was working at Environment Canada. At the time I didn't know if I would ever work in Planetary Science or Astronomy again, and I was beginning to lose my connection to the field in which I was trained. So, I decided to see if there was some way in which I could use my PhD to engage with the public and rekindle my own passion for planetary.

I emailed around to various departments, planetaria and observatories to see if there was some way I could be of use. As you might expect, most chose not to reply while others told me that they were doing well and needed no help. But Paul got back to me, invited me out to the observatory and the rest is history. Today I have a very fruitful collaboration with the York University Observatory that is almost three years old.

It was also Paul that gave me my introduction to the world of AFM. I started out as a guest on "Live from York U" (the precursor to "York Universe"). When that went well, I was asked to become a regular co-host on the program. But with the move to Western, it was time for me to strike out on my own. Again, I had the full support of Paul and he midwifed the pitch that Alyssa and I made to AFM that was ultimately accepted as "Western Worlds."

The title above for this particular episode is fitting for several reasons. As a dear friend of the show, we mean to evoke Paul's quiet contribution. But the title is also meant to pay homage to my WEaT speaking tour on which Paul got me started last year. That was an especially successful endeavor in which I learned that I could really enjoy sharing my enthusiasm and expertise with the public. The closing words of each show will continue this tradition.

So won't you join us tonight? I'll be there at 10 PM ET, 3 AM UTC on Astronomy.fm along with a friend who helped to make it all possible. You can find the text of my intro is behind the cut.

Had we but world enough, and time, this coyness, lady, were no crime. You’re listening to Western Worlds!

Hello and welcome back for another conversation here on Western Worlds, an AFM*Original show heard right here on Astronomy.fm. My name is Dr. John and I’m coming to you this week as every week from the
Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration at Western University nestled deep within the forest city of London, Ontario, Canada.

Tonight we started our show with the first two lines of Andrew Marvel’s famous poem “To His Coy Mistress.” Marvel’s poem urges its readers to seize the day for neither time nor space is infinite for us. But, like Marvel’s mistress the planets themselves have been reticent to give up their secrets easily. While the planets are
amongst the brightest objects visible from the ground, even the most powerful telescope on the surface of the earth does not posses the resolution to answer some of our most basic questions about how these eight objects came to be and are evolving today. And so much about the planets remained a mystery until we could send out spacecraft to look down upon other worlds from nearby and to touch their surfaces.

The accompanying music tonight is “Jupiter” from Gustav Holst’s incomparable symphonic suite “The Planets” as performed by the Australian Youth Orchestra. This well known composition is a favourite of Youth Orchestras the world over and I can still remember listening to it performed by the Newfoundland Symphony Youth orchestra when I as younger. But the reason I chose an Australian interpretation was for our Guest tonight and friend of the show, Paul Delaney. Paul began his academic career in Australia and has been working his way east ever since. Since 1986 he has been a professor at York University and is currently the coordinator of the York Observatory. Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with Paul in his Toronto office.

Western Worlds off to a great start!

2012-03-02T19:40:00.000-08:00

This past monday, we had our big debut and I need to thank you all for listening in. Our producer over at AFM crunched the numbers today and estimates that our first episode had a listenership of nearly 20,000 people! That astounds me - I can barely believe it! So thanks for listening in. And thanks again to York Universe for their great lead-in! I, and the rest of the WW team, will do our best to continue to provide you with an engaging look into planetary science and exploration along with the people who practise it.

If you missed our first episode, you can download a podcast of WW101.

Wondering what the first one was all about? Well wonder no more! My introduction can be found beneath the cut. Don't miss us next week on Monday when we'll have Paul Delaney on the show.

WW101: How Lucky We Are

"How lucky we are to live in this time; the first moment inhuman history when we are, in fact, visiting other worlds." You’re listening toWestern Worlds!

Hello and welcome to the premiere of Western Worlds, thenewest AFM*Original show heard 10 PM Eastern Time Mondays, that’s 3 AM UTCTuesdays right here on Astronomy.fm. My name is Dr. John and each week you canlook forward to a new conversation in planetary science and exploration fromthe Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration, CPSX, located at thebeautiful Western University in London, Ontario, Canada.

The quote we started with tonight is from Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos”series. It’s fitting then that our background music tonight is “Alpha” byVangellis, the same music that plays as the evolution of life unfolds in theCosmos episode “One voice in the cosmic fugue.”

Since this is our first show, let me tell you how WesternWorlds will work: each half hour show will feature an interview with someonenotable from our field. That could be a planetary scientist working on a spacemission, an engineer developing a new exploration technology or an educatorsharing the wonders of our solar system with you, the public.

We hope that you will find these interviews fascinating. Iknow we will. In fact, we’ve set aside the last few minutes of every show totalk about them amongst ourselves. I’m particularly looking forward to thatpart because, here at CPSX, we’ve got all kinds of researchers: planetarygeologists, astrobiologists, aerospace engineers, atmospheric physicists andastronomers – just to name a few. Because of that variety of specializationeach of our talented co-hosts brings something different to that roundtablediscussion.

I’m excited – this is going to be fun. And I’d like toinvite you along for the ride! Won’t you join us as we explore Western Worlds?

Without further ado, let me introduce our firstguest. Tonight we start things off with a Bang as one of our co-hosts, RaymondFrancis, sits down with Dr. Gordon Osinski, a world-renowned expert on impactcratering and acting head of the Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration righthere in London, Ontario.

Introducing: Western Worlds

2012-02-20T13:52:00.000-08:00

The short-form logo for the newest AFM*Original program, "Western Worlds."

For those of you who enjoy York Universe (you can check out our new website here) I am happy to tell you that there is a spin-off show on the way and it starts at 10 PM ET on Monday, February 27th! The name of the show is "Western Worlds." Here's the format: the show is thirty minutes long and each will feature an interview with an engineer, researcher or educator working in the planetary sciences as interviewed by one of our capable co-hosts. That's the first twenty minutes. The last ten minutes will feature a round table with several co-hosts as we draw upon our own individual expertise to understand what the interview subject's work means to each of us.

The show is being co-produced by Alyssa Gilbert of the Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration (CPSX) at the University of Western Ontario and by Michael Foerster at Astronomy.fm . I'll be doing the day-to-day showrunning. We've also got a great crew of undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate scholars who will be generating the interviewing, editing and discussion content that we will share with you all each and every week.

We've got several episodes which are nearing completion and I will be delivering these to AFM this week. As a Canadian Planetary Scientist, I'm excited to have a radio home all our own and I look forward to sharing all the great work being done within our community with you all every Monday night!

A Presentation and some MSL Preliminaries

2012-01-11T05:44:00.000-08:00

The cover slide for my upcoming presentation on MSL, the 2012 kick-off to the Planetary Science and Exploration Research Forum (better known as PSERF) at the University of Western Ontario's Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration (CPSX). Check it out this Thursday, January 12 at 12:30 PM in Biological and Geological Sciences Building room 1084.

In writing this post, I had considered another title "What you won't read on this blog this year." The reason for this is that as a part of the mission, I'm bound by what we call the "Rules of the Road." A document like the RotR is not uncommon on large projects and there have been similar agreements in place on each of the past missions I've been involved in. The reason for the document is simple - it's easier to determine beforehand how data will be shared, how to interact as a team, what it is appropriate to discuss with the public and press and what rights different team members have to publication of results. In short it saves a lot of trouble down the road. If you're curious, an early version of this document was appended to the NSPIRES call for Participating Scientists (see the PSP Package pdf starting around page 123 or so).

The net effect of my participation as a PS means that I am bound by this document. Since this blog is a public forum, it comes under the scope of the terms described therein. So don't expect to read much about what is happening behind the scenes in this space. Don't expect news of new discoveries to be broken on this site. Instead, I will be restricting myself to what is publicly available, including the contents of the PDS.

But that doesn't mean this space will go dark! I can always talk about anything in the public domain, so long as you all understand, dear readers, that I do not purport to speak for the project. Furthermore, there is a procedure outlined in the RotR for clearing things like blog posts: in those cases where I want to present my own experiences on the team alongside the publicly available facts, I will seek dispensation from the project to do so. I will post those entries only if the project feels them to be appropriate. It's only fair to all the scientists and engineers who have worked on this project since 2003 and before that I take these steps. After all, they have been kind enough to let a "Johnny-come-lately" like me participate and I want to show my respect for their effort and hard-earned success.

So there you have it, the preliminaries are out of the way. I've got an exciting year ahead and I hope to be able to take you all along for the ride in some small way.

__
Note: This post has not been cleared by the MSL Team. It contains only information within the public domain and my experiences outside of my interaction with the MSL Team.

Another Good Omen?

2011-12-18T14:56:00.000-08:00

The launch plume from MSL's Atlas-V. The input of water vapor into the normally dry mesosphere (at altitudes of around 80km) causes very high ice-water clouds known as "noctilucent" clouds to form. We contemplate the shapes we see in the sky and like the ancient Romans, trying to read auspices, we hope to glean the relevance to our own future of such ephemeral and changing patterns.

On the morning of November 26, as we were boarding our busses to head to the MSL Launch viewing area near the VAB, the brilliant sunrise lit up the light, misty rain we had passed through on the causeway over towards cape canaveral. The refraction through the particles generated a vivid rainbow which seemed to touch the ground in the general direction of pad 41, where the Atlas-V rocket that MSL would ride on its way to Mars was being prepared for departure. We took it as a good omen, and a few hours later, everything went right with the launch.

On the bus ride back to the parking lot, I had the chance to observe another atmospheric phenomena: noctilucent ("night glow") clouds. Well, actually, since they occurred during the day, these would technically be mesospheric clouds. Such clouds are a relatively rare occurrence since there is very little water vapor at such high altitudes. 80km is not an uncommon height, making noctilucent clouds amongst the highest visible atmospheric phenomena after auroral displays. As you might guess from the name, they are typically seen after sunset when their great height allows them to be illuminated by the sun even after the landscape has fallen into shadow. You can see a similar, but less impressive, version of the same effect if you look at scattered clouds on the western horizon immediately after sunset.

Noctilucent clouds observed in Estonia and photographed by wikipedia user Martin Koitmae. Note that the sun has set sufficiently that the clouds appear to shine by their own light, rather than by reflected twilight.

When such clouds are seen it is often in high-latitude regions where water vapor is available to do the job. But if there is one surefire way of generating a mesospheric cloud at any latitude or time of year, it is by using a rocket launch to do the job. Since one of the major products of the exhaust will be water vapor (no matter the specific fuel used) and rockets pass through the mesosphere on their way out of the atmosphere, there is no issue with water supply. The displays thus-generated can be spectacular. For instance, here's the launch plume/noctilucent clouds associated with the launch of the Delta-II with the Phoenix lander onboard in 2008:

Noctilucent clouds photographed by Sid Leach from Cocoa Beach in the aftermath of the 2008 launch of the Delta-II carrying the Phoenix Lander. Note that the nighttime launch of Phoenix means that these clouds truly do shine by their own light.

It was not uncommon for us to use a version of this image in our education/public outreach presentations which showed a superimposed bird with a fiery tail:

Phoenix launch noctilucent cloud with a stylized phoenix overlaid. This was used in presentations for the mission, but I don't know who captured the image or who modified it. If you know, please make a comment below and I will update this caption!

What then can make of the MSL image at the top of this post? Recall that MSL hopes to be able to understand the habitability of gale crater past and present. That is to say, we want to know whether Gale could ever have had conditions that would have allowed life to thrive and grow and whether the conditions in the interim would have allowed any traces of such past life to survive to the present. Given that preamble, here's my best guess:

Launch plume from MSL as captured by the author and overlaid with a stylized martian courtesy of Michelle Parsons. Is this representative of what we might find? Only time will tell. But, as I say above, it's a good omen!

Meet the Team

2011-12-01T06:13:00.001-08:00

My UWO MSL Team. From left to right we are Raymond Francis, Emily McCullough and John Moores. David Choi is not shown, but you can take a look at him below.
Photo credit: Mitch Zimmer.

As of last Wednesday I can say that I ama Participating Scientist on the Mars Science Laboratory Mission. That missionlaunched successfully last Saturday and we're now on our way to Mars. In themeantime, we have work to do. There are models to test, training for operationsto complete and data reducing software to write. I won't pretend that I can getthis all done by myself in the next eight months. Luckily, I don't have to. I'vegot a great team behind me and I wanted to help to shine a spotlight on themand what we hope to accomplish together - they deserve it!

(As a quick note of technicality, if thesame system as Phoenix is in place all three will be considered "ScienceTeam Collaborators" or "Collaborator-Level Science TeamMembers." I'll be able to update once I get a look at the MSL Rules of theRoad document.)

David Choi you may recall from such posts as this one. Click on that link for a close-up.

First up is an old friend from GradSchool, Dr. David Choi, most recently of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre.David has spent his career studying the movement of clouds on Giant Planets andwe plan to build upon his work by applying this code to Mars. In doing so, weshould be able to extract the wind direction in any atmospheric image thatshows clouds of dust or water ice.

Intrepid astronaut, Raymond Francis.
Photo Credit: Cassandra Marion, 2011.

Spearheading this application is RaymondFrancis, a doctoral student at the University of Western Ontario inEngineering. Raymond's speciality is image processing techniques and he will belooking at each frame to determine which way the wind is blowing. Beyond our work on MSL, we would alsolike to explore preprocessing of atmospheric data sets to allow a greaterfraction of the sky to be analyzed during landed planetary missions.

But we don't need to limit ourselves topassive techniques. MSL has a powerful laser, the LIBS System for Laser-InducedBreakdown Spectroscopy, a part of the ChemCam instrument. We can aim thisinstrument into the sky and where there are sufficient particles, we should beable to see the light scattering back from the particles within the beam. Thisis very much like using a flashlight in the fog. By looking at where this"backscatter" strikes the CCDs of the MastCam cameras we can tell therange to the target and by analyzing the intensity, we can determine just howmuch material is out there. We can then combine this information with microphysical modelling of the formation of ice as well as what we know about the condition of the ground ice from the Russian Neutron Spectrometer, DAN, and the water vapor content of the atmosphere from the Spanish weather station, REMS.

Science Manager, Emily McCullough
Photo Credit: Barringer Lunar Analogue Mission

This application will be led by EmilyMcCullough, a doctoral student at the University of Western Ontario in thePhysics and Astronomy department. Emily has worked with LiDAR techniques in thehigh arctic, so Mars isn't a huge stretch from the environments she is used to. As well, where the images being used in Raymond's investigation are multi-spectral, we will be able to determine whether those particles are icy or dusty. Ultimately, we seek to find a relationship between the spectral ratios to help determine mixing ratios of ice and dust.

WhileI took courses with David, I know Raymond and Emily best from working with themover the summer and fall on three analogue mission deployments at UWO. Raymondhas played the part of Science Planner/Integrator and Astronaut and was aprocess co-designor along with myself. For her part, Emily led the Science BackRoom in all three deployments and was the counterpart to my Planning Managerposition for Sudbury and Flight Director for Arizona. I purposely used photostaken of them in this context for this article. Based on their work on these"simulated missions" I have no doubts about their abilities. I lookforward to the months ahead as we get ready to apply what we have learned atMars.

Flight Director, John Moores

Photo Credit: Barringer Lunar Analogue Mission

_________
We've been lucky in the last few days to get some good press. I'll paste some links down here for those interested and so I can find them again later on!

Western News
CTV-London

Words just cannot describe this...

2011-11-27T09:12:00.001-08:00

So I won't even try.

Mars Science Laboratory is shown here in this picture I took at the parking lot of OFB-1 (our shelter in case of a launch failure), near the VAB at Kennedy Space Centre and 6 miles from pad 41 at 10:02:09.2 AM on Saturday, November 26, 2011, 9 seconds after the main engines of the Atlas-V started it on its way to Mars. Best of luck, little rover - our thoughts, prayers and hopes go with you.

Marking Time in an Astronaut's Playground

2011-11-25T18:19:00.001-08:00

On today's tour we got the briefest glimpse from the coach of MSL sitting across the bay on pad 41. We're all suited up and ready to go!

I knew that I would only be able to stay in Florida for two days, so I picked the 25th and 26th in the hopes that the launch would occur within one of the first two windows. However, with the battery failure in the Atlas-541 abort system, the launch was pushed back one day to the 26th. This opened up a hole which SMD graciously filled by adding a Kennedy Space Centre tour to our schedule. We got to go to some interesting places that the public doesn't always get to see and we were pre-cleared for the launch and issued special MSL VIP badges. You can take a look at some of the pictures I took (now updated with images from launch day!) along the way today.

Much of the tour focused on Apollo and Space Shuttle Heritage and you definitely get the feeling that this is a place that is in flux. Compared to the gantries and the VAB, the actual hardware being used today seems small. Many of the buildings are of a 1960s vintage and the launch control centre looks like it might have been the inspiration for Disney's Contemporary Resort Hotel. But one look at the crawler tracks etched in the beach cobbles out towards the pads will reveal that even though this is a place whose grounds are seeped in history, it is not a remote history. Nor is this centre a museum. The VAB, a cathedral to science and technology if ever there was one with a 525-foot interior clearance that could accommodate a skyscraper, the crawlers themselves and countless other pieces are still in use today and are available to be modified for whatever use NASA sees fit to put them too. The era of the Shuttle might be over, as evinced by the presence of Endeavour in its decommissioning bay, but with the right project this place could quickly return to life.

I'm thankful I got the chance to go on this tour. The guides were helpful and professional and everyone had a great experience. If I'm lucky enough that MSL goes tomorrow, it will have been the best possible outcome. I would have gotten to see a great deal of the centre in addition to a successful launch. Oh and about that - the latest I've heard is that the weather has a 70% chance of cooperating. 30% chance of scrubbing sounds significant, however, I'm told that here on the Florida barrier islands, 70% is about the best one can hope for. I know my fingers are crossed.

Dreams and my Date with Destiny

2011-11-24T21:22:00.001-08:00

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? Amongst us planetary scientists, the answer is almost always: "An Astronaut." I can certainly understand the appeal. Who wouldn't want to explore an alien place and do it in the style with which we associate Buck Rogers, Captain Kirk or any of our other intrepid science fiction heroes?

But that doesn't quite capture what I imagined at that age. Let me explain what I mean by that statement by using an example. When I was much, much younger, my parents allowed me to stay up for one show alone - NOVA on PBS. It was a real treat because the show came on at 9:30 PM in Newfoundland which is pretty late for an eight year old. For those of you who know the show, there's quite a variety of topics that end up getting covered from medicine to military technology and everything in between.

However, I did have a favourite episode. I just couldn't get enough of the results that came back from the Voyager probes. That story had everything: cutting edge tech, an audacious plan with dramatic twists and turns, and wonders revealed that felt so much more satisfying than anything from SciFi because they were actually real. Central to the whole process was the mission controller and that holy of holies for me, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Yes, I was one of those eight year olds who dreamed of one day being part of JPL.

As with all dreams, as I grew up the vividness faded in the light of real life and I set aside such juvenile foolishness for a more practical course. But like all dreams they may become tattered around the edges, creased with age, crammed in dark corners or under the seat cushions, but they never entirely die and they don't go away. When I began to find my course of study was missing something I tried a radical change and went back to basics, switching over to Planetary Science on a hunch. The rest is history and within a year I got my wish: in 2004 I spent two weeks at JPL working on Spirit on assignment from my advisor, Peter Smith.

I was hooked and I couldn't get enough. With each new assignment from Peter, my confidence, abilities and wonder grew. Next was the Huygens probe to Titan's Surface: an exotic location I was amongst the first dozen human beings in history to witness. Then came Phoenix. Initially my involvement was peripheral (again, my head had won out over my heart as I closed in on the end of my PhD) but with Peter's encouragement I went all in. I became a Science Planner/Integrator and discovered a state of satisfaction with my work that I have never experienced before or since. I am lucky to have found such purpose; I know many others never do even after a lifetime of searching.

Unfortunately, the higher you are, the further you have to fall. With the recession, my first postdoc fell through and I ended up being forced out of planetary science all together. Ever so slowly, over the past three years I've been clawing my way back. But the experience left some scars. Cognitive dissonance made me come to terms with the strong possibility that I might never work another mission again.

But then serendipity worked its magic once more and I was in just the right place at the right time to make a submission to the Mars Science Laboratory Participating Scientists Program. Of such chance opportunities seized is a life made. As of yesterday, I've been informed that my proposal has been selected. What makes this especially sweet is that it is work almost entirely of my own design which has been recognized by my peers.

And so here I am… sitting on a plane, 40,000 feet above the Appalachian mountains on my way to Florida and that place that all us planetary scientists know simply as "the Cape." In my business, the Cape is where dreams come true or shatter into a million pieces; it is a place of legend. I certainly intend to be hoping and praying with everything I've got that we get a successful launch. MSL is now, in a small sense, my ride and with it go my own hopes and aspirations. That changes the entire character of my trip down here into something more subtle and yet profound.

Appropriate then that the launch was rescheduled for Saturday morning... it has become an interlude to a tradition as old as television for millions of kids. Will the networks cut away from the cartoons for just a minute so that the kids will get a peek? If they do, I've got to believe that for at least a few, they will look at that rocket heading skyward and dream about the day that they too will be a small part of solar system exploration. As I once did.

Getting Ready for the Cape

2011-11-17T04:16:00.001-08:00

MSL Arrives at Launch Complex 41 inside its 5m fairing just before dawn on November 3. In the days ahead, this fairing will be mounted atop an Atlas-V 541 EELV for a launch to Mars no earlier than November 25.

After some consideration, I've decided to bite the bullet, take a chance and head on down to Cape Canaveral next week to help see off Mars Science Lab (MSL). Better known as the Curiosity Rover, MSL is an exciting mission to Mars that will take a close-up look at the km-thick layered deposits inside Gale Crater. It's an exciting place to try for and the rover team is looking forward to a successful launch, landing and the scientific results that will be returned. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the spectacular night launch of Phoenix in 2008. So this will be my first launch, assuming that delays don't push the launch back until after I need to fly home. While I have some idea what to expect from video and images, I have no idea what the experience will be like in person.

Currently the launch is planned for 10:25 AM EST on Friday, November 25. That's when the first launch window opens. On that day we will get 1 hour and 43 minutes before that daily window closes (for details on the windows, see this excellent table from spaceflightnow.com). At the next level, within each daily window there are individual launch opportunities approximately every five minutes. If there are issues that prevent a launch on the 25th, the good folks at ULA will try again the next day and the next and so forth until December 18. On that day, the launch window closes entirely shut and the orbital mechanics of the positions of Earth and Mars are no longer viable for our spacecraft.

Dare I add a brief word on launch windows and their good friends landing elipses? For Earth to Mars trajectories, the preferred orbit is called a Hohmann transfer orbit. It's an ellipse with the Earth at launch, the sun in the middle, and Mars at arrival aligned along the major axis. It's a special trajectory because it requires the least amount of velocity change ("delta-V") and hence the least energy/fuel to complete. Looked at another way, this is the trajectory that allows us to get the greatest amount of Mass and hence the largest number of scientific instruments (payload) to Mars.

MSL's Hohmann Transfer Orbit: note the alignment of the Earth at departure, Mars at Arrival and the sun in the centre.

But in order to take advantage of a Hohmann transfer, Mars and Earth need to be properly aligned and that only happens a little over every two years or so. If the path of the spacecraft was completely ballistic from launch to Mars Atmospheric Entry, the launch window would be very short, perhaps no more than ~280 seconds - the time required for Mars to move through the point in space where the spacecraft would arrive. But, every spacecraft has onboard fuel for course corrections and this widens the usable launch window to about a month.

Why do we have daily launch windows? To answer this, you need to recall that the Earth is a spinning planet. Ideally, the sequence initiated by main engine ignition will proceed directly from liftoff to the Hohmann transfer orbit without delays. This suggests launching when the rotation of the Earth carries the launch location past the start of the Hohmann transfer orbit (see the animation shown on this site for a graphical representation). Technically, however, only the final burn needs to take place in this orientation. In theory, you could launch, circularize the spacecraft orbit into LEO and add in a hold of up to 90 minutes until the spacecraft orientation is appropriate for the Hohmann transfer. This would allow you to launch at any time of day, but practically speaking this may not be easily achievable depending on how propellant is distributed between the various rocket stages.

The unfortunate Russian Phobos-Grunt spacecraft is currently using a variation of this emergency technique which allows it an opportunity to head for Mars once every 90 minutes or so. Of course, the ground crew needs to sort out why the spacecraft's rockets aren't firing first.

Oh and what about landing ellipses? A landing ellipse expresses the uncertainty that we have about where the spacecraft is going to touch down on Mars. It is elliptical because the spacecraft has a velocity with respect to the planet and a value for this uncertainty translates into a larger error in space along that trajectory rather than perpendicular to it. But a little known property of landing ellipses is that each launch window has a different one! As the relative positions of Earth and Mars change over the launch window, we can compensate in latitude and longitude using corrective maneuvers (burns) in deep space. But the landing ellipse will also tend to rotate irreversibly as the launch window proceeds, producing a bow-tie-like shape when all ellipses are superimposed.

Landing ellipses for the Phoenix Spacecraft showing how the ellipse changes over the course of a launch window. Superimposed, all the different ellipses form a shape referred to as a butterfly or bow-tie. (I prefer bow-tie since I imagine that the consumption of "pork chop" diagrams from which launch windows are created is a formal affair)

Hopefully all will go as planned. The Atlas-V launcher that MSL sits atop has a good track record with planetary science missions lately with Juno successfully launching within its first daily launch window. LRO similarly launched on its very first attempted day (the launch was delayed one day due to conflicts with the space shuttle). However, MRO had a launch delay of two days and New Horizons was delayed for 8 days. Add to that the fact that the specific Atlas-V configuration variant being used, the 541*, has never been launched before, and you can see why this is a bit of a gamble. My own personal launch window only extends for two days, so I will have my fingers crossed!

___
* How to read Atlas Configurations: For an Atlas-V ABC, A = diameter of the payload fairing (the "nose cone") in meters, B = Number of solid boosters, C = number of upper stages. So a 541 has the biggest payload fairing (because MSL is pretty darn large), four solid boosters and one centaur upper stage. Juno was launched aboard the similar 551. Hopefully, one less solid booster will not make a huge difference and our launch can be as picture-perfect as was that one!

Dr. Hojatollah Vali's CATP Seminar

2011-11-04T13:30:00.000-07:00

Astrobiology's favourite martian meteorite, Alan Hills 84001 is shown alongside a Magnetosome, a bacteria that fixes iron within its body to form magnetite and gives itself a free ride (or orientation) courtesy of the Earth's magnetic field. Could the tiny magnetite crystals serve as biomarkers long after the host is gone? And what is the origin of these kinds of features in ALH84001?

Recently, we kicked off the CATP seminar series for the 2011-2012 season! The first talk of the year comes from McGill University's Hojatollah Vali. Dr. Vali's work is mainly concerned with the ability of iron-fixing bacteria to serve as biomarkers long after the bacteria have long since passed away. It's just one way that we can answer the question of how to detect past biological activity in the absence of well-developed morphologically distinct fossils.

For most planets, there are several ways that we can get information on whether they supported a past biology. First, many creatures build hard internal structures or armor plate their exteriors for protection. This kind of biomineralization will be familiar to anyone who has seen a dinosaur skeleton. We can also gain some information from what has been left behind in the rock. Many leaching features in surrounding rock have specific morphologies that suggest a biological origin and certain minerals make better foodstuffs for life than others do. We can also use life's tendency to extract energy from its surroundings and cheat entropy by looking for the coexistence of incompatible mineral phases that would not typically form together. Sometimes we can even get lucky and find organic residues themselves inside the rock. Though these may no longer show much trace of having once been life, they can be suggestive in context. This is especially true when they are combined with isotopic composition. The chemical reactions that organisms use tend to be very sensitive and the slight differences in the zero-point energies of the specific isotopes involved can upset the balance. Thus life selects for one and not others and excesses or depletions of that isotope suggest that life has been active. Though not a direct biomarker, evidence of prebiotic chemistry can also be suggestive.

But on planets with significant magnetic fields, like the Earth, there may be one more trait that can act like a biomarker: magnetic signatures. For many bacterial creatures, it makes sense to precipitate a specific iron mineral called magnetite within or along their bodies. This transforms these creatures into little magnets and allows them to travel effortlessly along magnetic field lines, lending them a mobility they would not otherwise possess or providing them with a way to align themselves to a magnetic field for swimming. What distinguishes the iron crystals created by life from other forms? Their domains are typically aligned, they form in chains of grains and the crystals themselves are elongated compared to their inorganic kin. And the size, between 30 and 100 microns is very particular: this is the easiest size over which you can form strongly magnetic materials easily, yet have the entire crystal be made up of just one magnetic domain.

A schematic of the Earth's magnetic field is shown in this USGS graphic. Note that as long as you are away from the equator, the magnetic field lines have a vertical component as well as a horizontal one. Travel along it far enough and you can either head up in the world or use your orientation to get down.

The existence of such bacteria also tell us a great deal about their environment. While they need some oxygen to form the magnetite in the first place, most magnetosomes are either anerobic or microaerobic (tolerating small amounts of O2) meaning that for many of these creatures, free oxygen can be lethal. Since magnetic field lines have a vertical component, if you are away from the equator, this gives the bacteria another advantage. By orienting themselves along these field lines, they are able to travel back down to lower levels in a pond or marsh, where the oxygen levels are reduced and conditions are more clement.

So what is Dr. Vali's connection with all this? He has done a little work with Astrobiology's favourite martian meteorite, ALH84001. This particular meteorite is the site of many a hotly contested battle about the meaning of the small yet enigmatic shapes found within. Like the Martian dunes and permafrost polygons, they look very much like their terrestrial counterparts despite the problems in scale.

Perhaps tellingly, the meteorite has a significant fraction of nice elongated single domain magnetite crystals of about the right size to have been from magnetosomes. This has been used in the past to argue for a biogenic origin for the other deposits seen in the rock. For Vali, what makes this even more compelling is two major factors. First, the magnetite crystals are located similarly to where you would find them on Earth. They are on the rims of the carbonate deposits, rather than shot entirely through the rock. As well, the magnetite crystals are found distributed randomly within these rims which would not have been the case, had the material cooled from high temperature.

This idea of finding magnetofossils is not far fetched - on some parts of the Earth, such crystals made from uncountable numbers of magnetosomes are the major magnetic mineral present and can persist in the right environments for tens of millions of years at a minimum.

But if these "magnetofossils" are indeed indicative of past magnetosomes on Mars it has far reaching implications. First and foremost, Mars would have needed to have evolved life to the bacterial level. But even more tantalizing are the details of such an environment. For magnetite to have any value to a bacterium, Mars would have needed to have had a significant magnetic field and a fluid in which a creature could travel. Secondly, there would have had to have been a survival advantage to that bacterium of being able to rise or fall within its environment. The most obvious example would be an atmosphere that locally had significant amounts of free oxygen.

Paleomagnetism on Mars today as measured by Mars Express. Note that the highest levels (blue and red) correspond to the ancient highland terrains in the South. If Mars has not had a magnetic field for a long time, the magnetite in ALH84001 must be extremely old to have been a biomarker from a magnetosome.

It's a great picture, but there are problems. Mars has no magnetic field today and it is possible that has been the case for a long time. We know that Mars did originally possess such a field since we can detect small amounts of "paleomagnetism" frozen into the ancient rocks of the martian southern highlands. These are some of the oldest rocks on Mars (Noachian in age) and this suggests that Mars did not maintain a strong magnetic field for long. Furthermore, we know from the history of the Earth that it takes a long time for even wide-spread life to create an oxygen rich atmosphere. This suggests that both factors that together give a survival advantage to magnetosomes on the Earth may not have co-existed on Mars.

As well, over the years, the results found in ALH84001 have been challenged and refined. There are abiogenic origins that have been proposed and as they say: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The best that can be said, as of today, is that the issue has not been settled definitively. Perhaps the Mars Science Laboratory will be able to help. If Mars ever did sport free oxygen in its atmosphere, there will likely be some quite obvious signatures just waiting to be found in Gale Crater!

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Some Background on Magnetosomes:
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2001/20010702/living_lodestones.shtml
You can also check out the original paper to which Dr. Vali contributed here:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1996Sci...273..924M
You can listen to Dr. Vali's lecture and others in the CATP Series here:
http://create-astrobiology.mcgill.ca/seminars.html

Meanwhile at Europa, The Plot Thickens

2011-10-25T08:47:00.000-07:00

Divide and Conquer!
A concept for cutting JEO into two pieces brings an Europan Mission back towards the realm of the possible!

VK over at futureplanets reports on two mission proposals to Europa that were delivered to the recent OPAG meeting. The upshot is that by taking a page from the Mars Exploration Program, the outer planets folks have found that they can divide and conquer to explore. By cutting up the science goals and objectives of the US part of EJSM (known as JEO) into two missions - an Europan Orbiter and a Fly-by vehicle - it is possible to reduce the cost of the total missions by over $700 million. More importantly, it divides the program into much more manageable chunks, each of which costs less than $2 billion.

At the same time, it can't be overstated that these are pretty big chunks! It won't fit in under the Discovery Program nor under New Frontiers, so that makes them both flagships. The authors of the report themselves acknowledge that the current funding profile for planetary science as well as the recent Planetary Decadal work against this size of a mission. However, by reducing each mission down below $2 billion, it opens up the possibility that a consortium of countries working together might well be able to bring the cost down to something approaching NF boundaries, particularly if someone else can provide the launch vehicle.

Those of you who read this space frequently will know that even though I am a Martian by training, I was disappointed to see Europa fall off the end of the decadal. It's great to see that ways are being found that could make significant strides in Europa science for less money. At the same time, programmatic balance needs to be addressed, and either of these missions needs to be evaluated side by side with other outer planets priorities of similar cost such as the Uranus or Enceladus Orbiters. Still, it's a hopeful sign.

At the end of the article, vk conjures up the specter of reality. Namely that since both missions are expensive, the possibility exists that the first one to go might be the only one. Therefore it makes sense to consider which is preferred. Vk is unable to make a choice, preferring instead a slightly augmented version of the orbiter. However, given the funding envelope, perhaps we should be considering even more basic versions of these two missions.

What breaks the tie for me is the ice-penetrating radar onboard the fly-by mission. This will tell us if the putative ocean below is accessible at any point and therefore enable a lander when combined with high resolution imagery and composition data from a spectrometer. It would also collect more data and operate for longer, allowing the scientists more of an opportunity to ponder more results (one side effect of short missions is that the funding profile for the data reduction tends to fall of quickly with time). Furthermore, if the ice shell is thin, it will develop the kind of publicity and momentum that will help get the second mission or a lander funded.

2011 DPS Notebook

2011-10-13T07:55:00.000-07:00

The large mechanical elephant of Nantes as photographed by wikimedia user dyhorus. Last week, planetary scientists from around the world gathered in the home city of Jules Verne. There we discussed our work and looked forward to the year ahead. In particular for us on this side of the pond, we got a look at a European community that is seeing more and more coordination of their activities and is resembling less an less a hodgepodge of individual moving parts.

This year I spent most of my DPS-chronicling energies over on Twitter. When this was combined with my poor adaptation to Central European Summer Time, the length of the sessions (which ran to 7PM every night) and a preference to use my late night hours in productive discussion with colleagues I did not get the opportunity to write much during the conference. I've finally arrived back home now and, as such, I present a minor information dump of my thoughts regarding the conference.

Part 1: The Martians are coming!

One satisfying aspect of this year's conference was the presence of many first time DPSers. In particular, I'd like to highlight the presence of the martians who normally shun the conference in favor of LPSC! I can say this because, until last year, I was one of them. That we usually stay away is understandable - there are often only a couple of sessions at DPS dedicated to Mars. But Mars was not left out this year. Alfred McEwen put the highlight on HiRise, presentations were given describing what we can learn if only ESA's troubled TGO gets the green-light and modelling results from our European colleagues were also featured. Thus, a confluence of additional support from the US and a strong European contingent made this a year to remember.

There were so many fascinating discoveries shared and any attempt to try and list them all would leave many out. However, I would still like to highlight a few. Candi Hansen presented interesting work that suggests that much of the active erosion of dunes and scarps in the north could be caused by the same CO2-Sublimation processes that produce the geysers that lead to spiders. Nathaniel Putzig gave us an update on SHARAD results, including the presence of a mysterious "Reflection Free Zone" within the southern polar cap which might be CO2 ice. If it is, 40% of all the CO2 on Mars is locked up in that one deposit! As well, Shane Byrne presented an update on his elegantly simple sounding of the martian permafrost by looking at small impacts that occur as HiRISE watches. The uptake is that the ground-ice margin isn't where we thought it was, suggesting that we still have much to learn about martian permafrost. Speaking of ice, Bourgeois also presented evidence of km-scale glaciation in Valles Marineras based on orbital imagery and geomorphology.

One talk in particular bears specific highlighting, however. Geronimo Villanueva updated us on what he and Mike Mumma have been up to in the search for Methane on Mars since 2009. They now have a half million spectra from three of the best telescope facilities to pour over. However, what is most impressive about this work to me isn't the methane abundances. Instead it's all the other molecules that fall out of the calculations - dozens and dozens of them. In a sense, we're already doing trace gas chemistry on Mars from afar. For instance, Villanueva flashed the first HDO map of Mars up on the screen for the briefest instant. Even so, it should be noted that the error bars are significant, and even Villanueva contended that a completely unambiguous and unassailable detection of many species, including methane, would need either orbital or in-situ verification. TGO anyone?

Part 2: EPSC-DPS or DPS-EPSC?

The second notable aspect of this year's conference was the size. Organizers presented a chart on Monday that indicated there were at least 1500 participants and once same day registration was counted, that number could have risen above 2000! That's almost LPSC-big! This speaks well of the idea of holding this conference jointly (or at least the advantages of holding an October conference on the French Atlantic Coast) and I think there was a great deal of support for repeating the exercise - perhaps with a US venue.

At the same time, we were also victims of our own success and so many researchers in one place created some problems. Some of the rooms were laughably small and it was not uncommon to see every seat occupied, people up against the walls, sitting in the asiles and lined up out the door. This is the first DPS where I've heard of people quitting the breaks 10 minutes early to try to get a seat in sessions they really cared about. Or bypassing sessions they were marginally interested in due to overcrowding. The poster sessions also became difficult to attend. Refreshment stations were poorly positioned and tended to create bottlenecks while it became a task and a half just to get swim through the crowd to get to a poster.

Part of the reason for the issue was the incredible and somewhat unexpected turn-out from the Americans. DPS in the US typically gets 800-900 participants and EPSC sees 700-800. It was perhaps assumed that by holding the joint conference in Europe, the EPSC crowd would dominate. Instead the opposite seemed to be true. This extended to twitter. The official conference title was EPSC-DPS, but many of the Americans were using the hashtag #dpsepsc. A reconciliation was required and finally even event organizer and sponsor Europlanet gave over to the reverse handle.

To me this large turnout was a plus and a minus. I have pretensions of being an equal opportunity scientist when it comes to the planets. One of the advantages of DPS was that I could take in a much larger swath of planetary science. However, with 9 sessions typically running concurrently this proved impossible.

Part 3: SwRI, the Nice Model and the triumph of the Dynamicists

All fields go through hot and cold phases. Right now in Planetary Science nothing is hotter than Dynamics. This field has really come of age in the last ten years as increasing computational power lets us examine the granularity of the early solar system and how it came to look the way it does today. This conference was in some ways a celebration of all we have learned from this dynamical renaissance. In that spirit, EPSC-DPS exhibited two particularly well known centers of Dynamical work - L'Observatoire de la Cote D'Azur in Nice and the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder. Kudos in particular go to the latter. I have to wonder if it is a first to have both senior Prize Lectures given by members of the same institution.

Both of those lectures were of excellent quality and were required viewing for all members of the community. I generally view these prize lectures as being akin to my PhD coursework; they update my fundamentals. William Ward spoke to us about work to understand planetary obliquity. William Bottke schooled us about the particulars of the so-called Late Heavy Bombardment. Present in both talks was the explicative power of the Nice Model of the solar system and the contributions made by high-power computing.

As a smattering of what was discussed:

(A) the stabilizing influence of the Moon on Earth's obliquity will wane over the next 1.5 Ga. Thus, the Earth's climate will enter a chaotic state reminiscent of Mars at that time.
(B) there are ways of tipping Uranus on its side and making Venus rotate retrograde that do not involve giant impacts.
(C) the LHB likely began earlier and lasted later than 3.9 Ga. On the Moon, basin forming impacts likely lasted until 3.7 Ga and on the Earth to 2.5 Ga.
(D) Serious bombardment of KT-sized objects likely continued on Earth until 1.5 Ga, suggesting that Sudbury and Vredefort might be the last gasps of the LHB. This has profound implications for Astrobiology and the development of Life on the early Earth.

Part 4: Comets and Beyond: A Good Omen

I have a special place in my Scientific heart for Comets. I've done laboratory work on this in the past (and I hope to write up a blog post on this in the next few months!) and am currently involved in projects to understand how we can better study these objects. As such, I had been hoping to attend a few sessions discussing results from recent missions to these objects. But the shear volume of material absolutely blew me away! What was also surprising was the breadth of the reporting. Spacecraft results, modelling results and even ground-based telescopic observations were all presented. This last group, in particular, is unusual and it was good to see them here. In the end I got a lot of useful information that I think will be helpful for my activities in the coming months.

In terms of research, there are, of course, some highlights. I greatly enjoyed efforts to understand the dyamics of cometary coma through tracking cometary "grains" some of which are as large as basketballs! As well, it seems clear that we don't yet have a good handle on why comets produce jets where they do, though we have some very tantalizing clues. But, particularly poignant for me is the discovery and announcement at this conference by Hartogh et al that the D/H ratio of the water ice in the coma of comet Hartley-2 is equivalent to the water content of the Earth's oceans. This ratio, known as VSMOW (Vienna-Standard Mean Ocean Water) was one of the main reasons why it had been previously thought that comets could not have provided much of the Earth's water reservoirs - comets that had been visited by spacecraft before had all exhibited high values of this ratio. But it could be that these other comets had undergone more cycling - more transits around the sun. And if there's one thing that cycling can do, it's causing isotopic fractionation, particularly as the comet gets dusty. The uptake of this new measurement is that it now becomes possible for cometary impacts to explain more of the water on our present wet world.

The other two areas in which I was interested to learn were sessions on Astrobiology and Super-Earths in other solar systems. Despite the differing titles, the subject matter was similar. In the astrobiology session, what really caught my eye was the discovery of warm dust around a nearby star called Eta Corvi. According to Lisse, this is evidence for kuiper belt material scattered into the inner solar system. I'm astounded that we can even see this stuff. Sounds like we might have a second example solar system where the Nice Model can really sink its teeth into the small bodies and Giant Planet Migrations! As for the Super Earths session, there was a lot of interesting modelling and a consensus emerged as to what we can expect to detect with JWST. While there are compounds we can expect and look for, the Signal-to-Noise story means that JWST will not be able to detect any biomarkers in the atmospheres of habitable-zone Earth-like planets. It's just not the right tool for this job.

Part 5: ESA-NASA Night

My conference concluded with ESA-NASA Night and talks by Jim Green (NASA-PSD) and Luigi Colangeli (ESA). While Jim was a bit downbeat, we did learn a great deal from his talk as to the continuing activities in the PSD. He implored us to not go negative and to declare our support for the Planetary Decadal Survey verbally - which we did. It is key, he said, that we argue for our program and say why planetary science is worthwhile of the funding we get instead of arguing against another program. The DPS issued a statement reinforcing this perspective. Jim expressed his dismay with how little he has heard from us in the way of support, so let me right here and now declare my own support for the decadal (as I have done in the past). As well, I'd encourage Jim not to loose heart! Ours is a vibrant community and I know that we are all immeasurably thankful for his excellent and tireless work at PSD.

The ESA report was more upbeat. Instead of being an update, this was almost a first-look for many of us. If that was the case, Colangeli's report succeeded in showing off what Europe has to offer. Currently 19 missions are in flight, in development or approved for flight and the program appears to be somewhat robust. Of course, we all know that ESA has its own funding issues, though Colangeli's report was light on challenges. But there are good building signs, not least of which is the coordinating outreach of the Europlanet Research Institute. Certainly, a take-home from this conference is that ESA is becoming more of a full partner with the US in planetary science, a trend which seems likely to continue for the foreseeable future!

Another conference and more bad news looming

2011-10-02T15:58:00.000-07:00

ESA's TGO - Last ditch negotiations are expected Monday in South Africa at the International Astronautical Congress to see if this mission can be saved.

As I was crossing the Atlantic, Universe Today was reporting some details about the negotiations between ESA and NASA with respect to the ESA Exo-Mars program. From the sound of the article, barring some last ditch maneuvering at this week's IAC meeting in South Africa, Trace Gas Orbiter could be nearing the end of the road.

To quickly recap, the European Exo-Mars program is made up of two components. First, an orbiter to look into trace gasses in the martian atmosphere, particularly methane, called Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO). Second, a capable drilling robot called the Exo-Mars rover. TGO was planned for a 2016 launch and Exo-Mars for a 2018 launch (though TGO has now likely slipped to 2018).

The second of these, the rover, was the subject of some negotiating earlier in the spring when NASA's planetary decadal survey recommended restructuring this mission. Initially Exo-Mars would have been joint with NASA's planned astrobiology/Mars Sample Return rover MAX-C, both being deployed simultaneously with one sky crane. Now the agencies are looking at ways to merge the two missions into one.

But the orbiter wasn't safe either. While NASA considers each to be completely separate missions, on the ESA side they are part of the same program. Commitment papers from NASA were due at ESA in late June. Due to budget uncertainty, NASA was unable to deliver these. As such, work has been shut down over the summer on TGO. There was a second deadline of September 15th for a decision from NASA on this commitment and, from the sound of the article, this deadline may have also been missed.

Now comes the news that NASA may be unable to provide the launch vehicle, an Atlas-V, for TGO. Universe Today reports that attempts are being made for the Europeans to acquire a cheaper proton launcher from the Russians. If that deal cannot be completed, it may force the cancellation of TGO. Perhaps counter-intuitively, while ESA heads the project, many of the individual instrument teams have leadership and significant participation from US sources (the MATMOS instrument, for instance, is being co-developed by Caltech and the CSA). Thus a cancellation would be bad for both agencies. Still, it is not yet known how much funding NASA will be able to contribute.

As well, as I have previously commented, there would be a significant science cost to eliminating TGO. While MSL can perform the atmospheric methane measurement with similar fidelity, it can only provide one data point. You really need the seasonal variation and orbital mapping capabilities that you can only get with an orbiter to really understand what is going on with this molecule on Mars.

Look for more information on this story in the next few days.

Getting Ready for DPS 2011

2011-09-29T06:36:00.000-07:00

My two posters for DPS 2011. On the left is a description of the ILSR Analogue Mission Control Architecture, on the right I discuss some suggested atmospheric measurements for MSL and argue for pre-processing on-board landed spacecraft in order to improve the temporal coverage of this dataset. You can get a preview of the Analogue poster here and the Atmospheric/MSL poster here.

It's almost time for the 2011 edition of the AAS's (American Astronomical Society's) Division for Planetary Sciences Conference, better know to us in Planetary Science as DPS. Next week, those of us interested in planets will descend upon the conference centre in Nantes, France. As happens every five years or so, this conference is being held in concert with our European counterparts, the EPSC (The European Planetary Science Congress) who have shared the organizing duties. This has meant, among other things, an extended abstract process which is reminiscent of LPSC's famous 2-page behemoths. Yes, these abstracts have abstracts! But the end result of that extra work is that we all have a better idea of what will be presented by our colleagues.

Somehow, despite being in this business since 2003, I had somehow managed to avoid DPS until last year. Based on what I saw there, I really was missing out all those years. DPS is an interesting venue for several reasons. First, the scope of DPS tends to be broader than the other major conference on the planetary calendar: LPSC. While LPSC tends to, de facto, focus more on the terrestrial planets and surface processes, DPS draws in people working in the outer reaches of the solar system and exoplanetary researchers. This makes the conference a little more tractable to a Martian, like myself. It also allows me to expand my horizons a bit more than does LPSC. Secondly, for some reason, the smaller attendance of DPS seems to have less turn-over compared to LPSC. This can make it feel a little more like a community event.

I'm really looking forward to the conference and my first joint ESA-NASA night. Will we finally find out more about how the budget and how the Mars program will shake out? Stay tuned to this space for the answer! As the PSD budget contracts in the coming years, these sorts of international partnerships will become increasingly significant. It's also going to be great to hear about the research being done across the pond and to understand better what opportunities might exist for employment. The conference partnership with Europlanet will be very interesting to explore.

I'll be live-tweeting as much as I can manage and will post updates in this space if anything interesting occurs. While I will make a report on our new show, YorkUniverse, over on Astronomy.fm when I get back, I don't anticipate taking any interviews. However, this could easily and quickly change, so if there's something you'd like to say to our 2000 weekly listeners out there, by all means, drop me a line!

With the rest of this space, I'd like to give a quick preview of the results I'll be presenting:

The ILSR Mission Architecture

All deployments have now been completed for the ILSR analogue mission (previously reported on here, here and here) and the time has come to analyze what went well and what could have gone better. As a part of this effort, I will be discussing the Mission Control Architecture we employed during the middle deployment to the Sudbury impact structure. This was an analogue of a lunar sample return done on the cheap - with one relay orbiter and one landed rover which could gather samples to return to a stationary ascent vehicle.

For our architecture, we started with the Mars Exploration Program's tried and tested format. But we needed to make some changes! The biggest of these was to effectively divide our Mission Control team into "platoons" representing different processes. This subdivision of responsibility changed the way buy-in was achieved with the team, but it allowed each process to be more flexible. This division allowed us to make decisions rapidly and respond to each two-hour command cycle effectively.

The other major conclusion is with regards to the rover - we found that having a vehicle capable of creating a branching path is ideal for a situation in which samples need to be returned to a centralized ascent vehicle. The ability to easily return to a spot on a pre-existing network enables parallel investigations of multiple sites from the large to the small scale and is remarkably similar to the operating strategy for the Phoenix Robotic Arm. By adopting this parallel investigation strategy we can perform down-selection exercises which give assurance that not only are our samples appropriate, but that they represent the best samples possible.

Atmospheric Measurements of Water Ice and MSL

The second poster is an interesting gamble, after a sort. It describes some ideas that myself and my team had as we were considering the MSL spacecraft earlier in the year. While MSL does not focus on atmospheric measurements, there are some interesting synergies between the imagers and the LIBS package which suggest some really interesting investigations which could look into surface-atmosphere interactions involving water ice. Each of the proposed investigations has been validated using data from other landed spacecraft, especially Phoenix.

But these don't just apply to MSL. The 2018 European Exo-Mars rover (or a combined NASA-ESA MAX-C/Exo-Mars rover) would also be able to complete several of these investigations. Furthermore, we want to advocate pre-processing of atmospheric measurements on-board landed spacecraft. On Phoenix, our coverage of the changeable sky was less than 1 observation for every 10,000 possibilities. The reason for this is that data budgets are limited and investigation of the ground, deservedly, takes priority.

However, given that the martian sky often exhibits cloud-forms which lend themselves well to being reduced to angular speed and average spectral ratios, we can achieve much greater coverage in time and space for the same data budget. This technique would also give a greater probability of detecting anomalous events, such as precipitation/virga, convection and wind shear. These interesting cases would be kicked out by the software as being unprocessable and would be returned to Earth whole.

A new name in Radio

2011-09-27T07:25:00.000-07:00

September 29 Update:

Shane Martin of http://sha.nemart.in has provided some really beautiful looking graphics! You can even make a weekly theme depending on who is presenting!

Other versions below the cut!

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The dawn of a new program, but expect the same insight expertise and engaging guests you have come to enjoy over the last year!

As of today, "Live from York U" is no more. In its place we give you the new York Universe! I was playing around with the Hubble deep field and produced the above promotional image.

As always, tune us in, Monday nights at 9 PM EDT or 1 AM GMT.

In Memoriam: A Tough Year for Planetary Science in Tucson

2011-09-27T06:53:00.000-07:00

The ephemeral Ocotillo flower as photographed by the author in 2005 on Tower Peak in the Tucson Mountain Range. The spiny stalks of the Ocotillo appear dry and dead to the casual observer for most of the year, but within hours of rainfall they burst into life.

Until a couple of years ago, my planetary science heart belonged entirely to that little valley in Arizona tucked in between the Santa Catalinas, the Tucsons, the Rincons and the Santa Ritas. But it has been a difficult year for that city and for my alma mater. This past year has seen the passing of several great planetary scientists from the Tucson community both from the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and the Planetary Science Institute.

On December 14th of last year, it was Donald Hunten who died. He was a researcher whom I did not know but with whom I shared the twin passions of atmospheric and planetary science. I also learned that we had canadian roots in common and had spent time in London, ON at the University of Western Ontario. It is interesting and perhaps a little sad how often you don't realize the similarities between yourself and others until they are gone.

More recently, Tom Geherls passed away on July 11. He had had a long and distinguished career at the University of Arizona. In April, he was honored for 50 years of service with the university, a milestone that is almost unheard of these days. While I had spoken with Tom a few times, those occasions tended towards administrative matters and I cannot say that I knew him well. Still, I will not forget his office, unique at LPL, decorated with tapestries from his travels. Perhaps a little of the man inside was on display there.

Both of these researchers had made many contributions to planetary science and had led rewarding and full lives. Each was honoured with celebrations at LPL of their life and achievements. Furthermore, from the outpouring of sympathies at their passing, it was clear that they had made many friends and supportive colleagues over the years. But neither of them were young - Donald was 85 and Tom was 86 - and unfortunately, the past year has also seen two Tucson-based colleagues taken from us before their time.

I'll talk a little more at length about Mike Drake, who passed away this past Wednesday (September 21) at the age of 65, and Betty Pierazzo who died suddenly and tragically at the age of 47 on May 15 of this year. I was a colleague of each, but not a close friend and will therefore leave the eulogizing to those better suited to the task. Instead, I thought I might share a brief description of my connection to each and a personal story or two and how I was affected by them.
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Let's start with Betty. For the first few years of my graduate experience, she was someone who just happened to be around the department; someone you might see at a Journal Club or in the halls. She had graduated several years before I had arrived and was working at the Planetary Science Institute. Since she worked with cratering processes, she was a common collaborator for many of the graduate students interested in planetary surfaces. She was also an enthusiastic supporter of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory Conference (LPLC) and could always be counted on to give a talk.

Later, in 2006, I got to know her better as one of the TAs assigned to a NATS course she taught. Through that experience I acquired an appreciation of just how much effort went into teaching and how to structure material for non-science majors. Betty was a good teacher both for the students and for myself - she made it look easy. She was always ready and willing to answer any question a student had.

I can remember the group of us, the three TAs and her, together sitting around her kitchen table laughing and joking as we prepared to grade exams. She was always willing to give a student the benefit of the doubt on an answer, much more so than we grads were. We never feared a late night grading over at her apartment because at the first hint of exhaustion she would bring out an Italian stove-top coffee maker and whip us up espresso.

I admit that I envied her the easy camaraderie she shared with her collaborators and friends. The evidence of such friendships we scattered around her house. I can remember, in particular, a pair of photographs from Antarctica which were a gift from Gordon Osinski (for whom I now work) which she had framed and hung on her wall.

After the course finished up, we began to meet up frequently to play tennis together. It was a good match since our skill level at the sport was similar - we were both terrible! However, the matches made for some fun times and we picked them back up when I returned to Tucson for the Phoenix mission in the summer of 2008.

The greatest shock of the news in May was the suddenness of Betty's passing. Many of us had a difficult time reconciling the energetic and enthusiastic person we knew with the fact that she was gone. For me, that passion was inspiring. Here was someone dedicated about their work and in it for the long haul. She showed us that persistence really can pay off and was building an impressive career, most recently as an adjunct professor at the University of Arizona.

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Let's move on to Mike. When I arrived at LPL in 2003, Mike had been at the laboratory for over thirty years and had been head and director for nine. As a result, I feel like I owe him a great deal for helping to create the environment in which I figured out what I wanted to do with my life. The more I see of the academic world as part of my postdoctoral work, the more I realize how rare an experience that is.

As graduate students, our main group interaction with Mike was at the town-hall style graduate meetings. In these, he would tell us what the department and the university were up to and what difficult decisions loomed. He never held back at these meetings or sugar coated the truth, but instead laid out everything in complete detail. During and afterwards, he would gladly answer any questions we had. This, together with his willingness to take the time to talk to any of us he passed in the hallways, made us feel included and valued and it gave us a voice. It's a lesson I won't soon forget, and I think that this posture has contributed heavily to the success of the graduates of the department. After all, we didn't just feel like we were training to be part of the community of planetary science; we were already accepted members. This faith, in part, gave us the confidence to go out and feel that we could contribute to our field.

This faith was also something that I had the chance to personally experience. You see, Mike and I also crossed paths professionally on a few occasions in discussing water delivery to the terrestrial planets. I had done some work in Bob Brown's lab on understanding the isotopic ratios of dusty water ice as an analogue to comets to determine if these could be a source. And in my 3rd year I realized that my work was also applicable to Mars. Unfortunately, I needed some dedicated equipment if I was really going to get my teeth into this side of the problem. After speaking with my adviser, Peter Smith, we identified some departmental money which was available as hallowed "discretionary funds." But it was up to me to convince Mike to give me access.

So I worked hard and prepared. I wrote up a proposal and put together budgets for a few different options and I headed over to the corridor on the second floor of the Kuiper building. Once in Mike's office, I handed over my papers which he looked over briefly. Then he looked up at me and asked me what I hoped to discover, what we might be able to do with the equipment and where the work might take me and suggested a few scientific avenues of investigation. I was shocked. I expected to have my budgets gone over with a fine-toothed comb and here we were discussing Science for the whole of the meeting! At the end, I had a verdict - I would get access to the funds to spend how I wished to carry out my research. It was a great feeling and I was determined not to let down his faith in me. Perhaps that too was part of his plan.

Certainly, Mike made dozens of these decisions every day and almost all of them carried more weight and more significance than my proposal. Yet, for me, this project was near and dear to my heart and I think he saw that. I will remember that meeting. Oh and if you're curious - the project was a success, the results published in Icarus earlier this year. Originally, I had offered Mike a co-authorship on the paper, but he was also modest. He thanked me for the honour and pointed out that he was but a facilitator of my work. So I instead recognized his contribution in the acknowledgments section.

It's one of many many such testaments to a man who we will all miss. The department has suffered a great loss as has the Osiris-Rex Mission, which Mike had been excited to lead. Though he will not be there to see it explored in person, perhaps he will be with us in spirit as we rendezvous with 1999 RQ36 and in some way a little something of him will make that journey as well.

UPDATE: news has just arrived that LPL's second director Charles P. Sonett has also just passed away.

Teaching is in the air

2011-09-19T07:06:00.000-07:00

A mathematics lecture, courtesy of Wikimedia user Tungsten. Teaching is an area I greatly enjoy and seek out the opportunity to contribute. This fall, I will get to do more of it than I ever have before!

One of the aspects of preparing for a life in academia in Canada vs the United States is the prominence accorded to teaching. In the US, you could probably get away with not teaching until after receiving an assistant professorship appointment as long as your research and grant acquisition were top notch. In Canada, you really need to have shown an ability to hold your own in front of a classroom.

Most Canadian applicants get this kind of experience as graduate students, but in the US this is less common. I had only one hour of total in-class instruction when I graduated from LPL in 2008 (not including office hours and leading review sessions and tutorials) and I was pretty middle of the road. As a result, I've had to try to get my experience as a postdoc - a daunting task.

I've been helped along this journey most significantly by Paul Delaney of York University. I've given guest lectures pretty regularly in his Planetary Science course over the last couple of years. That has allowed me to push my in-class instruction hours up to nine.

But this fall, I'm blowing everything wide open. I had hoped to snag a full course this fall either from York or Western. But when that fell through, I still managed to put together a healthy slate. In the span of two months from early September through early November, I will be teaching two guest lectures (University of Toronto; York) and two full modules (Western; York). All told, this should push my total in-class instruction clock up to 22.5 hours, more than half a course-worth.

It's actually been quite a bit of fun and lets me show off the diversity of planetary science. The first module was on Planetary Atmospheres, the second will be Planetary Surface Processes. The first guest lecture will be on Spacecraft and Exploration, the second will be on Titan. Of the four, I'm currently particularly fond of the very first module (Planetary Atmospheres) which I developed as part of the 2011 Western Planetary Science Short Course. This task included a problem set and a laboratory activity which were well received. My slides for that short course have now been shared by my students with others like themselves across the world, and a version of my lab on Optical Depth is currently awaiting its debut at the University of Toronto!

The take-home here is that if teaching is an area you would like to shore up or get more experience in, it is possible to do so as a postdoc. But you have to be persistent, you may have to look outside your own home institution, and being paid for your labour is unlikely. Still, it is rewarding work and I highly recommend it. If nothing else, you will gain valuable experience and knowledge about where you want to take your PhD.

Springtime for Mars

2011-09-13T11:29:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again! The days are getting longer, the temperature is getting higher and there's a breeze in the air as the dry ice is evaporating away. Layers of terrain, stable for millenia are beginning to collapse in avalanches:

Hi-Rise catches the start of "Avalanche Season" on Mars.

Below the remaining dry ice deposits, geysers are forming, spreading their tracery through the red sands:

Side by side images of sublimation spiders: (Left) a Hi-rise image shows the form of these interesting geomorphic features. (Right) An artist's (Ron Miller's) conception of what an erupting geyser at the nexus of these spiders would look like from the surface.

Above, the clouds and snows of summer will soon be here:

The arrival of clouds in Northern Hemisphere spring and summer are seen clearly in these two Viking images of the same region.

Will even the dunes start to move again, once their frozen overburden is removed?

Sand dunes in Mars' polar erg in the process of defrosting. The residual ice shows as blue in the colour-stretched Hi-Rise image.

And what treasures will the receding frost reveal?

The Phoenix Lander is revealed after weathering a Martian winter. Sadly the accumulated CO2 ice irreparably damaged the spacecraft.

What? This doesn't sound like the weather where you are on this September 13th*? Well it would be what you would feel and see if you were in the northern hemisphere of Mars! Mars has just passed solar longitude 0° as of today meaning that the vernal equinox is behind it and it's full speed ahead for the boreal solstice in another 200 days on March 30!

While there will be no flowers pushing their way up through the martian regolith, Mars does have crocus dates. But what do these mean? Aharonson et al defined CROCUS dates back in 2004 as being "Cap Recession Observations that reveal CO2 has Ultimately Sublimated" which is a nifty term for when the ground can once again breathe and interact with the atmosphere because the overlying CO2 seasonal ice cap has evaporated away. This meters-thick layer forms every year all the way down to 60° of latitude in some places:

View of the changing north polar cap of Mars from the planetary photojournal.The bright white region at left is the seasonal cap made up primarily of CO2, the remaining white at right is H2O ice. The dark band is the polar erg - a sand sea made up of dark dunes.

Despite the acronym, the timing is similar to the thawing of the ground in the terrestrial spring when our own meters-thick seasonal cap of water ice begins to evaporate. And for those of us who live in the middle to high latitudes, this event is one that is greeted by millions of impossibly hardy flowers called crocuses pushing their way up through the remaining snow:

Crocuses push up through recently defrosted northern latitude ground on the Author's way into work in 2009.

As on the Earth, this crocus date varies with latitude; the more northerly one travels, the later is the onset of thawed ground. At the lowest latitudes of the seasonal martian cap, around 60°N, the crocus date is about Ls=30° or mid November on Earth for this Martian year. From that time, the thawing will proceed northward, cluing up with the full reveal of the Northern Perennial Water-Ice cap a little after Ls=120° in early June, 2012 Earth time.

This delay in evaporation is just another way in which Mars is similar to the Earth. Here, we don't usually experience peak summer temperatures until late July and Mid August. Still, it is a surprising thing. After all, on our home planet, the delay is due to the time required to heat up the oceans and other bodies that can effectively store heat. But without much thermal inertia, how can the martian surface hope to hold out for long against a warming sun?

The solution can be found by examining the seasons on Mars. Since Mars' orbit is very eccentric (0.09 compared to 0.01 for the Earth), its distance to the sun is roughly as significant as its axial tilt. Both make about 30% worth of difference in terms of the amount of solar energy received at the surface. In northern spring, Mars is actually getting further and further from the sun and this moderates the rate at which the northern hemisphere warms:

The classic representation of Mars' orbit from Malin Space Science Systems.

You might also wonder: how can we tell when the ice all sublimates on Mars? Partly, we can tell from looking at the receding of the bright white seasonal cap from orbit. As well, we can see that same cap thin out in our measurements of elevation (or at least we could until the loss of MGS and the MOLA instrument). At the same time there is an increase in the number of neutrons emitted by the water ice below. But the most telltale sign of spring comes from looking at the nature of the ground itself. You see, much of the last ice to disappear is actually clear, just like the ice covering a pond. But it reacts differently when we look at it in thermal wavelengths. Solid ice rapidly conducts energy away from the surface, so it takes a long time to heat up in the day and a long time to cool at night. Therefore, when we look at the surface with an IR camera, the temperature of ice will be moderated.

However, dry Martian regolith is very fluffy stuff and once heated, the temperature rises quickly. At night this heat is easily radiated away. The result is more extreme temperatures for dry ground. How quickly heat is gained or lost to the environment from a surface is called "Thermal Inertia" and we can look for a change in the thermal inertia to determine when Spring has finally Sprung on Mars!
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*I apologize to my Southern friends - I haven't forgotten about you. This year the southern spring corresponds with the north of Mars!