looking back over September 2016 Space News looking back over September 2016

Chinese Radio Telescope starts testing phase The Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) is nestled within a natural basin in China's remote and mountainous south-western Guizhou province. Designed with an active surface for pointing and focusing, its dish antenna is constructed with 4,450 individual triangular-shaped panels.

Gaia’s billion star map (part one) published Gaia sits at a Lagrange point L2 (beyond Earth on the Sun-Earth axis) The first catalogue of more than a billion stars from ESA’s Gaia satellite was published on 14th September – the largest all-sky survey of celestial objects to date. On its way to assembling the most detailed 3D map ever made of our Milky Way galaxy, Gaia has pinned down the precise position on the sky and the brightness of 1142 million stars. This first release is based on data collected during its first 14 months of scanning the sky, up to September last year. This release also features the distances and the motions across the sky of more than two million stars.

Cassini starts its final mission year… The Cassini mission will end on 15th September 2017 with the spacecraft burning up in the atmosphere of the planet. Before then, the programme will include fly-bys of the F-ring, Titan (again as a sling-shot), then between Saturn and its rings before finally testing the upper atmosphere.

Hubble team sees possible water plumes from Europa The frozen moon of Jupiter is believed to have an ocean under the thick cracked surface ice. Plumes or jets of liquid from this ocean have been seen shooting over 100 miles high (maybe?). If these plumes can be sampled it would save the expense of drilling through the ice to get to the ocean. The James Webb space telescope may provide more detail and confirm these plumes… …

Mars’ surface chemistry explains its unusual atmosphere The SAM instrument on Curiosity has observed unusual ratios of Xe and Kr isotopes in the atmosphere. One explanation is that Ba and Br atoms in the soil are gamma-irradiated and then convert to Xe and Kr by neutron loss.

Reminders of the American South-western Deserts On its 1454th martian day, Curiosity finally passed through the area of the Murray Buttes. It is pretty clear now that they are sandstone buttes formed by layering, compression and erosion of drifting sand dunes and are similar to those seen in all good cowboy films (Hi-ho Silver!).

Curiosity – its route to date and ahead Triangles = sites of Research and drilling Here is the route of Curiosity over the ~4 years since landing and the direction of proposed future exploration (dotted). After the Murray Buttes, there will be an area of Haematite, then clays and a section consisting(?) of sulphate deposits.

Insight Mars Lander Due for launch in 2018 INSIGHT (acronym!) is currently due for launch from 5th May 2018. On arrival at Mars, its main role is to study the deep interior of the planet and answer - “How are rocky planets formed?” The main instruments are a seismometer and a heat probe (@ 3-5m) to measure Marsquakes and heat from the interior. Other measurements to be collected include rotational ‘wobbles’, the magnetic field and the weather.

Dawn moves to higher orbit to extend its mission The Dawn spacecraft has spent time orbiting Ceres at 240 miles but is now being moved up to ~900 miles. This is to save its remaining fuel and provide wider views of the asteroid. The main mission ended in June; future plans in development.

Ceres’ Ice Mountain in detail Height x2 Ahuna Mons has been photographed from low altitude in a range of ‘colours’ – red, blue and IR. Current thoughts are that it is a type of ‘cryo-volcano’ formed by ejecting a mixture of ‘liquid salty mud’(?) from within the asteroid. There is evidence of water molecules in a weak atmosphere. More to learn/discover…

OSIRIS-REx launched 8th September ‘OSIRIS-REx’ will travel to a near-Earth asteroid called Bennu and bring a small sample back to Earth for study. The Atlas V rocket launched on 8th September from Cape Canaveral. The spacecraft will reach Bennu in 2018 and return a sample to Earth in 2023. [Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer - in case you want to know.]

Rosetta mission -- in Numbers Note the position and trajectory of the comet. Also the fact that it is now beyond the Sun. This is why it was necessary to end the mission last week. What numbers are missing here? Number of pictures Quantity of data Years of research

Rosetta’s Last Day - 30th September 2016 Taken from 16km on descent. This view is about 600 metres wide. Taken from 20metres. The last picture before collision and a controlled shutdown.

MISSED !! Asteroid 2016RB1 passed by the Earth on 7th September, 17:20 UTC at a distance of about 25,000 miles (40,000 kilometers, or just less than 1/10th the Earth to moon distance). As of today, there are 1731 potentially hazardous asteroids known (Spaceweather.com).

Water necessary for life on Earth . . . The tiny sphere represents all the water on Earth, compared to the ‘dry’ globe. Yet water is essential for all of the chemical reactions found in living organisms. If water was brought to the early Earth by comets/asteroids, how many would be required… ???

Drones everywhere !! In exchange for a donation, this drone was carried high above by a balloon. ‘Spaceweather.com’ and the students of ‘Earth to Sky Calculus’ launched their space weather balloon to monitor cosmic rays in the stratosphere.

Send anything interesting during October to: michael@held.org.uk Waiting for your ideas…!!