Although there wasn’t much happening in space last week, what there was was pretty cool. You may remember Asteroid 2008 TC3 which was detected by NASA shortly before it impacted Earth in Sudan last October. Well, now they have recovered actual fragments of this asteroid. 
Other than that, not much is going on. The Cassini program has created a virtual flyover of Titan, which is cool but just assembled form old data. And, New Horizons has detected Neptune’s moon Triton DSR 2.6
Sorry Rich, but the promise of the liquid ocean of Europa beats out the promise of exotic methane based life forms on Titan. Search for Life Heads to the Outer Solar System "Does life require liquid water as the liquid medium, or are other liquids possible hosts for, if not life as we know it, some kind of organized chemistry?" asks Jonathan Lunine, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona and a member of the team pushing for a Titan mission. "You'd be testing the limits of what the word 'life' really means in the cosmos." In any case, cool beans.
Mars Last week I briefly mentioned the methane burp on Mars. This has reopened a general discussion of the implication of the presence of methane on Mars. This is a really big deal, because there are only 2 possible sources of methane on Mars, volcanoes or microbes. Both are very exciting possibilities, but it turns out that many Mars experts have concluded that a biological source seems to explain the data better. That means life on Mars people. This is a really big deal. There was an interesting discussion last week on Science Friday, available in a podcast. Also, Spirit has a scary glitch. It failed to respond to commands to move, and then didn’t store any data in non volatile memory, so the whole day was lost. The MER team isn’t panicking yet. This may just be a one off failure, or it could be the beginning of the end for the aging spacecraft. Saturn Cassini captured new images of a region of lakes near the south pole on Titan. By comparing these images to earlier images, they have found seasonal changes, which include very strong evidence for lakes and cloud formations. ![PIA11147-br500[1]](http://www.techrivet.com/content/binary/WindowsLiveWriter/DeepSpaceReport2.2_C480/PIA11147-br500%5B1%5D_thumb.jpg "PIA11147-br500[1]")
Deep Space The Planetary Society has sent their new “Beyond the Moon” roadmap for future plans to explore space to congress. The plan focuses mostly on government funded exploration, with Mars as the eventual goal. Of course the long term goal is to establish some kind of permanent human presence in space, but suffers from the perennial problem of lack of justification. I think if we really want to go into space, we need to let private industry lead the way. The justification, as always, is profit. And there are vast riches out there to be won, we just need to enable private industry to go get it and then get out of the way. Companies like Armadillo Aerospace and Virgin Galactic are already making a good start. ![armadilloAerospace[1]](http://www.techrivet.com/content/binary/WindowsLiveWriter/DeepSpaceReport2.2_C480/armadilloAerospace%5B1%5D_thumb.jpg "armadilloAerospace[1]")
Also, new observations of a wild exoplanet, HD 80606b, that passes within .03 AU of it’s host star every 111 days have recorded a planet wide temperature increase of over a thousand degrees in just 6 hours. DSR 2.1
In the spirit of the new year, I have compiled a list of the 10 coolest topics covered last year in the Deep Space Report - 3 planets orbiting other stars were imaged, Fomalhaut, HR8799, and beta pictoris, in that order.
- The discovery of an ancient shoreline provided proof that Mars once had an ocean of liquid water in the northern hemisphere.
- Phoenix detected actual snow falling from the sky on Mars.
- Armadillo Aerospace wins Lunar Lander Challenge level 1, and also announces partnerships with the Rocket Racing League to provide rocket motors for their racers, and also work on a joint venture to provide commercial space tourism flights.
- India successfully sends Chandrayaan-1 to the moon.
- China send's it's first moon probe too, Chang'e-1
- Catalina Sky Survey program detected a meteorite before impact.
- A spectacular fireball meteorite was seen over Alberta, Canada.
- Cassinni makes 2 flybys of Encleadus, the first passing within just 16 miles of the tiny moon.
- NASA tests out several new lunar rover designs, including ATHLETE and PILOT
I apologize for the missing reports over the holidays, but not much has been happening anyway Luna The US DoD has proposed the idea of using Atlas and Delta rockets as a platform for launching manned missions to the moon. Both rockets have been in service for decades and have a proven flight record, but neither is "man rated". They have never been used to launch astronauts that is. however, the safety record has been proven by hundreds of successful launches, and they are probably as safe as or safer than the space shuttle. the big advantage would be cost. With such a long program history, NASA could save as much as $3.4 billion over the proposed Ares program. Also, a NASA instrument on Chandrayaan-1 has detected the signature of iron bearing minerals on the moon. This is mildly exciting. lunar materials containing aluminum and titanium are already known, this discovery may add iron as a potential material available from resources on the moon. Mars Lets give it up for the little rovers that could as they celebrate their 5th anniversary on Mars. As I'm sure everyone remembers like it was just yesterday, Spirit landed on 1/3/04, and Opportunity landed 1/24/04. Those little robots have surely exceeded all expectations of success by a wider margin than any other program in NASA history. Of course there is Voyager, still going, but voyager was DESIGNED to last decades, not mere months. The MER program is a shining example of success that should be used as a model for future NASA programs. Jupiter University of Arizona Professor Richard Greenberg has published a new book on his thin ice theory for Europa, and the implications this has for the possibility of life there. The more conventional theory is that, if Europa has an ocean at all, it is covered by a thick mantle of ice, tens of kilometers thick. Greenberg's thin ice theory, which is supported by his analysis of surface features on the moon, is the ice is no more than a few kilometers thick. This would allow more flexing and cracks which reach the surface, allowing material to be exchange more easily between the surface and the deep ocean. The theory also supports periodic melt troughs, where the liquid ocean would be exposed directly to the surface. Saturn According to Dr. Rosaly Lopes, new data collected from Titan supports the theory that the moon may have active cryovolcanoes. Human Space Flight MIT has released a comprehensive independent review of NASA's future plans for manned space exploration. MIT's review actually calls for a much more aggressive program of exploration, with more international cooperation, clearer stated goals, and less pressure on NASA to do more with less. Deep Space Report 1.12
Mercury
After it's successful encounter with Mercury a couple of weeks ago, Messenger has increased it's velocity relative to the sun to 63 km/s. This is the second fastest NASA spacecraft in history, the fastest being Helios 2 back in the 70s.
Earth
The IBEX spacecraft was launched on a Pegasus rocket last week. Pegasus is an aircraft launched rocket. IBEX's mission is to observe the boundary of our sun's magnetosphere. IBEX will use it's own solid rocket boosters to achieve a 100,000 mile earth orbit before beginning the science phase of it's mission.
Also, 9 teams (including Armadillo Aerospace, see RRL article last week) will compete in Northrup Grumman $2 million Lunar Lander Challenge this week. Here is a video from last year:
Mars
New observations by ESA's Mars Express spacecraft have been used to more accurately measure the mass and density of Phobos. With a revised density of 1.85 g/cc, which is significantly lower than the density or Martian rock at 2.7-3.3 g/cc, the conclusion is Phobos is most likely a rubble pile. It is also likely that the mass of Phobos contains significant quantities of water ice, which of course has a density of 1 g/cc. Of course, it would be nice to obtain a sample of Phobos, and a Russian mission planned to launch next year may do exactly that. However, with Russia's less than spectacular success record with missions to Mars, I would not bet on seeing those samples return to earth any time soon.
Opportunity is continuing on it's journey to Endeavour Crater, taking one last lap around Victoria first. Also, a couple of weeks ago, on sol 1671, Oppy acquired this panorama (assembled by Hortonheardawho)
Saturn
After the spectacular encounter with Enceladus last week, Cassini has still not posted any details or results from the encounter. They did post some raw images from 5000km+, but I was hoping for some extreme closeups. So far the hihgest res images are these images from August, at 545 km:
Now that is darn good, you can practically see the polar bears and leopard seals lounging on the ice, but if they got better images in the most recent encounter I'd love to see them.
Deep Space
A new comet was discovered last week, w00t!
Deep Space Report 1.3
Near Earth Space
For the very first time, our extensive near earth object tracking program has detected an impactor before it hit the earth. Well, not long before it hit the earth, and it wasn't much of an impactor. Asteroid 2008 TC3, estimated to measure between 3 and 15 feet in diameter, burned up in the atmosphere over Sudan on 10/7 at 2:46am GMT. The really cool part is the asteroid actually was detected prior to impact, and being a relatively small chunk of rock, this was quite a feat!
Image Credit: Richard Kowalski and Ed Beshore, Catalina Sky Survey
The asteroid was initially discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey in Tucson Arizona. The final orbit shows 2008 TC3 was both a Mars crosser and also (obviously) and earth crosser.
But, can anyone say invasion from Mars? Maybe, just as a precaution, we should send a team of international investigators to the impact location to check things out. Anyone exhibiting curious behavior or extra limbs should be detained ;-0
But seriously, JPL's Near Earth Object Program posted some nice data on this event:
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news159.html
Mercury
On 10/6 Messenger successfully completed the second flyby of Mercury this year. The spacecraft passed within 125 miles of the planet.
NASA update
Latest images
Mars
MSL was nearly cut this week, but then it wasn't. It's gone over budget of course. they've already spent $1.5 billion on the program. I think the real issue is if they do not get enough funding to keep the program on schedule, it will have to slip to the next launch opportunity for Mars, which come about 18 months apart. That would add even more cost which would suck even worse. The project is expected to run at least 30% over budget as is. Status quo really.
Phoenix is desperately trying to get in some more science before the mission ends from lack of sunlight. I have to say that compared to MER, Phoenix hasn't delivered much.
MER continues to be the poster child for the Energizer Bunny on Mars. If they keep going they may have to pick up Energizer as a sponsor because NASA is going to get tired of funding the mission that refused to die.
Saturn
10/9 was a busy busy day for Cassini. The big news was a very close flyby of Enceladus, at a distance of less than 16 miles. But along the way they also passed through the rings and had encounters with Telesto and Janus at 42,000 and 56,000 miles respectively. The encounter was a success. Apparently they have sent back data from the encounter, but none of the really close up images have been posted yet. In addition to acquiring phenomenally high res images of the vents near the south pole, Cassini flew directly through the plumes and sampled them.
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/press-release-details.cfm?newsID=874
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/index.cfm
Pluto
Almost forgot, 10/15 is going to be the 1000 day aniversary for New Horizons mission to Pluto. Everyone put on a party hat and sing happy birthday new horizons or something like that 
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/overview/piPerspective.php
Deep space Report 1.2
Deep Space Report Vol. 1 Issue 1 This is the first installment of a weekly summary of what's happening in solar system exploration. My goal is to include all the news that's fit to print from the moon and beyond. Mars Mars has been a very busy place recently. MER Opportunity is leaving Victoria crater and heading for an even larger crater, Endeavor, 12 km away. This is a very ambitious goal, one which would never have been dreamed of at the begriming of the mission, but the rovers have proven to be two tough little robotic explorers. Steve Squyres, Principal Investigator on the MER team, says with the new driving software JPL uploaded he believes Opportunity can cover up to 100 meters per day easily. On the way to the massive 20 km diameter crater, they hope to find some impact debris which may have been excavated from deep beneath the surface. Studying the ejecta could give them a window into Mars' ancient past. On the way, Opportunity will be guided by ground imagery from HiRISE, the high resolution imager on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. HiRISE can image features as small as 50 cm across. This will allow the MER team to possible identify some impact debris along the way, and navigate the rover to study the debris. By the way, I posted a thread on the Mars Rover Blog forum 4 years ago, suggesting we visit endeavor crater, although at the time I did not realize this was a crater. It's so huge I saw the crater rim in some MOC images and thought it looked like an enormous canyon. Meanwhile, the end is fast approaching the the Phoenix lander in the Martian arctic. Winter will bring a thick layer of water and CO2 ice which will bury the lander, but long before then the dwindling amount of sunlight will cease to provide enough energy to continue with science operations. This means the Phoenix team is in a race against time to collect one more sample of ice. According to Peter Smith, Principal Investigator on the Phoenix science team, soil samples collected by Phoenix do not behave like any of the simulants they worked with prior to launch. The soil particles seem to be small enough to fit through the sample screen, but they still get stuck. The particles appear to be sticking to the screen which was designed to prevent larger particles from entering the sample and clogging the mechanism. Obviously this has been very frustrating for the science and engineering teams. They have already obtained one small sample of ice, but they want to get one more sample of a high concentration ice deposit before the mission ends. Saturn Cassini is sponsoring a scientist for the day competition for high school students. Sounds like fun!
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