Tag Archives: Miriam Kramer

December 18, 2014 · 10:38 pm

Curiosity Rover Drills Into Mars Rock, Finds Water

Space.com
Miriam Kramer
The hole drilled into this rock target, called "Cumberland," was made by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on May 19, 2013.
© NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS The hole drilled into this rock target, called “Cumberland,” was made by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on May 19, 2013.NASA’s Curiosity rover is continuing to help scientists piece together the mystery of how Mars lost its surface water over the course of billions of years.The rover drilled into a piece of Martian rock called Cumberland and found some ancient water hidden within it. Researchers were then able to test a key ratio in the water with Curiosity’s onboard instruments to gather more data about when Mars started to lose its water, NASA officials said. In the same sample, Curiosity also detected the first organic molecules it has found. Mission scientists announced the discovery in a news conference today (Dec. 15) at the American Geophysical Union’s convention in San Francisco, where they also unveiled Curiosity’s first detection of methane on Mars.

“It’s really interesting that our measurements from Curiosity of gases extracted from ancient rocks can tell us about loss of water from Mars,” Paul Mahaffy, Curiosity’s SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) instrument principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a statement. [Photos: The Search for Water on Mars]

Curiosity measured the ratio of deuterium (heavy hydrogen) to “normal” hydrogen. This D-to-H ratio can help scientists see how long it takes for water molecules to escape, because the lighter hydrogen molecules fly toward the upper atmosphere more freely than deuterium does.

The D-to-H ratio in Cumberland is about half the ratio found in the Martian atmosphere’s water vapor today, NASA officials said. This suggests that the planet lost much of its surface water after the Cumberland rock formed, space agency officials added in the same statement.

But the water sample is also about three times “heavier” than Earth’s oceans. This means that if Mars’ surface water started off with a D-to-H ratio like Earth’s, then most of the Martian water likely disappeared before Cumberland formed about 3.9 billion to 4.6 billion years ago.

The Cumberland measurement fills in a gap for scientists studying different epochs of Martian geological evolution. This sampling marks the first time scientists have been able to measure what the water on Mars may have been like during the Hesperian period, when this rock was formed, said Mahaffy, who is the lead author of a Mars water study published in the journal Science this week.

Previously, scientists have used Martian meteorites on Earth to sample Martian water; however, none of those space rocks date back to the Hesperian period.

“You have the whole period from 2.5 billion to 4 billion years old, and there’s no data that we have from Mars meteorites just because we haven’t found any yet, I guess,” Mahaffy told Space.com. “So, it’s very gratifying to be able to fill in that picture a little bit.”

Follow Miriam Kramer @mirikramer. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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October 27, 2013 · 12:51 pm

Astronauts see strange cloud in space

Astronauts see strange cloud in space, remnant of missile launch

By Miriam Kramer

Published October 15, 2013

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    Oct. 10, 2013: NASA Astronaut Mike Hopkins took this photo from the International Space Station. “Saw something launch into space today. Not sure what it was but the cloud it left behind was pretty amazing,” the Expedition 37/38 Flight Engineer tweeted.(MIKE HOPKINS (VIA TWITTER AS @ASTROILLINI))

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    Oct. 11, 2013: Astronaut Luca Parmitano of Italy tweeted this photo of a missile launch seen from the International  Space Station.(LUCA PARMITANO (VIA TWITTER AS @ASTRO_LUCA))

Astronauts on the International Space Station have beamed home photos of an eerie space cloud outside their orbital home, a strange sight apparently created by a recent missile launch.

The astronaut photos were captured on Oct. 10 by NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano who took to Twitter under their pen names (@AstroIllini and @astro_luca, respectively) to share the unnatural looking space cloud formation with Earth.

“Saw something launch into space today,” Hopkins wrote. “Not sure what it was but the cloud it left behind was pretty amazing.” At first, Hopkins wasn’t sure what created the odd looking cloud outside the window of the orbiting laboratory, but Parmitano cleared up the confusion with a Twitter post of his own. [Amazing Space Photos by Astronaut Luca Parmitano]

“A missile launch seen from space: an unexpected surprise!” Parmitano wrote in a post on Oct. 11. One of the Italian astronaut’s photos shows a curving contrail left in the missile’s wake and another features a wispy cloud formed in space after the missile disintegrated.

Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces launched the missile, according to a blog post on RussianForces.org. The Topol/SS-25 missile launched from Kapustin Yar to the Sary Shagan test site in Kazakhstan.

“According to a representative of the Rocket Forces, the test was used to confirm characteristics of the Topol missile, to test the systems of the Sary Shagan test site, and ‘to test new combat payload for intercontinental ballistic missiles,'” RussianForces.org wrote on Oct. 10.

Russia also conducted a similar test from Kapustin Yar to Sary Shagan in June 2012, RussiaForces.org said.

Parmitano and Hopkins are joined by four other spaceflyers on the International Space Station. NASA’s Karen Nyberg and Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin, Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy round out the Expedition 37 crew. Ryazanskiy, Hopkins and Kotov launched to the station at the end of September. Current station commander Yurchikhin, Nyberg and Parmitano are scheduled to fly back to Earth on Nov. 11.

Although NASA is currently closed due to the government shutdown, astronauts on the station are apparently still able to post photos on social media websites.

Twitter is just one of the ways that astronauts are able to communicate with people on the ground. Nyberg actively posts post photos on the website Pinterest and Parmitano blogs about his adventures in spaceflight through ESA. The station astronauts can also video chat with their loved ones on the surface of Earth.

The $100 billion orbiting laboratory is the size of a five-bedroom house with the wingspan of a football field. It is the largest structure ever built in space and has been continually staffed by a rotating crew of astronauts and cosmonauts since 2000.

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October 14, 2013 · 9:42 pm

NASA finds plastic ingredient on Saturn’s moon Titan

NASA finds plastic ingredient on Saturn’s moon Titan

By Miriam Kramer

Published October 02, 2013

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    Saturn’s moon Titan’s atmosphere creates a ring of light outlining the large moon. Image uploaded on Sept. 30, 2013. (NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SSI)

For the first time, a chemical essential for the creation of plastic on Earth has been found in a far-off part of the solar system: Saturn’s largest Titan.

The discovery, made by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn, found that the atmosphere of Titan contains propylene, a key ingredient of plastic containers, car bumpers and other everyday items on Earth. NASA scientists announced the discovery  with a video describing the propylene find on Titan.

“This chemical is all around us in everyday life, strung together in long chains to form a plastic called polypropylene,” Conor Nixon, a NASA planetary scientist and lead author of a paper detailing the new research in the Sept. 30 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letterssaid in a statement. “That plastic container at the grocery store with the recycling code 5 on the bottom — that’s polypropylene.” [Amazing Photos: Titan, Saturn’s Largest Moon]

‘This chemical is all around us in everyday life.’

– Conor Nixon, a NASA planetary scientist 

Scientists used Cassini’s composite infrared spectrometer (CIRS) instrument, which measures infrared light given off by Saturn and its moon, made the discovery.

The new study helps piece together a long-standing mystery about Titan’s atmosphere. When Voyager 1 conducted the first close flyby of the moon in 1980, it recognized gasses in the moon’s brown atmosphere as hydrocarbons.

Scientists have found that hydrocarbons — which make up fossil fuels on Earth — form on Titan after sunlight breaks apart methane and the chemicals reform into chains of two or more carbons. Voyager found evidence of the heaviest three-carbon hydrocarbon, propane, and the spacecraft also discovered propyne — one of the lightest in the family.

The middle-weight chemicals like propylene, however, were missing from the Voyager data.

“This measurement was very difficult to make because propylene’s weak signature is crowded by related chemicals with much stronger signals,” Michael Flasar, Goddard scientist and principal investigator for the CIRS instrument, said in a statement. “This success boosts our confidence that we will find still more chemicals long hidden in Titan’s atmosphere.”

Titan is about half the size of Earth and is the second-largest moon in the solar system — only Jupiter’s Ganymede beats it out in size. The moon is also the only one in the solar system that harbors clouds and a planet-like atmosphere, which is mostly composed of nitrogen and methane.

Cassini launched to space in 1997, arriving in orbit around Saturn in July 2004. The mission — centered on understanding Saturn and its many moons — is expected to continue until 2017 when the spacecraft will be crashed into Saturn’s atmosphere.

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