Meteorites yield Mars water clues

Rare fragments of martian meteorites have revealed evidence of how water once flowed near the surface of that planet, U.K. researchers say.
Scientists at the University of Leicester have examined five samples of nakhlite -- a form of meteorite known to have originated on Mars and named after the Egyptian village of el-Nakhla where the first one was found in 1911 -- using an electron microscope, a university release said Wednesday.
The samples showed veins created during an impact on Mars and filled with clay, carbonite and other materials probably carried there by water from ice melted in the impact, John Bridges of Leicester's Space Research Center says.
The discovery closely ties in to recent geological discoveries of clay and carbonate on the surface of Mars made by NASA and European Space Agency probes, and suggests how some of it probably formed.
"We are now starting to build a realistic model for how water deposited minerals formed on Mars, showing that impact heating was an important process," Bridges said.
"With models like this we will better understand the areas where we think that water was once present on Mars."

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Canada to play important role in Mars mission

A Canadian-built device aimed at testing the Martian landscape for signs of "habitable" environments from the planet's past -and perhaps its present -is being readied at a California space institute for launch later this year.

The latest version of the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer -designed by University of Guelph physicist Ralf Gellert and built by B.C.-based aerospace firm MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates -will be mounted on the Mars rover Curiosity as part of NASA's upcoming Mars Science Laboratory mission, scheduled for takeoff on its 55-million-kilometre journey to the red planet as early as Nov. 25.

If all goes according to plan, the probe and its APXS instrument, partly funded by the Canadian Space Agency, will land on Mars in August 2012.

Then the Canadian-built sensor -a smarter, faster and more durable version of similar devices used on previous NASA missions to Mars -will be put to use as Curiosity roams the Martian surface scanning rocks in search of geological evidence that the planet might have sustained life in the distant past, and perhaps still could today.

Gellert's device is "one of 10 that will help the rover in its upcoming mission to determine the past and present habitability of a specific area on the red planet," NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said in a newly issued update on launch preparations.

"Scientists will use information from APXS and the other instruments to find the interesting spots and to figure out the present and past environmental conditions that are preserved in the rocks and soils," JPL stated. "Identifying the elemental composition of lighter elements, such as sodium, magnesium or aluminum, as well as heavier elements, like iron, nickel or zinc, will help scientists identify the building blocks of the Martian crust."

Gellert and members of his research team have been preparing the upgraded APXS device for years. It is being twinned with an identical instrument that will remain at the University of Guelph to run simulations corroborating surface-ofMars findings during the mission.

"APXS was modified for Mars Science Laboratory to be faster so it could make quicker measurements," Gellert said in the JPL statement. "On the Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity), it took us five to 10 hours to get information that we will now collect in two to three hours. We hope this will help us to investigate more samples."

Cassini to Sample Magnetic Environment around Titan

NASA's Cassini spacecraft is set to skim close to Saturn's moon Titan on Friday, Feb. 18, to learn about the interaction between Titan and Saturn's magnetosphere, the magnetic bubble around the planet.

The closest approach will take place at 8:04 a.m. PST (4:04 p.m. UTC) and bring Cassini within about 3,650 kilometers (2,270 miles) of Titan's surface.

As Titan makes a complete 360-degree orbit around Saturn, the relative influence of the sun's illumination and the hot ionized gas trapped in the magnetic bubble changes. These factors are important for understanding the relationship between Titan and Saturn's magnetosphere. It is important to make measurements at a variety of locations in the Saturn magnetosphere, so this flyby will occur in a part of the magnetosphere that has been poorly sampled so far.

Previous flybys have shown the magnetic environment near Titan to be rather variable and unpredictable. For 12 hours before and after closest approach, the Cassini plasma spectrometer instrument will be pointing in a direction to capture ionized gas in the region.

At the same time, Cassini's radio science subsystem will be gathering sensitive gravity data from Titan to improve understanding of the structure of the interior. Collecting data like these will eventually enable scientists to determine whether Titan has an ocean under its crust.

Other instruments will also be collecting data, much of it pertaining to seasonal change. Titan is currently in northern spring, approaching northern summer, and scientists want to know what has changed with the north polar winter vortex weather pattern. The composite infrared spectrometer, for instance, will be mapping temperatures in Titan's stratosphere. The imaging science subsystem will also be monitoring the lakes, clouds and transport of aerosols in the Titan atmosphere.

This latest flyby is dubbed "T74," though planning changes early in the orbital tour have made this the 75th targeted flyby of Titan.

New Planet Believed to Have Been Found at Edge of Solar System

While some people may still argue otherwise, most of us have come to accept the unfortunate realization that Pluto is not a planet. But just because we’ve lost Pluto as a planet doesn’t mean that we’re down to eight. NASA scientists are working to see if a mass that was found by NASA telescopes is, in fact, the long-believed-to-exist-but-as-of-yet-unprovable planet of Tyche.

Tyche (pronounced “tie-key”) is believed to be a gas giant located some 1.35 trillion miles from the Sun, which is equivalent to 15,000 AU. In layman’s terms, it would take light from Tyche roughly thre months to reach Earth. Tyche is also believed to be between three-and-four times the size of the current champion of the solar system, Jupiter, and have a surface temperature of -73C.

Even if Tyche is proven to exist, which seems to be a foregone conclusion, there’s no guarantee that it will ultimately be classified as a planet in our solar system. Many scientists believe that Tyche was not formed in our solar system, but was formed around another star and was later captured by the gravitational pull of our own Sun. According to Professor John Matese of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, the International Astronomical Union (IAU, the organization that determines what is and isn’t a planet), the organization may not include Tyche as a new planet but create a new category specifically for Tyche.

Jupiter’s Moon Helps Peek Below Planet’s Belt

Astronomers have a new view of the chaos brewing beneath Jupiter’s cloud belt, thanks to some help from its icy moon Europa.

This new image, captured Nov. 30, 2010 with the 10-meter Keck II telescope in Hawaii, shows heat escaping from Jupiter’s interior, giving astronomers a peek into the roiling turmoil inside Jupiter’s missing red stripe.

The image shows Jupiter at four wavelengths of infrared light, which is beyond the range that human eyes can see. Three of those wavelengths show reflected sunlight. But one wavelength, 5 micrometers, can sense breaks in the cloud cover.

Jupiter’s famous red stripe mysteriously faded in late 2009 and vanished altogether by May, 2010. Observations with Hubble and other telescopes showed that the ruddy band was hiding beneath a layer of high, bright clouds made from icy ammonia crystals.