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Space News Update — October 22, 2013 —

Contents

In the News

Story 1:

India’s First Mars Mission Set to Blast off Seeking Methane Signature

Story 2:

Sky Survey Captures Key Details of Cosmic Explosions

Story 3:

Gaia Sunshield Passes Final Exam

Departments

The Night Sky

ISS Sighting Opportunities

NASA-TV Highlights

Space Calendar

Food for Thought

Space Image of the Week

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1. India’s First Mars Mission Set to Blast off Seeking Methane Signature

Update: The launch of ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission has been delayed by about a week due to bad weather in

the Indian Ocean. The new launch date is November 5 at 02:06 MST.

India is gearing up for its first ever space undertaking to the Red Planet – dubbed the Mars Orbiter Mission, or

MOM – which is the brainchild of the Indian Space Research Organization, or ISRO.

Among other objectives, MOM will conduct a highly valuable search for potential signatures of Martian

methane – which could stem from either living or non-living sources. The historic Mars bound probe also serves

as a forerunner to bolder robotic exploration goals. If all goes well, India would become only the 4th nation or

entity from Earth to survey Mars up close with spacecraft, following the Soviet Union, the United States and the

European Space Agency (ESA).

The 1,350 kilogram (2,980 pound) orbiter, also known as ‘Mangalyaan’, is slated to blast off as early as Oct. 28

atop India’s highly reliable Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) from a seaside launch pad in Srihanikota,

India. ISRO officials are also paying close attention to the local weather to ascertain if remnants from Tropical

Cyclone Phaillin or another developing weather system in the South Pacific could impact liftoff plans.

The 44 meter (144 ft) PSLV will launch MOM into an initially elliptical Earth parking orbit of 248 km x 23,000

km. A series of six orbit raising burns will eventually dispatch MOM on a trajectory to Mars by late November,

assuming an Oct. 28 liftoff.

Following a 300 day interplanetary cruise phase, the do or die orbital insertion engine will fire on September 14,

2014 and place MOM into an 377 km x 80,000 km elliptical orbit.

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‘Mangalyaan’ is undergoing final prelaunch test and integration at ISRO’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR,

Srihairkota on the east coast of Andhra Pradesh state following shipment from ISRO’s Bangalore assembly

facility on Oct. 3. ISRO has already assembled the more powerful XL extended version of the four stage PSLV

launcher at Srihairkota.

MOM’s launch window extends about three weeks until Nov. 19 – which roughly coincides with the opening of

the launch window for NASA’s next mission to Mars, the MAVEN orbiter.

MAVEN’s on time blastoff from Florida on Nov. 18, had been threatened by the chaos caused by the partial US

government shutdown that finally ended this morning (Oct. 17), until the mission was granted an ‘emergency

exemption’ due to the critical role it will play in relaying data from NASA’s ongoing pair of surface rovers –

Curiosity and Opportunity.

NASA is providing key communications and navigation support to ISRO and MOM through the agency’s trio

of huge tracking antennas in the Deep Space Network (DSN).

As India’s initial mission to Mars, ISRO says that the mission’s objectives are both technological and scientific

to demonstrate the nation’s capability to design an interplanetary mission and carry out fundamental Red Planet

research with a suite of indigenously built instruments.

MOM is outfitted with an array of five science instruments including a multi-color imager and a methane gas

sniffer to study the Red Planet’s atmosphere, morphology, mineralogy and surface features. Methane on Earth

originates from both biological and geological sources. MOM’s science complement comprises includes the tri

color Mars Color Camera to image the planet and its two moon, Phobos and Diemos; the Lyman Alpha

Photometer to measure the abundance of hydrogen and deuterium and understand the planets water loss

process; a Thermal Imaging Spectrometer to map surface composition and mineralogy, the MENCA mass

spectrometer to analyze atmospheric composition, and the Methane Sensor for Mars to measure traces of

potential atmospheric methane down to the ppm level.

It will be of extremely great interest to compare any methane detection measurements from MOM to those

ongoing from NASA’s Curiosity rover – which found ground level methane to be essentially nonexistent – and

Europe’s planned 2016 ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter.

MOM’s design builds on spacecraft heritage from India’s Chandrayaan 1 lunar mission that investigated the

Moon from 2008 to 2009.

NASA’s MAVEN is also due to arrive in Mars orbit during September 2014.

The $69 Million ‘Mangalyaan’ mission is expected to continue gathering measurements at the Red Planet for at

least six months and perhaps ten months or longer.

Source: Universe Today Return to Contents

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2. Sky Survey Captures Key Details of Cosmic Explosions

Developed to help scientists learn more about the complex nature of celestial objects in the universe,

astronomical surveys have been cataloguing the night sky since the beginning of the 20th century. The

intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF)—led by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech)—

started searching the skies for certain types of stars and related phenomena in February. Since its inception,

iPTF has been extremely successful in the early discovery and rapid follow-up studies of transients—

astronomical objects whose brightness changes over timescales ranging from hours to days—and two recent

papers by iPTF astronomers describe first-time detections: one, the progenitor of a rare type of supernova in a

nearby galaxy; the other, the afterglow of a gamma-ray burst in July.

The iPTF builds on the legacy of the Caltech-led Palomar Transient Factory (PTF), designed in 2008 to

systematically chart the transient sky by using a robotic observing system mounted on the 48-inch Samuel

Oschin Telescope on Palomar Mountain near San Diego, California. This state-of-the-art, robotic telescope

scans the sky rapidly over a thousand square degrees each night to search for transients.

Supernovae—massive exploding stars at the end of their life span—make up one important type of transient.

Since PTF's commissioning four years ago, its scorecard stands at over 2,000 spectroscopically classified

supernovae. The unique feature of iPTF is brand-new technology that is geared toward fully automated, rapid

response and follow-up within hours of discovery of a new supernova.

The first paper, "Discovery, Progenitor and Early Evolution of a Stripped Envelope Supernova iPTF13bvn,"

appears in the September 20 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters and describes the detection of a so-called

Type Ib supernova. Type Ib supernovae are rare explosions where the progenitor star lacks an outer layer of

hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, hence the "stripped envelope" moniker. It has proven

difficult to pin down which kinds of stars give rise to Type Ib supernovae. One of the most promising ideas,

says graduate student and lead author Yi Cao, is that they originate from Wolf-Rayet stars. These objects are 10

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times more massive and thousands of times brighter than the sun and have lost their hydrogen envelope by

means of very strong stellar winds. Until recently, no solid evidence existed to support this theory. Cao and

colleagues believe that a young supernova that they discovered, iPTF13bvn, occurred at a location formerly

occupied by a likely Wolf-Rayet star.

Supernova iPTF13bvn was spotted on June 16, less than a day after the onset of its explosion. With the aid of

the adaptive optics system used by the 10-meter Keck telescopes in Hawaii—which reduces the blurring effects

of Earth's atmosphere—the team obtained a high-resolution image of this supernova to determine its precise

position. Then they compared the Keck image to a series of pictures of the same galaxy (NGC 5806) taken by

the Hubble Space Telescope in 2005, and found one star-like source spatially coincident to the supernova. Its

intrinsic brightness, color, and size—as well as its mass-loss history, inferred from supernova radio emissions—

were characteristic of a Wolf-Rayet star.

"All evidence is consistent with the theoretical expectation that the progenitor of this Type Ib supernova is a

Wolf-Rayet star," says Cao. "Our next step is to check for the disappearance of this progenitor star after the

supernova fades away. We expect that it will have been destroyed in the supernova explosion."

Though Wolf-Rayet progenitors have long been predicted for Type Ib supernova, the new work represents the

first time researchers have been able to fill the gap between theory and observation, according to study coauthor

and Caltech alumna Mansi Kasliwal (PhD '11). "This is a big step in our understanding of the evolution of

massive stars and their relation to supernovae," she says.

The second paper, "Discovery and Redshift of an Optical Afterglow in 71 degrees squared: iPTF13bxl and GRB

130702A," appears in the October 20 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters. Lead author Leo Singer, a Caltech

grad student, describes finding and characterizing the afterglow of a long gamma-ray burst (GRB) as being

similar to digging a needle out of a haystack.

Long GRBs, which are the brightest known electromagnetic events in the universe, are also connected with the

deaths of rapidly spinning, massive stars. Although such GRBs initially are detected by their high-energy

radiation—GRB 130702A, for example, was first located by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope—an

X-ray or visible-light afterglow must also be found to narrow down a GRB's position enough so that its location

can be pinpointed to one particular galaxy and to determine if it is associated with a supernova.

After Fermi's initial detection of GRB 130702A, iPTF was able to narrow down the GRB's location by scanning

an area of the sky over 360 times larger than the face of the moon and sifting through hundreds of images using

sophisticated machine-learning software; it also revealed the visible-light counterpart of the burst, designated

iPTF13bxl. This is the first time that a GRB's position has been determined precisely using optical telescopes

alone.

After making the initial correlation between the GRB and the afterglow, Singer and colleagues corroborated

their results and gained additional information using a host of other instruments, including optical, X-ray, and

radio telescopes. In addition, ground-based telescopes around the world monitored the afterglow for days as it

faded away, and recorded the emergence of a supernova five days later.

Source: California Institute of Technology Return to Contents

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3. Gaia Sunshield Passes Final Exam

Credit: ESA/M. Pedoussaut

Working inside a climate-controlled clean room in the tropical French Guiana rainforest, technicians have

completed final assembly and checkout of the European Space Agency's Gaia spacecraft before it blasts off in

November on a quest to map more than a billion stars.

The testing reached a climax last week when workers unfolded Gaia's insulating sunshield, a circular layer of

insulation stretching more than 34 feet in diameter. The shield keeps Gaia's sensitive camera, the largest ever

flown in space, at a chilly minus 148 degrees Fahrenheit for its five-year mission.

Gaia will measure the brightness and location of more than a billion of the brightest stars in the sky, plotting

their movements and allowing astronomers to study the evolution of the Milky Way galaxy.

With the sunshield unfurled, Gaia covers an area the size of half of a tennis court. The sunshield folds up like an

umbrella for launch, fitting inside the 13.5-foot diameter of the payload fairing for the mission's Russian Soyuz

launch vehicle.

Gaia will deploy the sunshield shortly after separating from the Soyuz rocket's Fregat upper stage. Launch of

the $1.2 billion mission is scheduled for Nov. 20 at 0857 GMT (3:57 a.m. EST) from a Russian-operated launch

pad at the French-owned Guiana Space Center.

Arianespace will oversee the launch as the Soyuz rocket's commercial marketing firm.

When the shield is extended 90 degrees into its flight position, Gaia resembles the shape of a wide brim hat - its

disc-shaped sunshield making up the visor and the observatory's main body in the middle.

The sunshield deployment was conducted with the help of a test rig to compensate for gravity since Gaia was

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unfold the sunshield in space.

"Gaia is made up of two telescopes which need to be extremely stable, so the purpose of the sunshield is to keep

the full spacecraft and the payload in the shade," said Giuseppe Sarri, Gaia's project manager at the European

Space Agency.

Engineers also designed Gaia to be stationed at the L2 Lagrange point about a million miles from the night side

of Earth, a thermally-stable position where gravity from the Earth and sun balance a satellite's motion.

Officials shipped the Gaia spacecraft and its sunshield to French Guiana on separate cargo flights from Europe

in August. Since the components arrived at the equatorial space center, technicians bolted the sunshield on Gaia

and carefully ensured it would deploy as designed.

The sunshield is made of 12 frames of carbon fiber tubes hinged at the base of the spacecraft. The frames are

covered with gold multilayer insulation blankets.

Because Gaia will always point away from the sun, the underside of the sunshade is also a mounting point for

some of Gaia's electricity-generating solar panels.

Preparations of Gaia's Soyuz rocket are ahead of schedule at the European-run spaceport in South America. The

rocket's Fregat upper stage, which will fire to send Gaia toward its distant operating post, is fueled and awaiting

its attachment to the 4,475-pound spacecraft. The Gaia mission retained its specially-modified payload fairing

because it required the removal of some layers of thermal coating to accommodate tight clearances between the

shroud and the Gaia spacecraft.

According to Sarri, Gaia should be in its final flight configuration by the end of this week. Fueling of the

spacecraft, a three-day operation, is due to begin Nov. 2.

Gaia will be transported to another clean room at the French Guiana space base for integration with the Russian

Fregat upper stage Nov. 8, with encapsulation inside the Soyuz rocket's "ST-type" clamshell-like payload

fairing to follow Nov. 13.

The Soyuz rocket will be towed 600 meters, or about 2,000 feet, from its assembly building to the launch pad

approximately four days before launch, then lifted vertical for attachment of Gaia and the Fregat rocket stage

inside the payload shroud.

Source: Spaceflight.com Return to Contents

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The Night Sky

Source: Sky & Telescope Return to Contents

Monday, October 21

Lonely Fomalhaut, the Autumn Star, is at its

highest in the south around 9 or 10 p.m. this

week.

Tuesday, October 22

It's October — so have you tried to spot the

companion of Sirius yet? Accompanying Sirius

is the first-discovered white dwarf, 1/10,000 as

bright and currently 10.0 arcseconds to its east.

Early dawn in October is an excellent time to

look for it, for reasons that Alan Whitman

explains in theOctober Sky & Telescope, page

30.

Last Tuesday morning, Whitman spotted Sirius

B surprisingly easily in a big scope: it "was

seen immediately in my 16-inch at 261x (7mm

orthoscopic eyepiece) with a lunar filter (since I

hadn't thought to bring out my occulting-bar

eyepiece)." It's possible in much smaller scopes

too — given first-rate dawn seeing.

Wednesday, October 23

Below the feet of Aquarius, off the eastern end of Capricornus, are the Helix Nebula and a crowd of

lesser-known galaxies. Now that the Moon is gone from the after-dinner sky, explore them with your

telescope using Sue French's Deep-Sky Wonders column, chart, and photos in the October Sky &

Telescope, page 56.

Thursday, October 24

The Moon rises around 10 or 11 tonight (depending on where you are), with bright Jupiter to its left

or lower left. Farther left is Pollux, with Castor above it. By the beginning of dawn Friday morning,

they're all high in the south (above Procyon).

Friday, October 25

Staying out late tonight? Keep an eye to the low east-northeast for Jupiter rising around 11 or

midnight (depending on your location). Castor and Pollux shine to its left. About 45 minutes later, the

waning gibbous Moon follows it up. And then once the Moon is well up, look to the Moon's lower right

for Procyon.

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ISS Sighting Opportunities For Denver:

Date Visible Max Height Appears Disappears

Tue Oct 22, 6:34 PM 2 min 11° 10 above NNW 10 above NNE

Tue Oct 22, 8:10 PM 1 min 16° 10 above NW 16 above NNW

Wed Oct 23, 7:22 PM 3 min 21° 11 above NNW 21 above NNE

Thu Oct 24, 6:34 PM 4 min 16° 10 above NNW 10 above ENE

Thu Oct 24, 8:10 PM 2 min 28° 10 above NW 28 above NW

Fri Oct 25, 7:22 PM 4 min 45° 10 above NW 41 above ENE

Sat Oct 26, 6:34 PM 6 min 29° 10 above NW 11 above E

Sat Oct 26, 8:12 PM < 1 min 29° 22 above W 29 above WSW

Sun Oct 27, 7:23 PM 4 min 61° 15 above WNW 25 above SSE

Sighting information for other cities can be found at NASA’s Satellite Sighting Information NASA-TV Highlights (all times Eastern Daylight Time)

October 22, Tuesday

7 a.m. – Coverage of the Unberthing and Release of the Orbital Sciences/Cygnus Cargo Ship from the ISS

(Release scheduled at 7:30 a.m. EDT) – JSC (All Channels)

12:00 p.m. - Video File of the ISS Expedition 38/39 Crew News Conference at Star City, Russia - JSC (All

Channels)

October 23, Wednesday

10:45 a.m. – ISS Expedition 37 Educational In-Flight Event with the Henning, MN School District – JSC (All

Channels)

October 24, Thursday

10:45 a.m. – ISS Expedition 37 In-Flight Event for ESA to Commemorate the “Albert Einstein” Automated

Transfer Vehicle-4 – JSC(Public and Media Channels)

October 25, Friday

5:30 a.m. – Video B-roll Feed of Expedition 38/39 NASA Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio – JSC (All

Channels)

6 - 7 a.m. - Live Interviews with ISS Expedition 38/39 Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio from Star City, Russia

- JSC (All Channels)

Watch NASA TV online by going to the NASA website. Return to Contents

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Space Calendar

Oct 22 - Comet 214P/LINEAR At Opposition (3.754 AU)

Oct 22 - Asteroid 10001 Palermo Closest Approach To Earth (1.070 AU)

Oct 23 - [Oct 19] Cygnus Reenters Earth's Atmosphere

Oct 23 - Asteroid 2010 VP21 Near-Earth Flyby (0.086 AU)

Oct 23 - Asteroid 2012 ER14 Near-Earth Flyby (0.088 AU)

Oct 23 - Asteroid 5256 Farquhar Closest Approach To Earth (1.458 AU)

Oct 23 - Kuiper Belt Object 15760 (1992 QB1) At Opposition (40.188 AU)

Oct 24 - Comet 292P/Li Closest Approach To Earth (1.808 AU)

Oct 24 - Asteroid 2013 TO69 Near-Earth Flyby (0.053 AU)

Oct 24 - Asteroid 2008 LH2 Near-Earth Flyby (0.083 AU)

Oct 24 - 15th Anniversary (1998), Deep Space 1 Launch

Oct 25 - Asteroid 1 Ceres Occults TYC 0865-00911-1 (10.0 Magnitude Star)

Oct 25 - Asteroid 41 Daphne Occults HIP 97157 (6.7 Magnitude Star)

Oct 25 - Asteroid 9777 Enterprise Closest Approach To Earth (1.439 AU)

Oct 25 - Asteroid 6154 Stevesynnott Closest Approach To Earth (1.520 AU)

Oct 25 - Asteroid 32096 Puckett Closest Approach To Earth (1.462 AU)

Oct 26 - Comet P/2013 N5 (PANSTARRS) Closest Approach To Earth (1.404 AU)

Oct 26 - Comet C/2013 S1 (Catalina) Closest Approach To Earth (2.005 AU)

Oct 26 - Comet 119P/Parker-Hartley At Opposition (2.148 AU)

Oct 26 - Asteroid 2013 TY5 Near-Earth Flyby (0.082 AU)

Source: JPL Space Calendar Return to Contents

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Food for Thought

Celebrating the Legacy of ESA’s Planck Mission

From the tiniest fraction of a second after the Big Bang to the evolution of stars and galaxies over 13.8 billion

years, ESA’s Planck space telescope has provided new insight into the history of our Universe. Although

science observations are now complete, the legacy of the Planck mission lives on.

Planck was launched in 2009 and spent 4.5 years scanning the sky to study the evolution of cosmic matter over

time. The Low Frequency Instrument will be switched off, having completed its science operations on 3

October.

Planck’s High Frequency Instrument already ended its observations in January 2012, after a total of five all-sky

surveys had been completed with both instruments.

With some operational procedures to still take place, the spacecraft will finally be switched off next week.

Earlier this year, cosmologists working on the Planck data delivered the most precise image of the cosmic

microwave background – CMB, the relic radiation from the Big Bang that was imprinted on the sky when the

Universe was only 380 000 years old.

The CMB is the most accurate snapshot of the matter distribution in the early Universe. It shows tiny

temperature fluctuations that correspond to regions of slightly different densities at very early times,

representing the seeds of all future structure, the stars and galaxies of today.

“Planck has delivered the most precise all-sky image of the CMB that is enabling us to test a huge variety of

models of the origin and evolution of the cosmos,” says Jan Tauber, ESA’s Planck project scientist.

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“But long and meticulous work was required before we could start exploiting this wealth of cosmological

information, since the CMB is hidden behind foreground glare including emissions from material within our

own Galaxy, as well as from other galaxies and galaxy clusters.”

For example, Planck has made the most extensive catalogue of the largest galaxy clusters, the most massive

building blocks in our Universe. Planck has also identified the densest and coldest clumps of matter in our

Galaxy, cool reservoirs of material from which new stars may be born in the future.

But these are only two examples of the wide range of topics that the Planck data archive has provided new

information.

New cosmic recipe Looking beyond the Milky Way and across cosmic history, Planck has redefined the relative proportions of the

Universe’s constituent ingredients. Normal matter that makes up stars and galaxies contributes just 4.9% of the

mass/energy density of the Universe.

Dark matter, to date detected only indirectly by its gravitational influence on galaxies and galaxy clusters, is

found to make up 26.8%, more than previous estimates. Conversely, dark energy, a mysterious force thought to

be responsible for accelerating the expansion of the Universe, accounts for 68.3%, less than previously thought.

The data also provided a new value for the age of the Universe: 13.8 billion years.

Deflecting Light from the “Big Bang”

Source: ESA Return to Contents

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Space Image of the Week

ALMA Peers Into Giant Black Hole Jets

Did you ever wonder what it would be like to observe what happens to a galaxy near a black hole? For all of us

who remember that wonderful Disney movie, it would be a remarkable – if not hypnotic – experience. Now,

thanks to the powerful observational tools of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in

northern Chile, two international astronomy teams have had the opportunity to study the jets of black holes near

their galactic cores and see just how they impact their neighborhood. The researchers have captured the best

view so far of a molecular gas cloud surrounding a nearby, quiescent black hole and were gifted with a surprise

look at the base of a massive jet near a distant one.

These aren’t lightweights. The black holes the astronomers are studying weigh in a several billion solar masses

and make their homes at the center of nearly all the galaxies in the Universe – including the Milky Way. Once

upon a time, these enigmatic galactic phenomena were busy creatures. They absorbed huge amounts of matter

from their surroundings, shining like bright beacons. These early black holes thrust small amounts of the matter

they took in through highly powerful jets, but their current counterparts aren’t quite as active. While things may

have changed a bit with time, the correlation of black hole jets and their surroundings still play a crucial role in

how galaxies evolve. In the very latest of studies published, astronomers employed ALMA to investigate black

hole jets at very different scales: a nearby and relatively quiet black hole in the galaxy NGC 1433 and a very

distant and active object called PKS 1830-211.

Source: Universe Today Return to Contents