Farewell to the voyager

After 33 years of traveling and unconditionally helping us to understand our universe, Voyager 1 is no longer in our neighborhood. The spacecraft is now at the almost incomprehensible distance of more than 17 billion (17 x 10⁹) km from its home planet -our beloved Earth- and has left the influence from our Sun. In other words, the Voyager 1 has finally left our Solar System.

Artist concept of the two Voyager spacecraft as they approach interstellar space. Image credit: NASA/JPL.

The spacecraft is now in a region called "heliosheath", were the solar wind of our Sun has a velocity of almost zero in relation to our star.

Voyager 1 was launched by NASA on September 5th, 1977, while its twin, the Voyager-2, was launched some days earlier, on August 20th. Together, they have studied all the exterior planets of our Solar System (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune -no, I'm not forgetting Pluto: it's no longer a planet, get over it!).

 Artist rendering of the Voyager 1.

Voyager 1 is since February 17, 1998 the man-made object most distant from Earth, after it surpassed the distances traveled by the spacecrafts Pioneer 10 and 11.

More information on the Voyager 1 status and in the mission in general can be found here and here, respectively.

2012 phenomenon is a hoax

Ok, just a short one. The title of this post explains itself:

www.2012hoax.org

And some Neil Degrasse Tyson, of course.

30 seconds on Mars

Brief news on the red planet and related stuff:

• Last week, NASA's Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter (MRO) spoted rocks from a Martian area called Nili Fossae that may contain fosilized life, as they are very similar to Stromatolites, rocky formations from Pilbara, Australia, that were created by the activity of some of the earliest life forms on Earth.
• This week, the MRO rebooted and put itself in safe mode for an unknown reason, but it's back online.
• Meanwhile, Italian astrophysicists stated during the European Congress of Planetary Science that Phobos (one of the two Martian moons, being the other one Deimos) may have been originated from an asteroid impact with Mars and that is not a meteorite captured by the red planet, as it was previously thought.

Mars.

Shrunk and gone: a story about the Moon

Have you ever seen the Moon low in the horizon, when it is just rising? Do you remember how big it looks at that moment and how it seems to have shrunk when it is high in the sky? Well, even if this phenomenon is caused by an optical illuson, our natural satellite is actually shrinking.

 Photograph by Justo Ruiz.

The Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter (LRO), an artificial satellite launched on June18th, 2009 by the US's National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to study the Moon discovered what have been called lobated scarfs, a type of cliffs caused by the Moon's shrinkage.

The data obtained by the LRO shows that the Moon has reduced its radius in 100 m during a yet indetermined time span -it may go from one hundred thousand (1 x 10⁵) to one billion (1 x 10⁹) years. Yet, the Moon's shrinkage, caused by the cooling of its is interior, is not affecting its crust as it is already cold, thus causing this one to wrinkle. This is, roughly, how the lobated scarfes are originated.

Graphic showing how lobated scarfs are created, as the Moon's crust is pushed together due to our natural satellite's shrinkage. Image by NASA.

So, the Moon is shrinking, but is still ours, as always, right? Well, not forever, because the Moon is actually moving away from us and will eventually be gone forever.

The gravitational interaction between the Earth and the Moon that is responsible for the tidals of our seas is causing our natural satellite to be 3,8 cm farther away from us and is accelerating its revolution time around our planet to compensate this fact.

So, the Moon will look smaller and smaller each year in the sky and someday, in a very distant future, it won't be there no more. Don't believe me? Just watch:

Now, here's the explanation on why this is happening:

More information on the shrinking Moon can be found here.

So far yet so close (at least roughly)

By the end of August 2010, the biggest extrasolar planetary system discovered so far was announced by a team of European astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

Artist recreation of the recently discovered extrasolar planetary system. Original image from ESO.

Five planets have been confirmed to orbit HD 10180, a star very similar to our Sun located 127 million light-years from us, within the Hydrus constellation. There is also the possibilty that two more planets orbit the star and, if that's the case, the HD 10180 system will be almost as big as ours, given that our cosmic neighborhood consists of eight planets (Pluto is no longer one, remember?).

Yet, seemingly so close to our solar system, there are major differences to take into account. The five confirmed planets are as big as Neptune and their orbits span from six to 600 Earth days.

One of the unconfirmed planets may be the size of Saturn and would orbit HD 10180 in 2200 Earth days. The other one may be 1,4 times the size of our planet, but it's yet quite far from habitable (at least by us) as it would be so close to its star that its "year" lasts only 1,18 Earth days. Besides that, this "evil twin" of the Earth is the smallest planet discoverd so far.

The discovery of this rich extrasolar planetary system took about six years and was performed using the world's most powerful spectrograph, an instrument that captures and analyzes light signatures, at ESO's telescope at La Silla, Chile.

The first extrasolar planet was discovered in 1995 around 51 Pegasi and was called 51 Pegasi b, being abbreviated as 51 Peg b and nicknamed Bellerophon. As of September 8th, 2010, there have been announced 490 confirmed detections of such celestial bodies.

More information on the HD 10180 system can be found here. As well, an official video from ESO about the program can be seen below.

One hundred days of solitude (so far)

Now we jump from the prehistoric times to a not so far future, a time when the first manned mission to Mars is deployed. When is this going to happen? So far, nothing's for sure, but, if we trust Barack Obama, it's going to happen by the third decade of this century.

But now, here on Earth, specifically in Moscow, Russia, a experiment is already being held regarding the effects on humans that the long journey from our planet to Mars may cause. Six male volunteers from Russia (3), Italy (1), France (1) and China (2) have been living isolatedly for about one hundred days in an facility designed ad hoc for testing the psychological demands of an interplanetarian trip.

The Mars500 crew. Photo from ESA's Mars500 program page.

Leaded by Commander Alexei Sitev, a Russian engineer, the team will leave the facility they have been living in since June 3rd, 2010 by the day 520 of isolation, i.e., on November 5th, 2011. Until that date, the men will have to share a space consisting in four hermetically sealed interconnected sections, consisting in habitable, medical and storage modules, as well as a Mars Landing simulator. They even have gym and sauna.

The first 250 days of isolation will consist in the "trip to Mars", followed by 30 days for "orbiting and landing on Mars", while the final 240 days will be for "going back to Earth". The presumed distances

This experiment is being carried out by Russia's Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP), the Russian Academy of Sciences and the European Space Agency (ESA) and is the third phase of the Mars500 program.

The first stage, developed during November 2007, consisted in a 15-days isolation for equipment, facilities and operating procedures testing and involved a different group of six volunteers (one of them being a woman). The second phase of the Mars500 program, developed with an all-Russian team, consisted in a trip simulation similar to the one being currently held, but designed to last only 105 days. It was completed on June 3rd, 2010.

More information on the Mars500 program can be found here.