A Mars Odyssey

Even though the solar activity was well known to the early Chinese astronomers, it was not first observed by Galileo until 1612 with his new telescope, a Dutch version. He also discovered the Jupiter moons, the Moon and its craters, along with Venus. But when he saw the Sun, he also saw some dark smudges he could not figure out. Even though Galileo Galilei himself could not figure it out, his enemy Christoph Scheiner stated that it must be little tiny undiscovered planets that were circling the Sun, passing in front of the hot planet. But of course, this theory was eventually proved wrong by Galileo during his most famous years, 1564-1642.

The solar physics would never had been recognized if it had not been for the invention of the 1600 telescope, with Galileo one of the first to use it from 1610 to 1613. The next major solar advancement was in 1817 when Fraunhofer discovered the dark lines in the spectrum of light from the Sun. The information up to this time allowed a scientific method to form which allowed the scientific field to learn the atomic composition of the Sun and the temperatures in its outer layers.

Rapidly advancing after this, the field of solar spectroscopy moved into the late 1900s—focusing on the development of specializing instruments for study of the Sun, showing the existence of the magnetic fields of the Sun within the earlier 1908 development of the Mount Wilson Observatory. This ground study continued until 1946 with rocket observations, with the launching of the Sputnik in 1957. After this, rocket instruments and orbiting satellites began to allow the study and observations of the ultraviolet and x-ray areas of the solar spectrum, pioneering the way for high temperature astrophysics to be applied to the solar atmosphere of temperatures exceeding 1 million degrees.

Timetable for the study of sun cycles:

• ca. 200 BC The distance to the Sun1543 The Sun moves to center stage1609 The Sun in focus1610 First telescopic observations of sunspots

  1644 The Sun as a star

  1645-1715 The Maunder minimum

  1687 The mass of the Sun

  1774-1801 The physical nature of sunspots

  1817 Solar spectroscopy is born

  1843 The sunspot cycle

  1852 The sunspot cycle is linked to geomagnetic activity

  1859 First observation of a solar flare

  1860 First observations of a coronal mass ejection

  1908-1919 The magnetic nature of sunspots

The lone remote sensing instrument for the Solar Probe+ is the Hemispheric Imager or “HI” for short. Consisting of a telescope that will make 3D images similar to medical CAT scans of the Sun’s corona, this new coronal tomography is one of the newest developments available for solar imaging, with photography performed from a moving platform close to the sun. While flying through the coronal clouds and streamers, it will image as it flies through it.

With US Patent 5508734, HI was licensed under the title “Method and apparatus for hemispheric imaging which emphasizes peripheral content,” issued on April 16, 1996. A system for electronic imaging and manipulation of a hemispheric field of view, the HI comprises a camera for receiving optical images. The images of a hemispheric field of view and for producing output a signal also affects photographic film-based materials corresponding to the optical images.

The photographic process will strut its stuff at the beginning of the Solar Probe+’s prime mission, which will be near the end of Solar Cycle 24, finishing near the maximum estimation date of Solar Cycle 25 in 2022. The reasoning is for the probe to experience the corona at its best in all phases of the solar cycles, with the majority of solar storms toward the end. The researchers for the mission theorize that the most dangerous of the particles are produced by the solar storms and energized in the corona area. The mission will focus in this area, observing the entire process in action in order to forecast Solar Energetic Particle (SEP) events, which have the ability to threaten the health and safety of astronauts in space.

Considered one of the most dynamic engines behind all solar phenomena, this particular type of energy source is the cause of space weather. It affects it in many ways, structuring it in many ways—the sun’s atmosphere, its wind and corona. Beginning in 1610, Galileo made the first European observations of the sunspots, with daily observations first began in 1749 within the Zurich Observatory.

During the early periods of Earth, it was indicated that the Sun appears to have went through a serious period of inactivity in the late 1600s even though it is stated by NASA that this period was not as intensive as during later years. A period of “Little Ice Age” corresponded to this period of solar inactivity, similar to a time when rivers froze and snow fields remained year-round in lower altitudes. This connection between solar activity and terrestrial climate has been and is now an area of on-going research.

Solar Probe+ is a heat resistant spacecraft that will plunge directly into the atmosphere of the Sun, prepared to sample the solar wind and magnetism that very little is known about—hopefully beginning its mission around 2015. With NASA making this a seven-year mission, the probe is still in pre-phase A stage with a lot to do for preparation.

The designing and building of the NASA probe is being done by John Hopkkin’s Applied Physics Lab (APL), an experienced company in sending probes toward the Sun—the Messenger spacecraft which just completed its first flyby of Mercury in January of 2008. The same heat resistant technology will be used on the new Solar Probe+, which also builds on an earlier 2005 APL design of the Solar Probe.

The radiation blasts coming from the sun’s corona have never been experienced before on any spacecraft, with the Solar Probe+ having a carbon-composite heat shield to withstand the near 2,000 degrees C. Solar powered, the liquid-cooled solar panels provide electricity that are able to retract behind the heat-shield when it becomes too intense. If a human were viewing the Sun at this close-up, the Sun would appear about 23 times wider than when we view it from Earth.

TWO MYSTERIES OF THE CORONA:

• The corona itself is the primary cause of the mission, with its high temperature a mystery as the Sun’s outer atmosphere registers more than a million degrees C than the star below it;. The temperature increases the further one moves away from the Sun instead of going closer. The surface of the Sun runs about 6,000 degrees C.

• The solar wind is another reason for the mission, with the Sun throwing a wind of charged particles about one million mph throughout the solar system. Everything in its path is influenced by these winds, with no organized winds close to the Sun yet there is a veritable gale blowing. The mission is to search out what kind of unknown agent gives the solar wind such a huge velocity. The Solar Probe+ will actually enter the corona area to find this out.

What will be involved in the probe are instruments meant to read and sense the Sun’s environment—a magnetometer, a plasma wave sensor, a dust detector, an electron/ion analyzer—all in-situ measurements to unravel the mysteries of the coronal heating and solar wind acceleration.

With so much attention on Mars and the return to the Moon, the Sun is considered one of the last unexplored regions of the entire solar system, yet it has had a 400-year historical love-affair with hundreds of astronomers. The solar corona is one of the most important regions in space to better understand the Sun-Earth Connections, which is why NASA has developed the Outer Solar System/Solar Probe Project.

To study the Sun better, the Solar Probe mission was developed in order to explore the source of the solar wind from inside the solar corona at 4 to 110 radii from the Sun’s center. The goal is to better understand the Sun’s processes regarding the heat processes and also the “whys” of the development of its solar wind. With the Solar Probe the third of three missions, it will be one of the most historic missions as is flies directly into the Sun’s atmosphere for the first time approaching at a distance of 3RS above the surface of the Sun, employing a combination of in-situ measurements and imaging.

The reason the mission began had a lot to do with what NASA considers the the “solar corona problem”, originating from a region around the Sun which extends more than one million kilometers from the surface of the Sun and is a temperature of two million degrees. This is the area which emits X-ray radiation and also is seen during solar eclipses, when the passage of the Moon blocks the main radiation from the surface of the Sun.

Considered a voyage of comprehension, the Solar Probe is a one of exploration and discovery. By flying through the Sun’s solar corona, it will be in an area which is believed to produce the fast solar winds. It will also be in streamers, which is where the slow solar wind is thought to originate. “We are going to visit a living, breathing star for the first time,” says program scientist Lika Guhathakurta of NASA Headquarters. “This is an unexplored region of the solar system and the possibilities for discovery are off the charts.”

(idea contributed by Jennifer Houser of Ogallala, NE)

“We are awash in chemistry data,” said Michael Hecht of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, lead scientist for the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer, or MECA, instrument on Phoenix. “We’re trying to understand what is the chemistry of wet soil on Mars, what’s dissolved in it, how acidic or alkaline it is. With the results we received from Phoenix yesterday, we could begin to tell what aspects of the soil might support life.”

The Snow White trench is still being enlarged by the NASA Phoenix Mars Lander, with little piles of ice soil scraped up by the Robotic Arm. Meanwhile, mission scientists are feeling that the scrapings are perfect for analytical instruments, considered about 80% complete on its first, two-day wet chemistry experiment with three more cells to use on the remaining mission.

About 50 scrapes have been made so far, with Phoenix’s arm heaping the results in 10-to-20 cubic centimeter piles—or about two and four teaspoonfuls each—forming a grid about 2 millimeters deep. June 29th gave the scientists their first viewing of the scraping, agreeing with the results being “almost perfect samples of the interface of ice and soil.” At this point, the scoop sprinkled the material into the TEGA for baking and determining the melting point of ice.

Looking at the Phoenix mission with an overall perspective, the lander’s goals are multi-fold:

• Dig to frozen water under the subsurface soil
• Soil needs to be touched, examined, vaporized and sniffed
• Once this is done, the history of Martian water can verified
• Can the Martian arctic soil support life?
• Need to study Martian weather from a polar perspective.

The latest find on Mars is showing adequate nutrients similar to those on Earth growing asparagus, but nutrients consumed by astronauts while in space is even more newsworthy. Nothing new, as nutrition for the body’s health is highly critical for a long time with its importance in space exploration—both short and long-term—no different. The body’s systems require optimal nutrition, with astronauts being affected by space flight in addition to the nutritional needs caused by space flights.

The parts of the body most affected are the cardiovascular systems, muscles, immune system, bone– combined with a need for protection against radiation damage. To prevent any damage to these areas, astronauts need to be healthy before, during and after their space flights. Requiring an extreme adequacy of the food system, NASA needs to define proper nutritional requirements for its many space travelers.

To obtain this on an overall level, specific divisions of the space agency develop and test different types of nutrition and their counter measures for the effects of space flight, while assessing the impact of other influences, such as exercise and pharmaceuticals. When astronauts experience weightlessness in space, they experience many nutritional deficiencies and health issues, according to a 2005 study at the Keio University School of Medicine in Tokyo, Japan, by J. Iwamoto, T. Takeda, and Y. Sato, entitled, “Interventions to prevent bone loss in astronauts during space flight”.

The study found that losses occurred in calcium, Vitamin D, and Vitamin K, along with urinary calcium excretion in an increased level, decreased intestinal calcium absorption, increased serum calcium level, and decreased levels of serum parathyroid hormone and calcitriol. They also found that an increase in bone resorption, causing a decrease of bone formation. The vitamin D level is affected so strongly that even when Vitamin D supplements are taken, the astronaut’s levels are still altered during space flight. An important nutrition, it is important for the proper calcium absorption and other tissue benefits.

Another big nutrient being studied today is the Omega-3 fatty acid, protector against radiation-induced cancer of astronauts, while also implicated in the mitigation of cachexia caused by cancer, similar to the mechanism of muscle loss during space flight. It also has been found to show protective effects on bone and cardiovascular function. On a more general level, Omega-3 is being tested for bipolar and has been proven as a 38% successful primary reduction of age-related macular degeneration of 38,974 case studies. A very recent study of 109 infants showed that when Omega-3 is taken in the last of the mother’s pregnancy months, an infant’s sensory, cognitive, and motor development will increase substantially.

“Scepticism of robotic in-orbit servicing is wasting the space sector vast amounts of money,” said the scientists. “There are few industries which would willingly spend 100 million dollars on highly designed, long-lived hardware without the provision for repair and upgrade,” they added.

European aerospace engineers are working toward the idea of fewer astronauts and more robots used for space maintenance, with anything else considered expensive, wasteful, and considered to be the wrong agenda for the entire space community. Instead, it is advised that space agencies and satellite operators need to improve their efforts to develop higher-technical robotic mechanics for various space “honey-do” jobs: plying various Earth orbits, fixing errant satellites on demand, or repair filing spacecraft.

The three engineers– Alex Ellery, Joerg Kreidsel and Bernd Sommer–offer this scenario in the journal “ACTA ASTRONAUTICA”, discussing the pros and cons of the crewed satellite repair missions using the NASA mission to fix the Hubble Space Telescope. These particular European space engineers feel that all space agencies and satellite operators, in order to save money and for the safety of the crew, should work with robotics for any maintenance issues in space—and for good reason. Money is a big issue for all countries, but safety issues require an even higher price tag. It is a lot easier and feasible to replace a robot than a member of our human race, one would certainly think.

Back when the Columbus space shuttle was destroyed along with its crew members, NASA managers said that in-orbit repairs were more difficult to perfect than they thought—with the orbital repair capability of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board only one of the 15 primary recommendations. But due to what happened to the Discovery, the lesson has been to always have options from that point on. At that time proven in-orbit repair capabilities were considered a long ways down the road, due to required experiments needed in the weightless space environment.

The Pentagon has already proven such a repair robot, Astro, can be used with in-orbit docking simultaneously docking with NextSat, a prototype serviceable craft which needed its dead battery changed. Agreeing there is a need, researchers are saying that the progress is extremely slow as satellites are not very reliable. Their navigation and thruster failures are commonplace.

Science and ideology use different interpretations of similar thought processes, yet attempting to achieve the same goal in the end. I think the old saying is many “different” roads lead to Rome, yet they all get there eventually. Whether or not we separate science from ideology depends on several things, as both have the ability to change over time with its individual answers. Neither are black and white in their content–ideology is a collection of ideas, while science is a collection of data based on ideas, forming new ideas for new collections of data—and so on.

Prior to the Middle Ages and the 1700s, the terms science and ideology were entirely different, but as both fields evolved into the scientific methods, the early English definition of acquiring science through knowledge was based on the Aristotelian concepts, yet in contrast philosophy was divided up into two divisions—natural and moral philosophy. By the late 1700s, the term “ideology” was termed for the first time by Destutt de Tracy, referring to his science of ideas while Hippolyte Taine describes ideology as a method of teaching philosophy by the methods of Socratic. In the 1800s, the scientific field became totally separate from the fields of ideology and philosophy, with science and technology even more separate.

Intermingling in their own way for hundreds of years as different as they both are, the fields of science and ideology have been used in our search for the endless quest of knowledge. When Mary Midgley said, “Before human beings can change their behavior, they have to change their way of thinking,” it took the scientific view that other beings and animals on Earth were unthinking and unfeeling, with humanistic ideology changing this brutal sort of thinking into that where animals are gathering more support for their care and way of living compared to case after case of severe child abuse and childhood sexual traumas slipping through endless bureaucratic cracks of society. Requiring a balance of both thought processes, ideology seems to be a system of abstract thought where a change in society is sought, developing a pendulum which swings back and forth from one extreme to another. This extreme is similar to the Bell Curve, where it takes one end of almost wanton neglect to achieve the desire of change to occur.

Ideology brings about change through thoughts and the philosophy of the human mind and behavior, as in the above scenario. But without science, it would be nothing as change needs to be studied—looked at—deciphered—absorbed—and then gather the scientific data that is accurate with as few errors as possible. In fact, the less errors that occurs in science the better the process of ideology has a chance of making accurate change. Was the change needed? Was it interpreted correctly? Were the studies and research run correctly? If so, then success can shake hands with both field, doing their job with one end result.

Time travel is a science, and according to what we know now the laws of science to not distinguish directions of time—at least when traveling backward and forward—but since 1997 it has become a questionable thing. And even though time travel is impossible to recognize with actual scientific proof, it is a true fact that the laws of science accept that time can increase as disorder increases, with the ability to distinguish the past from the future, which in a sense is considered time travel on some level.

Many conditions are involved in back-and-forth motion of time travel, especially regarding the requirements of the human body when time-traveling: (1) the ability of the human body to travel faster than the speed of light, and (2) the requirement of space-time to be warped and a tunnel, or “wormhole” to exist between two space-time points, which is impossible unless the end of the tunnel was kept open long enough for the physical body to get through it. The equations of Einstein’s General Relativity allow for some solutions to make this a feasible thing. We know that Albert Einstein has shown us that space is curved, or bent, while also showing us that time is relative and time travel going forward is theoretically a possible thing. Before he developed his special theory of relativity, any thought of traveling in time was nonexistent.

In April of 2006, Professor Ronald Mallett of the University of Connecticut became known for his experiment on time travel, with a prediction that time travel would become a reality within the next ten years, with his work based on Einstein’s relativity theories. “Einstein showed that mass and energy are the same thing,” says PHYSORG.com about Mallett, who published his first research on time travel in 2000 in Physics Letters. “The time machine we’ve designed uses light in the form of circulating lasers to warp or loop time instead of using massive objects.” Mallet goes on to say that time is manipulated by clocks—according to physicists—allowing us to manipulate time with a rate change of clocks, changing the ability for events to occur at different rates.

But presently black holes, wormholes and cosmic strings are refusing to open this time-travel door due to the inability of space to provide a gigantic amount of mass, which would distort space-time tremendously. NASA manipulates time travel all the time by setting their satellite clocks to adjust to “the fraction of a second” when it travels around the Earth much faster than the rotation of the Earth. We may not be able to travel in time, but according to NASA fast moving objects are able time travel into the future through manipulation. An example is when the satellite clocks travel with a high velocity it appears to run slowly relative to us, but when that very same clock is higher in a gravitational field, we think it runs slower. According to the theories of Relativity, the faster an object travels relative to where we are now, the slower the time will pass as we measure it.

Earlier telescopes had difficulty in detecting the Martian storms which covered the barren planet with its bright, oxidized Martian soils. Dust devils whipped apart the soil-covered plains, revealing darker, sub-surface soil—with the Martian winds making the planet much warmer as its own climate change was developing. Not related to our own greenhouse climate changes or driven by greenhouse gases, this climate change is just as important for an overall understanding of how planets evolve and change.

A year before the NASA Phoenix Mars Lander mission headed off to Mars, it had been speculated whether or not the heavy Martian winds would influence the entire mission, blowing away the collections of soil and ice the Phoenix was after. Winds up to 11 mph were estimated at the time of the Phoenix landing site during the entire 3-month mission, which caused a change in plans for the Phoenix scoop to be moved closer to the science-instrument intakes before dropping the soil, according to Renno, an associate professor in the U-M College of Engineering’s Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences.

An individual by the name of Lori Fenton, a Carl Sagan Center Principal Investigator, had published an article in the NATURE journal in April 2008 revealing the 2 degrees rise of the Martian global temperature over the past twenty years. The warming was attributed to the change in the “albedo” of the planet’s surface. When the dust devils or wind storms passes through the darker soil as the winds blow over the surface, more heat is absorbed and retained on the red planet, whereas the light, bright oxidized surface soil would reflect a lot of solar radiation. As the wind blows over the surface and reveals the darker soil underneath, the temperature begins to raise slightly as more and more dark soil is exposed.

Involved in this picture is the fact Mars has a very thin atmosphere, similar to what we have about 100,000 feet high above Earth. The winds from this thin atmosphere still impact Mars, with climate modelers and comparative planetologists monitoring the red planet for many years. Right now, the dust devils and wind gusts have saved the twin rovers time and time again, as their solar arrays pack in the dust which lowers their battery power. Each gust removes this grime, sweeping away the build-up to increase the power level for the 4-year batteries.

As advancements and high resolution instruments on the planet—such as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Phoenix Scout rovers, and Mars Science Laboratory—begin to obtain more information on Martian winds and its unpredictable weather, NASA scientists can begin to look at the Martian winds and how they can work for us.