This trailer is only marginally more insightful than the completely vague teaser though does offer a better glimpse of the overall story and a brief look at the outer space voyage undertaken by the characters.

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Early in the morning of April 15 at about 2 a.m. EDT, a total lunar eclipse visible from North America will begin and will finish at approximately 5 a.m. EDT.

What’s a Lunar Eclipse?

A lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes directly behind the Earth into its umbra(shadow). This can occur only when the Sun, Earth, and Moon are aligned (in “syzygy”) exactly, or very closely so, with the Earth in the middle. Hence, a lunar eclipse can only occur the night of a full moon. The type and length of an eclipse depend upon the Moon’s location relative to its orbital nodes.

Unlike a solar eclipse, which can only be viewed from a certain relatively small area of the world, a lunar eclipse may be viewed from anywhere on the night side of the Earth. A lunar eclipse lasts for a few hours, whereas a total solar eclipse lasts for only a few minutes at any given place, due to the smaller size of the moon’s shadow. Also unlike solar eclipses, lunar eclipses are safe to view without any eye protection or special precautions, as they are no brighter (indeed dimmer) than the full moon itself.

The timing of total lunar eclipses are determined by its contacts:

P1 (First contact): Beginning of the penumbral eclipse. The Earth’s penumbra touches the Moon’s outer limb.

U1 (Second contact): Beginning of the partial eclipse. The Earth’s umbra touches the Moon’s outer limb.

U2 (Third contact): Beginning of the total eclipse. The Moon’s surface is entirely within the Earth’s umbra.

Greatest eclipse: The peak stage of the total eclipse. The Moon is at its closest to the center of the Earth’s umbra.

U3 (Fourth contact): End of the total eclipse. The Moon’s outer limb exits the Earth’s umbra.

U4 (Fifth contact): End of the partial eclipse. The Earth’s umbra leaves the Moon’s surface.

P2 (Sixth contact): End of the penumbral eclipse. The Earth’s shadow no longer makes any contact with the Moon.

Source: NASA, Wikipedia.

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Credit: Starry Night Software / A. Fazekas

The map has a whopping 20-gigapixel size, and it captures only about 3 percent of our sky. The space telescope’s vision was focused along the thin disk of the Milky Way galaxy for a total of 172 days , it shows more than half of its stars.

“If we actually printed this out, we’d need a billboard as big as the Rose Bowl Stadium to display it,” said Robert Hurt, an imaging specialist at NASA’s Spitzer Space Science Center in Pasadena, California. “Instead, we’ve created a digital viewer that anyone, even astronomers, can use.”

You can check out the map and take your own tour of the Milky Wayhere; http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/glimpse360.

It is amazing to think that all the countless points of light that make up this starry band are actually millions of stars. Most of them are tens of thousands of light-years away from Earth, yet are part of the island of stars that is our galactic city.

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Via: NatGeo

A group of scientists led by Geoffrey Collins of Wheaton College has produced the first global geologic map of Ganymede, Jupiter’s icy, seventh moon. The map combines the best images obtained during flybys conducted by NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft (1979) and Galileo orbiter (1995 to 2003) and is now published by the U. S. Geological Survey as a global map.

Animation of a rotating globe of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, with a geologic map superimposed over a global color mosaic. The 37-second animation begins as a global color mosaic image of the moon then quickly fades in the geologic map.

“The surface of Ganymede is more than half as large as all the land area on Earth, so there is a wide diversity of locations to choose from,” Collins said. “Ganymede also shows features that are ancient alongside much more recently formed features, adding historical diversity in addition to geographic diversity.”

 

 

“This map illustrates the incredible variety of geological features on Ganymede and helps to make order from the apparent chaos of its complex surface,” said Robert Pappalardo of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “This map is helping planetary scientists to decipher the evolution of this icy world and will aid in upcoming spacecraft observations.”

According to the scientists who have constructed this map, three major geologic periods have been identified for Ganymede that involve the dominance of impact cratering, then tectonic upheaval, followed by a decline in geologic activity. The map, which illustrates surface features, such as furrows, grooves and impact craters, allows scientists to decipher distinct geologic time periods for an object in the outer solar system for the first time.

“The highly detailed, colorful map confirmed a number of outstanding scientific hypotheses regarding Ganymede’s geologic history, and also disproved others,” said Baerbel Lucchitta, scientist emeritus at the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Ariz., who has been involved with geologic mapping of Ganymede since 1980. “For example, the more detailed Galileo images showed that cryovolcanism, or the creation of volcanoes that erupt water and ice, is very rare on Ganymede.”

The Ganymede global geologic map will enable researchers to compare the geologic characters of other icy satellite moons, because almost any type of feature that is found on other icy satellites has a similar feature somewhere on Ganymede.

Amateur astronomers can observe Ganymede (with binoculars) in the evening sky this month, as Jupiter is in opposition and easily visible.

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Image: Nature Geoscience / Alfred McEwen et al.

Researchers don’t know enough about Martian geology so they can’t be sure of where the water could be coming from. There could be pockets of ice underneath the surface that liquefy when warmed, but the emergence pattern of the dark streaks doesn’t seem to suggest that. There is also a possibility that the streaks are caused by water vapor being pulled from the atmosphere and condensed into the soil. 

If there were any traces of Earth microbes on the probes that will visit these potentially watery areas, these areas could easily be contaminated. So the probes must be completely sterilized using hydrogen peroxide vapor heating or ionized radiation, a complicated and expensive procedure but having accurate and meaningful data will be well worth the investment.

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Via: IFLS

“Titan is a very alien place that looks very Earth-like,” said planetary scientist Stephen Wall, leader of Cassini’s radar team.

 

While the northern hemisphere is dotted all over with hundreds of tiny lakes, the large seas seem confined to a specific area, mainly on the lower right side of the image above.

Other tectonic processes are probably behind the smaller dotted lakes, though scientists don’t yet know precisely what. Some of the lakes could be infilled calderas of former active volcanoes on Titan (which would spew molten water instead of lava). But there isn’t enough volcanic activity on the moon to account for all of them. Instead, many were probably created when liquid hydrocarbons dissolved the frozen ice.

“This creates a kind of exciting prospect that under the northern pole of Titan is a network of caves,” said Kirk. Caves on Earth are often filled with life, so perhaps Titan’s caves could be as well.

 

 

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NASA’s Curiosity, a car-sized robotic rover exploring Gale Crater on Mars as part of Mars Science Laboratory Mission (MSL), make the NASA people believe that the environment at the landing site was once viable for certain types of microbe. Those organisms, molecules, energetic particles and many other factors have terraformed Mars.

As the rover pursues organic molecules, that which life as we know exists within these carbon-rich systems, would not be an evidence of life on Mars; anyhow there will surely be enough excitement to ignite discussions on the subject matter.

The team that’s sent Curiosity to Mars, believes it now has a strategy that will increase its chances of finding some relatively intact molecules. They are planning to apply this technique into practice in the next couple of months when the robot arrives at a new rock outcrop in Gale Crater called KMS9.

Source: NASA

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As a part of NASA’s Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration (LLCD), USA space agency went a further step by zapping a record breaking 622 Mb data per second between the moon and earth.  The results in deep space communication heralds promising new advances and NASA is ready to bid farewell to radio waves which has long become the go-to option for conveying information between spacecraft and planet earth. Great data capacity lasers can accomodate and may render it possible for oncoming missions to send higher-resolution pics and 3D video transmissions across two-way channels.

How does the transmission function? Pulsed laser beams were shot from ground control at the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico to the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) satellite orbiting the moon and is currently flying around the moon 380,000 kilometers away.

The more NASA explores the neighboring planet, the more odd it gets. Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter (NASA’s Mars Exploration Program) since 2006 circles to provide the shiniest and maximum-resolution pics from the surface of the planet. Orbiter’s HIRISE camera (the cam can actually take photos of things about a meter wide on the ground) already resolved many interesting things over the years and recently unveiled another wonder that’s unknown to human brain.

HiRISE catches moments slightly different than our own eyes. Photo shows that new dunes were discovered, however there are actually no turquoise dunes on the planet Mars. This false color pictures do allow scientists to differentiate various textures and materials regarding the exploration program.

A group of Greek students have come up with a deployable greenhouse project named Popeye on Mars, that could feed Mars settlers. Capable of producing fresh spinach in just 45 days, the dome-shaped aeroponic growing system could be used for pre-deployment on a space mission to the Moon or Mars. The basic idea behind Popeye on Mars is to create a greenhouse growing unit that could be sent to an otherwise inhospitable planet or moon to begin growing fresh food autonomously before humans arrive. Designed to be deployed near the equator of Mars, Popeye would take advantage of solar energy and a relative lack of inclement weather to form a self-sufficient growing system.

“During the day, when the covers open and the PVPs [photovoltaic panels] are deployed, the greenhouse occupies a circle area of around 1.5 meters radius,” explain the designers.  “Without human intervention, the greenhouse operates for approximately 45 days (spinach life cycle). This period can vary up to 65 days depending on the planted plants. After this period, the stored oxygen (O2) and the produced seeds are ready to be collected. After elementary maintenance and seeds planting, the greenhouse is functional again and ready for the next harvest.”

The project has been named a winner in the NASA International Space Apps Challenge, a competition that seeks to engage thousands of people around the world in space exploration and is entirely open-source, and plans can be found on Git Hub.

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