Iron Age Deity Stone Heads, Devizes Museum, Wiltshire, 17.11.18.

Iron Age Deity Stone Heads, Devizes Museum, Wiltshire, 17.11.18.

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Rhoslan Prehistoric Burial Chamber, North Wales, 24.11.18.

Rhoslan Prehistoric Burial Chamber, North Wales, 24.11.18.

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Reconstructed Bronze Age Roundhouse, Devizes Museum, Wiltshire, 17.11.18.

Reconstructed Bronze Age Roundhouse, Devizes Museum, Wiltshire, 17.11.18.

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Fight the mammals | #Geology #GeologyPage #Joke Geology…

Fight the mammals | #Geology #GeologyPage #Joke

Geology Page

www.geologypage.com

https://www.instagram.com/p/BqnSKg8FkPO/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=15fwxx1at88bm

Azurite, Malachite | #Geology #GeologyPage #Mineral Locality:…

Azurite, Malachite | #Geology #GeologyPage #Mineral

Locality: Poteryaevskoe Mine, Rubtsovskoe Cu-Zn-Pb deposit, Rudnyi Altai, Altaiskii Krai, Western-Siberian Region, Russia

Size: 44mm x 39mm x 19mm

Photo Copyright © Quebul Fine Minerals

Geology Page

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ESA lends a hand at Mars

ESA & ROSCOSMOS – ExoMars Mission patch / NASA – InSight Mission logo.

25 November 2018

NASA’s InSight lander operating on the surface of Mars

The Red Planet will receive its first new resident in six years on Monday when NASA’s InSight lander touches down, aiming to investigate the Martian interior. ESA ground stations and orbiters are playing a crucial role in helping the mission get to its destination and deliver its data back to Earth.

On 26 November, NASA’s robotic science lab will land on the dusty Martian surface around 20:00 UTC (21:00 CET).

Equipped with a suite of geological instruments, InSight will land at Elysium Planitia, a broad plain that has been called the “the biggest parking lot on Mars,” ready to spend two years measuring the planet’s internal heat, detect ‘marsquakes’ and more.

A portion of the Cerberus Fossae system in Elysium Planitia, near the martian equator

Because the lander will not rove across the Martian surface, it is vital that it lands in the right place the first time, where it will then release its solar panels and deploy its instruments, becoming the first mission to directly study another planet’s interior.

The European Space Agency is providing mission-critical support to InSight, using its deep-space ground tracking stations to communicate with the mission during the journey to Mars and, after landing, assigning the Agency’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) to help relay lander data back to Earth. Teams at ESA’s ESOC mission control centre, in Darmstadt, Germany, are also on standby to relay instructions the other way, from Earth to the lander, if needed.

Getting by with a little help

Just five hours after InSight launched on 5 May 2018, ESA’s deep space ground station at New Norcia, in Western Australia, established contact and transmitted commands to InSight, the first time an ESA station transmitted commands to a NASA Mars mission in flight.

New Norcia antenna supports NASA’s InSight lander on Mars

As InSight set out for Mars, ESA Estrack network stations provided additional communication slots, and served as back-up to NASA’s own Deep Space Network stations. The support is part of a long-standing cross-support agreement between the two agencies, in which one provides tracking station support to the other, boosting efficiency and redundancy for both.

On landing day, about 12 hours prior to the critical entry, descent and landing phase, ESA’s New Norcia station will again be in action, providing a ‘hot’ back-up communication link to InSight for the final ‘Target Correction Manoeuvre’ before it enters the Martian atmosphere.

Data from down below

Once on the surface, InSight will be located in view of a number of NASA and ESA orbiters, including ESA’s ExoMars TGO, which will provide routine data relay services to the lander throughout its life on Mars.

ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter

TGO, which is equipped with NASA-provided radio relay technology, will catch InSight data signals from the surface and relay them back to Earth, and slots for this important service are already planned starting the day after arrival, on 27 November.

While contingency data relay from NASA rovers and landers on the surface has been tested in the past using ESA’s Mars Express orbiter, use of TGO to provide routine data relay is a new aspect of cooperation at Mars for the two Agencies. TGO has also been providing regular data relay services for NASA’s Curiosity and Opportunity rovers.

It is part of a larger cooperation at Mars that will see orbiters from both ESA and NASA relaying data from not only current and future NASA rovers and landers on the surface, but also from ESA’s ExoMars rover slated to land in 2021 and from the accompanying Russian surface platform.

ExoMars rover

“NASA’s InSIght mission relies on crucial ESA support, and this is a highlight of the cooperation we have between the NASA and ESA Mars programmes,” says Paolo Ferri, Head of Mission Operations at ESA.

“In return, our ExoMars mission has received essential NASA support.”

“Mars is a rich scientific target, but an extremely challenging destination. Extending our long-standing technical, scientific and operational cooperation at the Red Planet is the only way to go.”

Watch the landing live on Monday from 19:00 UTC (20:00 CET), via NASA’s webcast: https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/timeline/landing/watch-online/

Related links:

NASA’s InSight surface operations: https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/timeline/surface-operations/

Estrack: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Operations/Estrack

New Norcia – DSA 1: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Operations/Estrack/New_Norcia_-_DSA_1

NASA’s InSight lander: https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/

ESA’s ExoMars: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/ExoMars

Images, Text, Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, D. O’Donnell, D. Ducros, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO/NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Greetings, Orbiter.chArchive link

2018 November 25 Phobos: Doomed Moon of Mars Image Credit:…

2018 November 25

Phobos: Doomed Moon of Mars
Image Credit: Viking Project, JPL, NASA; Mosaic Processing: Edwin V. Bell II (NSSDC/Raytheon ITSS)

Explanation: This moon is doomed. Mars, the red planet named for the Roman god of war, has two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, whose names are derived from the Greek for Fear and Panic. The origin of the Martian moons is unknown, though, with a leading hypothesis holding that they are captured asteroids. The larger moon, at 25-kilometers across, is Phobos, and is indeed seen to be a cratered, asteroid-like object in this false-colored image mosaic taken by the robotic Viking 1 mission in 1978. A recent analysis of the unusual long grooves seen on Phobos indicates that they may result from boulders rolling away from the giant impact that created the crater on the upper left: Stickney Crater. Phobos orbits so close to Mars – about 5,800 kilometers above the surface compared to 400,000 kilometers for our Moon – that gravitational tidal forces are dragging it down. The ultimate result will be for Phobos to break up in orbit and then crash down onto the Martian surface in about 50 million years. Well before that – tomorrow, in fact, if everything goes according to plan – NASA’s robotic InSight lander will touch down on Mars and begin investigating its internal structure.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap181125.html

HiPOD (24 November 2018): Bedrock to the East of Terby Crater …

HiPOD (24 November 2018): Bedrock to the East of Terby Crater 

   – Alt: 250 km, less than 5 km across.

NASA/JPL/University of Arizona 

Reconstructed Neolithic Burial Chamber, Devizes Museum, Wiltshire, 17.11.18.

Reconstructed Neolithic Burial Chamber, Devizes Museum, Wiltshire, 17.11.18.

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Spiralling into Control From spinning galaxies to swarming…

Spiralling into Control

From spinning galaxies to swarming honey bees, nature loves a rotating spiral. But inside our bodies these patterns can cause as much damage as a spinning tornado. Waves of electricity spiralling through heart muscle can cause potentially fatal heartbeat irregularities. Throughout nature, spiral wave structure is dictated by the physical properties of the core around which they spin. So if you can manipulate that core, you should be able to control the spiral. Researchers tested that theory using slices of rat heart cells engineered to respond to light. Using beams of light to alter cells’ electrical properties, they established and then steered electrical spirals. The experiment worked both in simulations (left hand spiral) and real cells (right two), letting the researchers guide the spiral to safety. Scaling the concept up from a single layer of cells to a whole heart might one day lead to new treatments for irregular heartbeats.

Written by Anthony Lewis

• Video adapted from work by Rupamanjari Majumder and Iolanda Feola, and colleagues


• Laboratory of Experimental Cardiology, Department of Cardiology, Heart Lung Center, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands


• Image originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)


• Published in eLife, September 2018

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Small Businesses Help Us Explore Space!

Earlier this month,

Congress introduced a

resolution officially recognizing Nov. 24, 2018 as Small Business Saturday “to

increase awareness of the value of locally owned small businesses and the

impact of locally owned small businesses on the economy of the United States.”

This annual American

Express campaign began on the Saturday after Thanksgiving in 2010 to support

“local places that make our communities strong.”

For 60

years, we have supported and partnered with

small businesses across the country to pioneer the future of space exploration, scientific discovery and

aeronautics research.

Our Small Business Innovative

Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program funds the research, development and

demonstration of innovative technologies that help address space exploration

challenges and have significant potential for commercialization. In 2018, our

program awarded 555 contracts to small businesses for a total of $180.1

million.

NASA works with small

business Nanocomp Technologies Inc. of Merrimack, New Hampshire, to advance

manufacturing of carbon nanotube composite materials.

Our investments in small businesses help equip future

missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond by advancing our science and technology

capabilities. They also benefit the U.S. economy. The SBIR/STTR program’s 2017 Economic

Impact Report indicated

a $2.74 return for every dollar spent on awards—money well spent!

Small businesses

also contribute to scientific advances for the International Space Station as

well as here on Earth. Pancopia, Inc. in Hampton, Virginia, developed

an innovative, high-performance water recycling system to remove high levels of organic carbon and

nitrogen in wastewater. Recycling water in space saves money on resupply and

enables more Earth-independence and self-reliance. With the help of an SBIR

award, Pancopia is also working on a similar system for public wastewater that

has the potential to cut treatment expenses to less than half the current

costs.

Small businesses

also contribute to scientific advances for the International Space Station as

well as here on Earth. Pancopia, Inc. in Hampton, Virginia, developed

an innovative, high-performance water recycling system to remove high levels of organic carbon and

nitrogen in wastewater. Recycling water in space saves money on resupply and

enables more Earth-independence and self-reliance. With the help of an SBIR

award, Pancopia is also working on a similar system for public wastewater that

has the potential to cut treatment expenses to less than half the current

costs.

When NASA went to the private sector to develop deformable

mirror technology—a key component of starlight-blocking instruments—a

small business in Berkeley, California, applied for research and development funding through

SBIR to design extra-precision, segmented mirrors. This innovative approach for

a small deformable mirror made up of many tiny hexagonal segments enables

advanced control when paired with other optics.

Data collected by a

telescope using the Iris AO deformable mirror can be used to determine if the

target investigated in space is an exoplanet based on its orbit, and if the

exoplanet has atmosphere using color spectrum imaging analysis. The Iris AO technology

is currently being refined and prepared for inclusion in a future exoplanet

mission.

Does your small

business have a big idea? Your next opportunity to join our SBIR/STTR program

starts on Jan. 7, 2019, when our next solicitation opens. We’ll be seeking

new innovative ideas from small businesses and research institutions for

research, development and demonstration of innovative technologies. Go to

https://www.nasa.sbir.gov/ to learn more.

Make sure

to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Roman Fauna Clothing Pin Decorations, Devizes Museum, Wiltshire, 17.11.18.

Roman Fauna Clothing Pin Decorations, Devizes Museum, Wiltshire, 17.11.18.

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