Humans will walk on the lunar surface again - for the first time since 1972. The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced plans for a new manned mission. So far, super-specific details with dates have not been disclosed, the general message is simply "we will do it."
The American Internet is sobbing with happiness. But, unexpectedly, there were many dissatisfied experts among the experts. When NASA's plans were announced in front of an advisory group on November 15, the advisers split into two groups. On the one hand, there are proposals to speed up the program (otherwise, God forbid, China will overtake). On the other hand, there are stories about the unrealism and cost of the project, especially in terms of building a permanent Gateway station in lunar orbit.
At an advisory group meeting at NASA headquarters, Tom Cremins, head of the agency's strategic plans, outlined the goals and procedures for the new Exploration Campaign, as it is called for now.
As part of this campaign, it is planned to build a Gateway orbital station - with modules from NASA and international / commercial partners. Descent vehicles will also be developed to deliver people to the surface of the satellite. Their testing on the Moon is scheduled to begin before 2024.
NASA also presented a slide of what is expected to be achieved by 2028. Including - a minimum of 7 missions to the moon, a fully built Gateway, a rover, 4 exploration missions on the lunar surface and 3 commercial flights. The trigger module will be reusable. According to Tom Cremins, the plan may still change, it all depends on the money. But if NASA's budget remains stable, "we are confident that we can do all this."
The advisors' comments were divided. Eileen Collins, a former astronaut who was the first female Shuttle commander, says the plan is "not ambitious enough":
2028 is 10 years from now. I think it's too long. We can do this earlier.
Harrison Schmitt, an astronaut on the Apollo 17 last human landing expedition, was also unhappy:
There is no sense of urgency in this. We must feel that, behold, this will happen soon. It won't happen soon. The pace of this program is too slow. I think about the Saturn 5 launches every two months, and you will barely launch them every two years.
Apollo 11 mission participant and second man on the Moon, Buzz Aldrin, spoke out against the orbital station:
I don't like Gateway at all. It's absurd that we would use a platform like this to launch human and robotic missions to the surface. Why do you need to launch a command at some intermediate remote point in space, then to descend from there? We could do without it in the 70s.
Aldrin says he likes the Moon Direct concept proposed by engineer Robert Zubrin, known for his books in support of Mars missions. According to Zubrin's plans, the landing capsules can fly from the station near the Earth's orbit to the lunar / Martian surface, and then back. So, he calculated back in the 1990s, the energy costs for building an orbital station would be much lower.
NASA promo video:
Mike Griffin, the former head of NASA who now leads research and development for the US Department of Defense, did not attend the meeting. But a few hours after that, to journalists' questions about the new lunar mission, he answered:
I think 2028 is very late, not even worth discussing. It's my personal opinion. Such a date does not show the world that the United States is leading in some way.
Later, he added:
In my opinion, if China seriously wants to bring people to the moon, they can easily do it in six, seven, eight years, no problem. But they are in no hurry, they play long. I'm not saying that they will be on the moon in six years, but if they have the task of proving to us, they will. I think that such an event would trigger a restructuring of geopolitical forces, and this would be extremely harmful for the United States.
So far, China hasn't sent people beyond Earth's orbit: its program has focused on building its own space station by the mid-2020s. But Mike Griffin probably knows what he's talking about. When he was the head of NASA, it was he who announced in 2007 that the Americans would return to the satellite again by 2020. Then such plans were quickly canceled by the Obama administration in 2010. Trump also shows little interest in the country's space projects. The general consensus among experts is that until the president is as passionate about the idea of \u200b\u200bMars or the Moon as Kennedy once was, one should not expect truly decisive breakthroughs.
On October 30, 2018, it was officially announced the completion of the mission of the Kepler spacecraft - an exoplanet hunter that turned our understanding of extrasolar worlds upside down.
“We are ending Kepler's scientific operations, completing a nine-year odyssey. His discoveries were a giant step forward in the search for life in the Milky Way, "- said in NASA.
Space telescope "Kepler". Credit: NASA
Two weeks before the completion of the mission, the Kepler space telescope, at that time 170 million kilometers from us, sent precious and, as it turned out, the latest data that it recently collected, scanning a small region of the sky in the direction of the constellation Aquarius. The signal travel time from the telescope to NASA's Deep Space Network antennas was 9.3 minutes.
After the end of the data transfer, engineers tried to return Kepler to observing mode, but on October 19, the telescope system put it into sleep mode due to lack of fuel. Forever and ever.
What is in store for Kepler now? It will continue to drift slowly through space, crossing our planet's orbit every 40 years, but not getting closer to Earth than the Moon. This orbital dance will last for millions of years.
Thousands of star systems living in the Milky Way. Credit: ESO / M. Kornmesser
Kepler went into space in 2009. The mission was originally designed for 3.5 years, and its main goal was to collect data for statistical analysis of the number of exoplanets in the Milky Way. By the time the telescope was launched, astronomers had confirmed the existence of 340 extrasolar worlds. Now there are about 4 thousand of them, and 70 percent of them are the merit of "Kepler".
Kepler's first problems began in July 2012 when one of its four stabilizers failed. However, three were enough to continue the observations as usual. Things got worse in 2013 when the second stabilizer broke. As a result, Kepler began using precious fuel to accurately target the target.
To get out of the situation, the mission engineers developed a clever solution: they were able to reorient Kepler so that the sun's rays were evenly distributed over the telescope. This reduced the disturbing force from the Sun and allowed it to be "stable" using only two stabilizers. The only drawback of this approach was the limited observation area, but this allowed the mission to be extended until the end of 2018.
Kepler 452b as seen by the artist. Credit: NASA Ames / JPL-Caltech / T. Pyle
Whatever planetary system you imagine, most likely the exoplanet hunter found it. Waterworld Kepler-22b, Earth-like planet Kepler-452b in the habitable zone, close-packed system Kepler-11 with five planets located closer to the star than Mercury to the Sun, Tatooine Kepler-16b from Star Wars, living in the system of two stars, ancient system Kepler-444 is 11.2 billion years old and many more.
To be continued
However, do not despair, the search for a second Earth continues. Before retiring, Kepler handed over the baton to the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which had already done so. In addition, in the next few years, the James Webb space telescope will come to the rescue, which will help characterize the atmospheres of exoplanets and assess their potential habitability.
Good night, Kepler. Credit: Mariah Hornsby
It's safe to say that we will eventually find a planet similar to Earth, and Kepler laid the foundation for this discovery. We will not be able to thank him, but we will undoubtedly remember that the first hunter for extrasolar worlds quietly drifts around the Sun, like a monument to humanity's desire to find out its place in the Universe.
AdvertisingScientists have discovered a cluster of planets similar to the core of the solar system. Representatives of the North American Space Agency (NASA) announced this during a special press conference. The system has seven earth-like planets, each of which has the potential to have liquid water and life.
Is there life in the constellation Aquarius? To find out the answer, more than 50 thousand people simultaneously connected to the NASA press conference on the Web - a record audience for astrophysics. Ufologists all over the world have been waiting for a story about the first contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. But scientists announced something different: at a distance of 40 light-years from Earth is the twin of our solar system. And there are several planets with conditions suitable for life. What does this discovery mean?
And yet, not aliens, although they were all thought of when NASA announced that it was preparing an emergency statement, and even carefully hiding the details. But what scientists have told and shown is no less sensation.
In a new unusual star system - in the constellation Aquarius - they discovered seven planets similar to Earth. And most importantly: almost all of them are in the so-called habitat zone. The surface is such that there can be water, and in a liquid state. That is, theoretically, there is life.
The discovery of Michel Gillon's team from the Institute of Astrophysics at the University of Liège and NASA was made possible by the powerful Spitzer telescope, which makes observations in the infrared range. The single star Trappist-1, around which exoplanets - they were called sisters of the Earth - revolve in orbit - shines 2,000 times dimmer than the Sun and warms twice as weak. But given how close these planets are to the red dwarf, the temperature there is quite earthly.
The futuristic landscape that NASA scientists publish does not, of course, claim photographic accuracy. A model from the realm of fantasy. But scientific. Something similar was filmed by Tarkovsky in his famous Solaris in 1972, before that - Kubrick's Space Odyssey.
Here too, according to astronomers, the new planets are located so close to each other that if someone lived there, then from one planet it would be possible to view the neighboring one. As now from the Earth - the Moon and the Sun. NASA even modeled such a poster. True, it would have to be considered quickly. A year on exoplanets lasts from one and a half Earth days to two weeks.
Speaking about the possibility of extraterrestrial life, NASA scientists do not answer, however, another important question - how to test it in practice. Technology doesn't allow it.
Exoplanets are planets that revolve around other stars. One of the tasks of modern astronomy is the search for worlds that resemble the Earth. It is estimated that there are 5-20 billion of our planet's twins in the Milky Way galaxy. Scientists use special methods to find them. One of them is transit, based on the observation of the passage of a celestial body against the background of a star.
In 2016, Michaël Gillon of the University of Liège in Belgium and his colleagues reported that they were able to detect three exoplanets that passed in the background of a single red dwarf TRAPPIST-1 (distance to it - 39 light years). This star got its name due to the fact that it was discovered using the 0.6-meter TRAPPIST telescope (TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope) at ESO's La Silla observatory in Chile. This red dwarf is only 11 percent larger than Jupiter.
Much less resonance was received by the news about the first registration of gravitational waves - perhaps it turned out to be not so "glamorous", and the general theory of relativity with its name scares off more than the hadron collider. After all, it’s one thing to find a “particle of God,” even if it was originally named not at all that way, and another thing is to register some kind of incomprehensible wave. Or maybe everything is explained by the fact that CERN simply turned out to have a stronger PR service (yes, scientists also have their own PR people) than LIGO. In any case, NASA managed to outperform both of them by admitting that they had discovered aliens. At least the whole world Internet was full of such headlines yesterday.
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On this minor but reasonable note, Gazeta.Ru says goodbye to the lovers of everything extraterrestrial and unknown. Colorful alien dreams!
- What are the periods of rotation of these planets? - From 1.5 to 12 days. These are ultra-short periods compared to a year on Earth. The planets resemble Jupiter's Galilean moons. We believe they have migrated closer to the star in the past.
According to astrophysicist Popov, if astronomers want to look for planets with terrestrial life, they must look at other stars, for example, at the sun-like ones. “The first reason is that the seven planets found are close to the star, so most likely their rotation is synchronized (an eternal day is established on them). The second is that powerful flares occur on red dwarfs and this is not good for health. And finally, if the planets have a slow proper rotation, their geomagnetic dynamo "dies" and the magnetic field disappears. And to protect yourself from flares, you need a magnetic field! One thing pulls the other, and few people believe that highly organized life can exist on such planets, ”the scientist believes.
- Are these the nearest planets in the habitable zone? - No, the closest planet is near Proxima Centauri.
Scientists believe that the discovered planets were unlikely to be able to preserve their own satellites. This is due to their proximity to the star and the action of gravity.
- Question: what is the probability that they are inhabited? - It is too early to talk about it, we need to find out what the atmosphere is on these planets.
Sarah Seeger: We do not know quite a lot about these planets, but with the discovery of this system, we know how many discoveries of similar systems we have to discover in the future. The planets revolve around a very small, cold star - not at all the way it happens in our solar system.
“This star is very faint, at the limit of not being a brown dwarf, only 0.08 times the mass of the Sun. But on the other hand, this means that these are the most numerous stars, ”Popov believes.
Astrophysicist, Doctor of Physics and Mathematics Sergey Popov commented with healthy skepticism on the discovery of planets. “In astrophysics, dozens of results of this level appear in a year. The result looks like a record. We often hear that the next most distant quasar has been discovered, and so it is here. We cannot say that this discovery poses a great challenge to theorists, ”Popov told Gazeta.Ru. - The discovered system differs in that there are seven small exoplanets, and three of them sit in the habitable zone. This is exactly cool, as they say, "Wow"!
The press conference on the discovery of the planetary system 40 light years from the Sun has ended.
One of the differences between the found system and the Solar system is that, due to its low mass, the TRAPPIST-1 star evolves extremely slowly. “It burns hydrogen so slowly that it will live another 10 billion years. This is quite enough for life to begin on the planets, ”- Ignace Schnellen, co-author of the discovery from the University of Leiden.
Artistic representation of the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system
- How old are the planets? - At least half a billion years. This is a fairly young system.
Q: What about the radiation coming from the star? “It's a big problem for systems like this, but it's a calm dwarf.
Sarah Seeger: With the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, we will be able to study the atmosphere and composition of these and similar planets.
Nicole Lewis: Three planets are in the habitable zone. One of these planets is similar in size to Earth and has a similar temperature. Planet F has an orbital period of 9 days.
Gillon: Since the planets form a very compact system and are close to their star, they are likely to synchronize their rotation and look one side at the star, like the moon.
"Every time a planet passes between us and a star, it obscures its light, and from this brightness damage we can estimate its size."
Michael Gillon: we have discovered not one, not two, but seven planets. It is a star of the smallest class than all others - a red dwarf. For comparison, scientists have shown how a table tennis ball is comparable to a basketball - the TRAPPIST star is so much smaller than our Sun.
The press conference has begun! In 2010, Michael Gillon's group began searching for exoplanets using the method of transits near faint stars adjacent to the Sun. To do this, they used a robotic 60-centimeter TRAPPIST telescope in Chile. In 2016, scientists announced the discovery of three Earth-like planets at once near the neighboring star TRAPPIST-1, located 40 light years from the Sun.
Conducting additional observations of this system using other ground-based telescopes, as well as using the Spitzer space observatory. Thanks to this, scientists were able to observe as many as 34 transit events, which they attributed to seven planets orbiting this star. So, in other words, in relative proximity to the Sun, the planetary system TRAPPIST-1 has been found, consisting of at least seven terrestrial planets!
NASA and ESA often announce important astronomical discoveries on a grand scale, calling journalists at press conferences. The last time an exoplanet theme became the topic of such a meeting was six months ago, when scientists announced the closest exoplanet to the Sun, Proxima Centauri b. In August 2016, this news made a lot of noise in the scientific world, but later scientists expressed strong doubts that life could exist on this planet.
An exoplanet is any planet orbiting a star other than the sun. The first exoplanet was discovered by Swiss astrophysicist Michel Mayor in 1995. Over the past decade, the number of planets discovered outside the solar system has reached several thousand. As of February 2017, 3577 exoplanets are known to have been discovered in 2687 systems. They are discovered in several ways - the transit method, the spectroscopic method, the direct image method and the gravitational lensing method. A large role in the discovery of new planets was played by the Kepler space telescope, which searches for planets using the transit method, recording the slightest fluctuations in the brightness of the stars they eclipsed.
Nothing was reported about the essence of the discovery, except that we are talking about another scientific achievement in the field of exoplanets. The world's media are competing on assumptions - whether the discovery of life on another planet, aliens or a new unusual planetary system will be announced. However, it is known that the press conference is timed to coincide with the next scientific publication in the journal Nature, and journalists who have a subscription know in advance about the essence of the forthcoming publication :-)
It is known that the speech at the press conference will be about the discovery of new exoplanets. Thomas Zurbuchen, head of NASA's scientific development department, Michael Gillon, astronomer from the University of Liege (Belgium), Sean Keiry, an employee of the NASA Science Center. Spitzer at Caltech, Nicole Lewis, astronomer at the Space Telescope Institute for Space Research, Sarah Seeger, planetary exploration scientist at MIT.
NASA scientists became aware of the upcoming announcement of an important astronomical discovery a few days ago. The journalists were invited to the organization's headquarters in Washington.
In this regard, NASA announced the development of a new planetary defense system: scientists propose to "shoot down" the asteroid with a ram, changing its trajectory. Talk that the Earth is actually defenseless against a possible asteroid threat has been going up for a long time.
Someone says that the danger is greatly exaggerated, because only in 2016 was the first death of a person in 200 years from a meteorite fall, which, however, was denied by NASA, and someone - that we still cannot be sure predict the fall of celestial bodies to the surface of the Earth.
Confirmation is the famous Chelyabinsk meteorite, which made a lot of noise and caused huge losses. And we cannot not only predict, but much less prevent.
As part of solving the first problem, scientists consider it necessary to commission new observatories - both space and ground. One example is the Mobile Astronomical System of Robot Telescopes (MASTER), created on the basis of Moscow State University.
The main goal of the project is to obtain up-to-date information on the entire visible sky within one night. In addition to the search for dark matter, new exoplanets and the discovery of small bodies in the solar system, the data will help track potentially dangerous asteroids moving towards the planet.
NASA also has its own observatories, the purpose of which is to detect potentially dangerous objects for the Earth. One of the main such centers is the Arecibo Observatory, located in Puerto Rico, at an altitude of 497 meters above sea level, and has one of the world's largest radio telescopes using only one aperture.
At the same time, none of the modern radars has sufficient power to cover such a vast space even relatively close to the Earth and ensure the return of a signal to detect unknown near-Earth objects.
With optical telescopes, it is easier to detect light from the Sun that is reflected by an object, and ground-based radar can be used to more accurately track and determine the orbits of objects detected by these telescopes, their physical characteristics and body dynamics as they approach the Earth.
The threat of Apophis
Radar observations can correct our asteroid position data from several thousand kilometers, provided by optical observations, to several meters.
The risk of impact posed by a potentially hazardous asteroid can be resolved relatively quickly with radar observations, while using only optical observations, we may not be aware of its position for many years.
This was the case with the asteroid (99942) Apophis, which was discovered in 2004.
Initially, it was assumed that in April 2029 it could collide with the Earth, but radar observations carried out by Arecibo Observatory in 2005 practically ruled out this possibility.
After the asteroid approached the Earth on January 9, 2013 at a distance of almost 14.5 million kilometers, which is less than a tenth of the distance to the Sun, scientists found that the volume and mass of this asteroid is 75 percent more than expected.
Research shows that the best way to defend against an asteroid by changing its trajectory depends on each specific scenario.
The choice of mitigation method depends on the object's orbit, composition, relative velocity, as well as the likelihood of impact and the expected impact location. Some near-Earth objects can be in such an orbit, which is very difficult to work with if not detected over several decades.
Other asteroids are essentially a collection of small debris, making it difficult to correct their trajectory without destroying them. Some objects are too small or fragile to reach the Earth's surface, such as the meteorite that collapsed over Chelyabinsk in 2013. They require more rapid response to emergencies.
Therefore, each specific case requires special planetary protection measures.
Planetary protection is a term used by astronomers to describe all the capabilities needed to detect and warn of probable collisions of asteroids or comets with the Earth, and then either to prevent them or to mitigate the consequences.
It is necessary to accurately characterize these objects by determining their orbital trajectories, size, shape, mass, composition, rotation dynamics, and other parameters. This information will help professionals determine the hazard of potential exposure.
Darts game
With projects of active impact on potentially dangerous asteroids, which could minimize damage from their impact in advance, everything is a little more complicated.
Various ideas were proposed: from sending a compact nuclear or traditional chemical charge to an asteroid in order to destroy it, to using a gravitational tug and rocket engines capable of deflecting the asteroid's course from Earth.
However, most of these ideas have not yet gone beyond theoretical developments: these projects are too expensive and have quite a lot of controversial points - up to the unresolved issue of using nuclear charges in outer space.
However, NASA has come up with another way to actively influence an object threatening the Earth.
We are talking about the space mission Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) - this is the first real attempt to actively influence an asteroid. The goal is to develop ways to protect the planet from the impact of objects from space.
The project is being created in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory with support from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and Johnson Space Center (JSC).
“We have many scientific missions aimed at understanding the past of the solar system and its formation. The Planetary Defense Project refers to the present solar system and our immediate immediate plans and actions. To carry out our plans and physically correct the trajectory of the object, it will take a lot of time in stock. The idea of \u200b\u200ba kinetic ram is, of course, not at all what is shown in the movie "Armageddon", where people were alarmed at the last moment and saved the Earth. We will need to take care of this 10 or even 20 years before the impact: slightly push the asteroid so that it flies past and does not hit the planet, ”explains planetary scientist Nancy Chabot of the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University.
The target of the DART mission was a binary asteroid system, which received the name (65803) Didymos, which means "twin" from Greek. Didymos A is 780 meters in size, while its "younger brother" Didymos B is only 160 meters. He will become the main goal of the mission. The Didymos system has been extensively studied since 2003: the primary body is an S-type rocky object, the composition of which is similar to that of many asteroids, and the composition of Didymos B is not yet known.
The double asteroid itself does not pose a threat to the Earth: in 2003 it flew over a distance of more than seven million kilometers, and next time it will approach our planet in 2123.
However, this mission will help scientists obtain important information that will be invaluable in the future for protection from dangerous objects.
Shoot down and trace
Preparations for the launch of the DART spacecraft will begin at the end of December 2020 and will last until May 2021. The launch is scheduled to take place in June 2022, and in early October, the space ram will collide with an object 11 million kilometers from Earth.
DART is believed to use an airborne autonomous targeting system to target Didymos B and then pierce the asteroid at six kilometers per second - about nine times faster than a bullet.
Ground-based observatories will be able to capture this impact and Didymos B's orbital change, allowing scientists to better identify the potential for kinetic forcing as an asteroid mitigation strategy.
The kinetic impact technique works by changing the speed of the threatening asteroid by a small fraction of its total speed, but doing so well before the predicted impact, so that this small shock over time is added to the large displacement of the asteroid's trajectory. In this case, an important part of the mission will be to observe the asteroid both before and after the impact.
It will be monitored by a small artificial satellite Light Italian Cubesat, which the Italian Space Agency will launch simultaneously with DART. The European Hera mission, in turn, will reach the binary asteroid by 2026 and capture the size and destruction patterns that DART did.
Despite the fact that Didymos does not threaten our planet, it is important for humanity to learn how to prevent collisions with potentially dangerous space bodies, because if we plan to continue living on Earth, taking care of the climate and the safety of its resources, we must also think about external threats that are capable of overnight put an end to all living things.