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Those weird spots on Ceres? Probably water ice

Image: Ceres' Occator Crater
This color-coded representation of Ceres’ Occator Crater shows differences in surface composition, highlight bright patches inside the crater. (Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA)

For months, scientists have puzzled over weirdly bright spots of material shining on the asteroid Ceres, but now they say the spots are probably made of salty ice.

That determination, based on a detailed analysis of spectral data from NASA’s Dawn orbiter, comes in a paper published today by the journal Nature. Dawn’s images highlight one particular patch in a 106-mile-wide impact basin known as Occator Crater, but other spots are spread across the surface of the 590-mile-wide dwarf planet.

“The global nature of Ceres’ bright spots suggests that this world has a subsurface layer that contains briny water-ice,” the study’s principal author, Andreas Nathues of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, said in a NASA statement. He and his co-authors suggest that cosmic impacts dig up enough surface material to expose the shiny ice.

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Cygnus delivers goodies to space station

Image: Cygnus spaceship
A photo tweeted by NASA astronaut Scott Kelly shows the International Space Station’s robotic arm about to grab onto a commercial Cygnus cargo ship. (Credit: Scott Kelly / NASA)

The International Space Station’s astronauts got their Christmas presents early today, in the form of HoloLens augmented-reality headsets from Microsoft and more than 7,000 pounds of other nice stuff, courtesy of a Cygnus commercial cargo ship.

Orbital ATK’s uncrewed Cygnus arrived at the station three days after Sunday’s launch atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket from Florida. NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren used the station’s robotic arm to grab onto the 20-foot-long (5.1-meter-long) capsule at 3:19 a.m. PT and bring it in for its berthing.

In a tweet, space station commander Scott Kelly joked that the delivery arrived “just in time for Christmas.”

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Atlas 5 rocket sends cargo ship to space station

151206-launch
A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket rises from its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Sunday, sending an uncrewed Orbital ATK Cygnus commercial cargo capsule to the International Space Station. Two Microsoft HoloLens headsets were aboard. (Credit: NASA TV)

After waiting out Florida’s weather for three days, United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket lofted supplies to the International Space Station today for the first time ever.

The Atlas rose from its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 4:44 p.m. ET (1:44 p.m. PT), sending Orbital ATK’s uncrewed Cygnus crew capsule into orbit. The space station’s commander, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, watched the launch from orbit.

Among the record-setting 7,700 pounds’ worth of supplies, experiments and hardware on board are two of Microsoft’s HoloLens augmented-reality headsets. Once they arrive, the station’s astronauts will try them out as wearable aids for in-space operations.

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NASA probe delivers Pluto’s closest close-up

Image: Pluto heart
A heart-shaped patch of nitrogen-rich ice (outlined in red) lies next to a mountain range on Pluto, as seen in a picture from NASA’s New Horizons probe. (Credit: NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI with heartification by Vicknesh Selvamani / @Vicknesh96)

If you heart Pluto, you’ll love the sharpest, closest close-up of the dwarf planet, just sent back by NASA’s New Horizons probe.

The images, captured from a distance of 10,000 miles during the July 14 flyby, include a heart-shaped block of nitrogen-rich ice right on the edge of the big heart-shaped region known informally as Tombaugh Regio.

You can also see the craggy blocks of water ice that form the al-Idrisi mountains, bull’s-eye impact craters on Sputnik Planum, and ripples and layers in Pluto’s icy crust. The pictures have a maximum resolution of 250 feet per pixel, which is less than the length of a football field.

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NASA hails SpaceX’s taxi for future crew

SpaceX Crew Dragon
An artist’s conception shows SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule en route to the International Space Station. (Credit: SpaceX)

NASA has ordered its first mission from SpaceX to carry astronauts to the International Space Station, six months after placing a similar order with Boeing.

“It’s really exciting to see SpaceX and Boeing with hardware in flow for their first crew rotation missions,” Kathy Lueders, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said today in a news release. “It is important to have at least two healthy and robust capabilities from U.S. companies to deliver crew and critical scientific experiments from American soil to the space station throughout its lifespan.”

Both companies are developing space taxis for NASA’s use as early as 2017, under the terms of multibillion-dollar contracts that were awarded last year.

Even though the first order went to Boeing, it has not yet been determined whether Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner capsule or SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule will go first. The contracts required NASA to put in its orders early, but the scheduling decisions and required certifications will be made at a later time.

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Get an all-around view of Pluto and Charon

Pluto views
An array of images shows Pluto from all sides, as seen by NASA’s New Horizons probe over the course of one full Plutonian day (6.4 Earth days) from July 7 to 13. (Credit: NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI)

The bright heart of Pluto has been burned into our consciousness, thanks to scads of high-resolution pictures. But a new set of images from NASA’s New Horizons mission provides an all-around view of the dwarf planet, including the splotchy shapes that went out of view days before the time of closest approach on July 14.

Another 10-picture set shows Pluto’s biggest moon, Charon, from all sides.

The imagery was captured over the course of a full Plutonian day, which is 6.4 Earth days long. New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager and the Ralph / Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera were trained on the icy worlds as the distance to Pluto decreased from 5 million miles on July 7 to 400,000 miles on July 13.

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Orion capsule is now officially a shiny object

Image: Orion
An artist’s conception shows NASA’s Orion capsule in flight, with a silvery, metallic-based coating bonded to the capsule’s back shell tiles. (Credit: NASA)

NASA has released new artwork that reflects the latest look for its Orion deep-space crew vehicle – and it’s highly reflective.

Orion’s shiny back shell isn’t just for show: In Thursday’s update, NASA explains that the silvery, metallic-based thermal control coating is designed to reduce heat loss when the spacecraft is pointed toward the dark chill of outer space, and limit high temperatures when it’s exposed to the sun.

“You’re trying to hit this sweet spot because when you’re looking at the sun, you don’t want to get too hot, and then when you’re not looking at the sun and instead in darkness, you don’t want to lose all the heat that the spacecraft generates,” John Kowal, NASA’s thermal protection system lead for Orion, explained in the update.

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Inside the flying lab that’s probing rain clouds

Image: DC-8 view
The view out the window during NASA’s DC-8 flight on Saturday. (GeekWire photo by Alan Boyle)

JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. – I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now – from below, on the receiving end of an all-day rain; and from above, where NASA’s flying laboratory is dissecting those rain clouds.

For more than six hours on a rainy Saturday, I rode along as a DC-8 jet bristling with electronic gear took radar and microwave measurements of the clouds hanging over the Olympic Peninsula. The flight is part of a months-long campaign called the Olympic Mountain Experiment, or OLYMPEX, which is being conducted by NASA and the University of Washington.

OLYMPEX is aimed at fine-tuning the algorithms that scientists use to translate the data coming from on-the-ground weather installations and satellites like the recently launched Global Precipitation Measurement Mission Core Observatory into weather and climate projections.

In the process, they’re addressing a scientific problem we’ve known about since Judy Collins first sang about clouds in the ’60s: We really don’t know clouds at all.

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Rain-measuring mission gets a good, soggy start

Image: DC-8
Members of a NASA Social group at Joint Base Lewis-McChord get ready to tour a DC-8 plane that NASA is using to document rainfall on the Olympic Peninsula. (GeekWire photo: Alan Boyle)

JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. — The weather forecast for the Olympic Peninsula is dark and rainy, and that’s putting the scientists behind NASA’s OLYMPEX campaign in a sunny mood.

“The really exciting thing that everyone’s talking about is, there’s this huge rain event that’s coming in,” says Rachael Kroodsma, an atmospheric scientist from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, helping to get a specially outfitted DC-8 plane ready to fly into the storm this week. “There’s a lot of buzz about that. … It’s a good start to the campaign.”

Usually, bad weather is bad news.

Not for OLYMPEX, the Olympic Mountain Experiment.

Under the leadership of NASA and the University of Washington, the months-long effort is using aerial observations as well as a bevy of radars and rain gauges to validate orbital data from the Global Precipitation Measurement satellite, also known as GPM. The $3 million campaign is the latest of several field studies aimed at making sure the satellite readings reflect ground truth.

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Pluto probe sees evidence of ice volcanoes

Image: Piccard Mons
A color-coded topographical map, based on New Horizons data, shows Piccard Mons on the surface of Pluto. The mountain’s structure suggests that it’s an ice volcano. (Credit: NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI)

Scientists with NASA’s New Horizons mission say that at least a couple of the miles-high mountains on Pluto look as if they’re ice-belching volcanoes, providing further evidence that the dwarf planet is geologically active.

Although the case for cryovolcanoes isn’t yet rock-solid, it’s the “least weird explanation” for the observations of 2-mile-high Wright Mons and 3-5-mile-high Piccard Mons, said Oliver White of NASA’s Ames Research Center, a member of the mission’s geology team.

If the mountains’ status is confirmed, “that would be one of the most phenomenal discoveries of New Horizons,” White told reporters. “Whatever they are, they’re definitely weird.”

Image: Wright Mons
Like Piccard Mons, Wright Mons has a summit depression that suggests it’s an ice volcano on Pluto. (Credit: NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI)

Pluto’s potential status as a volcanic world was just one of the revelations that came to light on Monday during a review of New Horizons’ latest discoveries at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences in National Harbor, Md.

“The New Horizons mission has taken what we thought we knew about Pluto and turned it upside down,” Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA Headquarters, said in a news release about the findings.

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