What's Up In Space? Explore an asteroid from home, a new search for SETI and mission over for a veteran Mars rover?

Wednesday, April 1, 2015, 3:33 PM -

Explore an asteroid from the comfort of home, SETI refocuses their search for alien signals and is it 'mission over' for the Mars Opportunity rover? It's What's Up In Space!

Citizen Scientist Alert! Explore Asteroid Vesta!

If you've ever wanted to explore space, but are stuck here on planet Earth, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has a new tool for citizen scientists that may be just what you're looking for.

Vesta Trek is an application now available for download, which will allow users to explore, in detail, the surface of Vesta, an asteroid visited by the Dawn spacecraft in 2011 and 2012.

Using data beamed to Earth by Dawn, this new program allows the user to fly around Vesta, observing it from a perspective not unlike what Dawn had during its visit, but also the ability to interactive, highly-detailed maps of the surface to explore.

Vesta Trek's interface allows explorers to fly around and even skim the surface of Vesta. Credit: NASA

"There's nothing like seeing something with your own eyes, but these types of detailed data-visualizations are the next best thing," Kristen Erickson, the director of Science Engagement and Partnerships at NASA, said in a press release. "We're thrilled to release Vesta Trek to the citizen science community and the public, not only as a scientific tool, but as a portal to an immersive experience that, just by the nature of it, will allow a deeper understanding of Vesta and asteroids in general."

Check out the program on the NASA's website: vestatrek.jpl.nasa.gov

Refocusing the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence

For over decades now, various programs involved in SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, have been listening for signals from space, which would hopefully carry messages from intelligent beings elsewhere in the galaxy.

So far, although there have been a total of 11 signals detected that, currently, defy conventional explanation (including the famous WOW Signal from 1977), not one has been found that scientists can confidently claim was sent by intelligent aliens.

This isn't necessarily a reason to give up on the search, though. Thus far, the focus of SETI has been on detecting radio waves, for fairly obvious reasons, but this has required larger and larger arrays of radio telescopes, in order to more fully explore the weakest signals for evidence of messages. However, we don't necessarily need to continue on that same path. Discovering a message from an extraterrestrial civilization may only require a slight shift in our focus.

For this, researchers have turned their attention to infrared wavelengths of light, which lie just beyond the ability of the human eye to see. This region of the spectrum has already proven invaluable to astronomers. Since infrared light is at just the right wavelength that it can slip past the dust and gases that permeate our galaxy, collecting this light with a telescope allows us to see objects that we'd never see with an optical telescope.

The Trifid Nebula in visible and infrared light, showing just how many more stars can be seen in the infrared. Credit: ESO

This advantage of infrared light would also be useful for sending messages to distant star systems.

"Infrared light would be an excellent means of interstellar communication," Shelley Wright, a professor of physics at the University of California San Diego, said in a statement. Wright, along with colleagues and students at the University of Toronto's Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, led a team that advanced this idea, and developed a new instrument known as NIROSETI - Near-Infrared Optical SETI.

This instrument will have several advantages over the use of large radio arrays to detect weak signals.

"The signals are so strong that we only need a small telescope to receive them," Frank Drake, director emeritus of the SETI Institute, said in the statement. "Smaller telescopes can offer more observational time, and that is good because we need to search many stars for a chance of success."

Drake has been part of SETI since the early years, and one of his works - the Drake Equation - sought to put a number to how many alien civilizations could be out there. According to what he told UC Santa Cruz News, there is a downside to using NIROSETI, since alien signals would have to be specifically aimed in our direction for the instrument to pick them up. However, there is still an upside that potentially balances this out.

"If we get a signal from someone who's aiming for us, it could mean there's altruism in the universe," he said. "I like that idea. If they want to be friendly, that's who we will find."

So far, NIROSETI has been installed at the University of California's Lick Observatory, outside San Jose, Calif., where it saw 'first light' on March 15, 2015.

Missed Opportunity for 2016?

Mars Exploration Rover B, aka Opportunity, is an incredible piece of machinery. Even after more than 11 years rolling around on the surface of Mars - setting new records for mission duration, off-world driving distance, and even surpassing a marathon distance in its travels - Opportunity continues to return amazing scientific discoveries, even after its newer, larger cousin, the Mars Science Laboratory - aka Curiosity - landed about two and a half years ago.

Despite Opportunity's impressive track record, the valuable science it consistently returns, and the fact that it just keeps on going, it appears as though the rover's mission has been left off of NASA's budget request for 2016.

Is this an oversight? Apparently not.

Testifying on the budget request on March 12, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said: "We cannot continue to operate instruments and missions whose time has passed, because I won't be able to put something like InSight on Mars in 2016 … I have to make choices."

While he may have a point, not everyone agrees with lumping Opportunity into the category of 'missions whose time has passed'. The science the rover has already returned is exemplary, and an independent review of its science plan for the future, performed just last year, earned it one of the highest ratings of any current planetary science mission in operation. Also, the funds required to operate the rover amounts to less than 1 per cent of what NASA's Planetary Science Division receives each year, and less than a tenth of a percent of NASA's total annual budget.

So, exceptional science at low cost.

This isn't the first time Opportunity has come up on the chopping block, either. Each time it does, Congress has added enough money to the budget to sustain the mission. Hopefully, they will do so again for 2016, as it would be a shame to shut down Opportunity - which may still run for years to come - simply because there was no will in the administration to continue its mission.

Sources: NASA Dawn | UC-Santa Cruz | Dunlap Observatory | The Planetary Society