The Mud Volcano from the Carnival of Wonders of the Solar System

I just wanted to throw up a few quick notes from the news and other blogs this Wednesday evening:

The Cumbrian Sky, a great astronomy blog by Stuart Atkinson, is this week's host of the Carnival of Space.  Check it out for some great photos taken over the last week from the Opportunity rover, still trucking along through Barsoom on its way to Endurance crater.  The Carnival of Space is a series of posts that is hosted each week by a different space or astronomy blog.  These posts highlight the best articles in the space and astronomy blogosphere that week.  This week, the Carnival of Space looks at the near-future of space exploration, the anniversary of the Voyager encounters with Saturn, and the distinction between Earth-like planets and Earth-sized planets (Stuart's own post on this latter topic has the funniest scientific graphic involving a kitten ever made).

Speaking of blogs, Emily Lakdawalla's Planetary Society blog has a new post up in reporting on the possibility of mud volcanoes in northern plains of Mars.  I personally assumed they were pingos, but Emily's article, covering a paper by Oehler and Allen, makes mud volcanoes as the origin of the many flat, rounded mounds that dot the lands seem pretty reasonable.  I am not a Martian geologist so I can provide any useful commentary, however.  Mud volcanoes are cool though.

Finally, the documentary series, Wonders of the Solar System, is premiering tonight here in the United States on the Science Channel.  I brought this up a couple of week ago on this blog, and you can see that original post to view a trailer for the five part series.  The show airs at 9pm EDT/6pm PDT, and re-airs for an encore at 12am EDT/9pm PDT.  The first episode is called, "The Empire of the Sun," and covers solar science and the long reach of the sun in the solar system through the solar wind and the Sun's magnetic field.  The other four episodes of the series air over the next four Wednesday at the same times.

• Wednesday, August 11: "Order out of Chaos" - the formation of the Solar System; Saturn's rings
• Wednesday, August 18: "The Thin Blue Line" - Planetary atmospheres
• Wednesday, August 25: "Dead or Alive" - Planetary geology (impact cratering, volcanism, long segment on Io)
• Wednesday, September 1: "Aliens" - Astrobiology, Water, the Mars/Europa episode

Link: Carnival of Space #165 [cumbriansky.wordpress.com]

The University of Arizona Goes to Mars...Again

I don't usually talk about Mars, but I think for this occasion I think we can excuse it.  It is a big week here at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (I would literally mean "here" if it weren't for the stupid Tucson transit strike).  My boss, Alfred McEwen, has been selected to be the principal investigator of the High-resolution Stereo Color Imager, or HiSCI camera on the joint NASA-ESA Mars Trace Gas Orbiter mission.  This will be his second camera that will make it to Mars, after the highly successful HiRISE.  HiSCI will beam back images with a resolution of 2 meters per pixel.  While this is not as crisp as the HiRISE camera, HiSCI will allow the team to image a wider swath of the Martian surface.  Not only that, but the entire swath will be in color, rather than a narrow band at the center of the HiRISE swaths currently. The four colors to be used by the camera will help scientists distinguish various surface components such as water ice and dust.

Another exciting feature of the camera is its Yaw Rotation Drive.  This drive will allow the camera to scan across a target before it passes over it, then rotate so it can scan the target again when the spacecraft is directly over the surface feature.  This allows the camera to obtain near-simultaneous 3D stereo coverage, rather than using two images that are taken months apart, as is currently done with other Mars cameras, like HiRISE or CTX, or with Io stereo images like this one of Zal.  This will mean that every target HiSCI images should have stereo, allowing detailed digital terrain models to be constructed for each imaging target.

This new camera will part of the payload for the Mars Trace Gas Orbiter, a joint NASA-ESA project that should launch in January 2016.  The main goal of the mission to measure the concentration, both in general and locally, of various trace gases in the Martian atmosphere, such as methane.  Much as the sub-millimeter observations of Io's atmosphere provided insights into how sulfur dioxide, sulfur monoxide, and sodium chloride got into that moon's atmosphere, this mission is focused on discovering how these trace gases get into Mars' atmosphere, be it through outgassing, photolysis, or most intriguingly, through biology.  HiSCI will be used to image possible sources regions for these gases, to better understand their geologic context.

Van Kane has an article up on his blog that describes the Trace Gas Orbiter and the other instruments selected in more detai.

So we (and by we, I mean those at PIRL who do work on HiRISE, unlike myself) are off to Mars again.  Congratulations are in order for the HiSCI team for their selection to the payload of NASA's next Mars mission after MAVEN.  I hope MRO and the HiRISE camera will still be functioning for you guys to to joint observations.  As for myself, I will still be toiling away in the Saturn system, hoping lightning will strike a third time.

Link: UA-Operated Stereo Camera Selected for Mars Mission [uanews.org]

Quick News

Here are a few quick notes:

• The Volcanism on Io Wikipedia is now featured on the main page of the popular encylopedic website, giving millions of people a chance to learn more about this fascinating word. Thanks to all who helped in bring that article to this point!
• Phoenix has finally kicked the bucket. A sad day, but not unexpected given the changing seasons in the Martian arctic. Congratulations go out to the Phoenix lander team for producing such a successful mission.
• I have added the Follower applet on the sidebar at right. So feel free to show your support for my blog.
  

Good Luck to Phoenix

Just wanted to wish the Phoenix mission good luck and I hope their landing on the Martian northern plains goes off without a hitch.

Update: Phoenix landed! WOOT!