Archive for the 'Planetary Science' Category

Was Mars Ever Habitable?

Published by The National Air and Space Museum on November 16, 2011 in Planetary Science, Research and space.
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If all goes according to plan, on November 25th the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover Curiosity will leave the Earth and begin its journey to Mars. Any delays due to weather or other factors should be accommodated by a launch window that extends until December 18th. The spacecraft will use a new landing system to arrive at its landing site on Mars in August, 2012, and the rover carries an impressive array of scientific instruments. The rover is about twice as large as the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, thereby enabling it to navigate terrain characterized by larger obstacles (such as rocks) as it travels up to about 200 meters (219 yards) per Martian day.

 

Curiosity

This artist concept features NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, a mobile robot for investigating Mars' past or present ability to sustain microbial life.

The new landing system for the Mars Science Laboratory replaces the airbag system utilized by the Pathfinder and Mars Exploration Rovers during landing. The new landing system enables much larger rovers and science instrument payloads to be delivered to the surface of Mars than was previously possible and opens the door for future missions geared towards the eventual return of samples for the Red Planet. Upon entering the Martian atmosphere, the MSL spacecraft will first steer itself through the upper atmosphere before deploying a parachute and then using rockets and a tether to lower the Curiosity rover to the surface.

Curiosity’s mission is geared towards understanding whether Mars is or ever could have been habitable. Recent data from NASA’s orbiting spacecraft (Odyssey and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) and the Mars Exploration Rovers suggests the planet has had a long and complicated history of changing environmental conditions and landscapes. Curiosity will follow those missions by deploying a diverse complement of instruments to interrogate the rocks and soils in the vicinity of the landing site. The “next generation” of instruments carried by Curiosity comprises a “mobile laboratory” and should lead to a quantum leap in our understanding of Mars’ potential habitability and how the surface of Mars evolved over time.

landing site

Images of Gale Crater, the selected landing site for the Mars Science Laboratory. The first image shows the regional context of Gale Crater (labeled on the left and discussed above) with colors representing the elevation of the land surface (purple lowest and red highest). The second image shows an example of high priority science targets for exploration near the ellipse (yellow box in first image shows the location) and the last image shows science targets within the target landing ellipse (white box in the first image shows the location).

Advances in landing precision enable consideration of smaller landing sites than was possible during prior missions and made it possible to access the selected landing site within Gale crater. Gale crater is attractive to scientists because there is a five kilometer (three mile)-thick section of layered rocks deemed likely to enable study of changing conditions on Mars over a time when the abundance and duration of water on the surface was decreasing over time. As water is an important factor in evaluating potential habitability, the chance to access the rocks that record the changes from relatively wetter to drier present an opportunity to learn a great deal about Mars as a planet and its potential as a possible abode for life.

Curiosity is an important step in the long term study of Mars and sets the stage for future missions that will be focused on whether there is or ever was life on Mars. By helping to understand whether the planet was habitable and, if so, for how long, MSL will help identify the likely environments and potential targets for future sample return and the eventual search for possible life.

The excitement should begin the day after Thanksgiving, so while resting after eating all that turkey, tune in to NASA TV and watch as Curiosity counts down towards lift-off and the start of an exciting new chapter in our understanding Mars and the solar system.

Visitors to our Museum in DC can also watch the launch, targeted for 10:25 am ET Nov 25, on the giant screen in the Moving Beyond Earth gallery.

John Grant is a geologist in the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the National Air and Space Museum, and co-led the process for selecting the landing site for the 2011 Mars Science Laboratory rover.

 

Where are the Voyagers now?

Published by The National Air and Space Museum on October 6, 2011 in History, Planetary Science, Research and space.
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The remarkable twin Voyager spacecraft continue to explore the outer reaches of the solar system decades after they completed their surveys of the Outer Planets.  Launched in 1977 (September 5 for Voyager 1 (V1) and August 20 for Voyager 2 (V2), whose trajectory took it past Jupiter after Voyager 1), the spacecraft pair made many fundamental discoveries as they flew past Jupiter (March 1979 for V1, July 1979 for V2) and Saturn (November 1980 for V1, August 1981 for V2).  The path of Voyager 2 past Saturn was targeted so that it continued within the plane of the solar system, allowing it to become the first spacecraft to visit Uranus (January 1986) and Neptune (August 1989).  Following the Neptune encounter, both spacecraft started a new phase of exploration under the intriguing title of the Voyager Interstellar Mission.

Voyager

Voyager Spacecraft

Five instruments continue to collect important measurements of magnetic fields, plasmas, and charged particles as both spacecraft explore different portions of the solar system beyond the orbits of the planets.  Voyager 1 is now more than 118 astronomical units (one AU is equal to the average orbital distance of Earth from the Sun) distant from the sun, traveling at a speed (relative to the sun) of 17.1 kilometers per second (10.6 miles per second).  Voyager 2 is now more than 96 AU from the sun, traveling at a speed of 15.5 kilometers per second (9.6 miles per second).  Both spacecraft are moving considerably faster than Pioneers 10 and 11, two earlier spacecraft that became the first robotic visitors to fly past Jupiter and Saturn in the mid-70s.

 

Jupiter

This processed color image of Jupiter was produced in 1990 by the U.S. Geological Survey from a Voyager image captured in 1979.

As seen in the night sky at Earth, Voyager 1 is within the confines of the constellation Ophiuchus, only slightly above the celestial equator; no telescope can see it, but radio contact is expected to be maintained for at least the next ten years.  Voyager 2 is within the bounds of the constellation Telescopium (which somehow sounds quite appropriate) in the far southern night sky.

 

Heliosphere

Diagram of the Voyager and Pioneer spacecrafts leaving the solar system.

Both spacecraft have already passed something called the Termination Shock† (December 2004 for V1, August 2007 for V2), where the solar wind slows as it starts to interact with the particles and fields present between the stars.  It is expected that both spacecraft will encounter the Heliopause, where the solar wind ceases as true interstellar space begins, from 10 to 20 years after crossing the Termination Shock.  Theories exist for what should be present in interstellar space, but the Voyagers will become the first man-made objects to go beyond the influences of the Sun, hopefully returning the first measurements of what it is like out there.  Each spacecraft is carrying a metal record with encoded sounds and sights from Earth, along with the needle needed to read the recordings, and simplified instructions for where the spacecraft came from, in case they are eventually discovered by intelligent extra-terrestrials.

 

Voyager Record

The Voyager "Sounds of Earth" Record, placed on board the Voyager spacecraft contains sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.

 

Keep track of the Voyager spacecraft on the official Voyager Interstellar Mission website or follow @NASAVoyager2 on Twitter.

 

Jim Zimbelman is a geologist in the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the National Air and Space Museum.

† The sun ejects a continuous stream of charged particles (electrons, protons, etc) that is collectively termed the solar wind.  The particles are traveling extremely fast and are dense enough to form a very tenuous atmosphere; the heliosphere represents the volume of space where the effects of the solar wind dominate over those of particles in interstellar space.  The solar wind particles are moving very much faster than the local speed of sound represented by their low volume density.  When the particles begin to interact with interstellar particles and fields (the interaction can be either physically running into other particles or experiencing an electromagnetic force resulting from a charged particle moving within a magnetic field), then they start to slow down.  The point at which they become subsonic (rather than their normal hypersonic speed) is the Termination Shock.

Curiosity Landing Site

Published by The National Air and Space Museum on July 22, 2011 in Planetary Science, Research and space.
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Here is a riddle: What takes more than 60 locations, 5 years, and 150 scientists to decide? The landing site for the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover Curiosity. Picking the landing site for a spacecraft to land on another planet is always serious business. And the job of finding the best location for Curiosity to set down on Mars was no exception.

Curiosity’s mission is geared towards understanding whether Mars could have ever been habitable. And recent data from NASA’s orbiting spacecraft (Odyssey and the Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter) and the Mars Exploration Rovers suggests the planet has had a long and complicated history of changing environmental conditions and landscapes. Combine that with the fact that the landing site could be anywhere between 30 degrees north and south of the equator and below an elevation of 0 kilometers (relative to the Martian datum) and there is a lot of territory to consider.

 

Curiosity Landing Site

This map of Mars shows all of the landing sites proposed for the Mars Science Laboratory (red dots) and the four final candidate sites (blue dots). From the four final sites of Eberswalde crater, Gale crater, Holden crater, and Mawrth Vallis, Gale eventually was selected as the landing site. The white shaded areas are more than 30 degrees north and south of the equator and off limits to MSL because of seasonally harsh (cold) conditions expected there. The black areas are above 0 kilometer in elevation and too high to be considered for landing.

The vast majority of the sites proposed for consideration (Figure 1) were within the general bounds outlined above and many possess attributes making them attractive as possible landing sites. Moreover, the design of the rover enables consideration of a variety of sites. So science merit became the major discriminator of which site would eventually win out.

Over a series of workshops, the science community and MSL science team came together to discuss and evaluate the various proposed sites. The diverse expertise represented at the workshop coupled with ample discussion time ensured each site got a good look. As the process went along, more and more sites were dropped from consideration as potential issues were identified. Finally, four sites remained, all of which were deemed satisfactory for MSL and each with a substantial group of science advocates. These four sites include a relict river delta in Eberswalde crater, a 5 kilometer (3.1 mile) thick section of layered rocks in Gale crater, ancient alluvial and possible lake beds in Holden crater, and ancient sequence of clay-bearing rocks near Mawrth Vallis (Figure 2). The four sites became the focus of intense study and discussion at the final two workshops, with efforts geared towards understanding how the rocks in and near the sites were emplaced and whether they might be accessible to Curiosity once on the ground. As data related to the sites poured in and evaluations went on, the four final sites have become arguably the best imaged and studied locations on the surface of Mars. In the end, there was no “smoking gun” that was found to rule out any of the four final candidate sites and the community reiterated their satisfaction with any one of them. Much more information about each of the proposed landing sites can be found on Marsoweb.

 

Curiosity Landing Site

Summaries of each of the final four candidate landing sites for the Mars Science Laboratory. The left column shows the regional context of each of the four sites (labeled on the left and discussed above) with colors representing the elevation of the land surface (purple lowest and red highest). The middle column shows examples of high priority science targets for exploration near the ellipse (yellow box in left column shows the location of each) and the right column shows science targets within each target landing ellipse (white box in left column shows the location of each). At Eberswalde crater, Curiosity would land on the crater floor and probe ancient river and possible lake beds on the way to a large delta on the western wall of the crater. At Gale crater, the site chosen as the landing site for Curiosity, landing will occur on an alluvial fan near the northern wall of the crater and the rover will than traverse to a thick stack of layered rocks to the south. At Holden crater, landing would take place on broad alluvial fans flanking the western wall of the crater and the rover would traverse down to underlying and finely layered rocks that may have been deposited in a lake. At Mawrth Vallis, landing would occur directly on a layered sequence of clay-bearing rocks that extend regionally across the surface. The images comprising the panels in the middle and right columns are from the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The scale bars in each panel indicate distance in kilometers.

The Curiosity science team then met and considered all of the information related to the sites. Both science potential and risks to rover landing and traversing were considered. In the end, Gale crater was selected as the landing site because the thick section of rocks (Figure 2) was deemed likely to enable study of changing conditions on Mars over a time when the abundance and duration of water on the surface was decreasing over time. As water is an important factor in evaluating potential habitability, the chance to access the rocks that record the changes from relatively wetter to drier present an opportunity to learn a great deal about Mars as a planet and its potential to support life.

Curiosity lifts off towards the Red Planet late in 2011 and will arrive at Mars in mid-2012. In the days and months leading up to landing at Gale crater, the MSL science team will continue to pore over existing and new images to plan the best path towards rocks they feel hold the clues to understanding Mars’ habitability. Once on Mars and on the move, Curiosity will provide images and information from its science payload of instruments that will enable all of us to follow along in the excitement of exploration and learn more about how one of our neighboring planets evolved over time.

John Grant is a geologist in the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the National Air and Space Museum and served as the co-chair of the Mars Landing Site steering committee for the Mars Science Laboratory.

A New Curiosity

Published by The National Air and Space Museum on July 3, 2011 in On View at the Museum, Planetary Science and Research.
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There is a strange looking car parked in the west end of the National Air and Space Museum in downtown Washington, DC. For now, it is only visible behind its security screen from the second floor landing above. From that vantage, the vehicle’s six wheels, robotic arm, mast, and other protrusions are clearly visible. But since this is the Air and Space Museum, it must be more than just a normal car.

Soon the barriers will be gone and the public will be able to view the vehicle up close and personal. And what they will see is a model of the next Mars rover, NASA’s 2011 Mars Science Laboratory. The rover, dubbed “Curiosity” will be launched to Mars later this year and will begin its mission to explore whether places on the Red Planet were ever habitable. Information on the mission can be found at: http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/. The rover carries a suite of instruments geared towards understanding conditions on the planet and a full description of the payload can be found at: http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/instruments/.

NASA Mars Rover Curiosity at JPL, Side View. The rover for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, named Curiosity, is about 3 meters (10 feet) long, not counting the additional length that the rover's arm can be extended forward. The front of the rover is on the left in this side view. The arm is partially raised but not extended. Rising from the rover deck just behind the front wheels is the remote sensing mast. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The landing site for Curiosity will be one of four final candidate sites all deemed to possess a variety of features suited to evaluating whether Mars could have been habitable in the past. It is expected that NASA will announce the landing site in the coming weeks. Much more information on the landing sites proposed for Curiosity can be found at: http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landingsites/index.html.

The model of Curiosity will be on display through Labor Day of this year.

See the model of Curiosity and learn more about its mission at this year’s Mars Day! on July 22.

John Grant is a geologist in the Museum’s Center for Earth and Planetary Studies and co-chair of the Mars Landing site steering committee leading the MSL landing site selection process.

MESSENGER on Final Approach to Mercury

Published by The National Air and Space Museum on March 17, 2011 in Planetary Science and Research.
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Today at 8:45 pm EDT (March 18, 2011, 12:45 am UTC), MESSENGER will become the first spacecraft ever to enter Mercury’s orbit. With MESSENGER on the last leg of its journey, I’m reminded how long it has taken to get there.  I watched the spacecraft launch in the early morning hours of August 3, 2004, almost six and a half years ago.  Now after one flyby of Earth, two flybys of Venus, and three flybys of Mercury, the spacecraft will catch up with Mercury again, but this time it will be captured by the planet.  You might think as one of our closest neighbors in the Solar System it would take a lot less time to get into Mercury orbit – but because Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, at a distance where the influence of the Sun’s gravity is much greater, it is a challenge to reach and orbit.

MESSENGER

This artist's impression shows MESSENGER with its sunshade side. The sunshade shields the spacecraft from solar radiation, helping to keep the instruments from overheating. Image courtesy of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

In its three flybys of Mercury, MESSENGER imaged much of the planet’s surface. As great as the flyby images are, they vary greatly in resolution and in lighting geometry.  In orbit, MESSENGER will map the entire surface of Mercury at high resolution and with even lighting.  These first images obtained from orbit will revolutionize our understanding of Mercury.  I will be eagerly examining the new images for evidence of fault scarps, landforms created by the shrinking of Mercury’s crust causing it to break and from cliffs.  These cliffs tell us that Mercury’s interior has cooled and the entire planet has contracted.  With a new global view of Mercury, we can map all the fault scarps and estimate just how much the planet has contracted over time.  It’s an exciting time for the exploration of Mercury!

Mercury

This color image of Mercury was captured on September 29, 2009 during MESSENGER's third and final flyby. Image courtesy of NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Tom Watters is senior scientist and geologist in the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the National Air and Space Museum.

Seeing Beneath the Surface of the Moon

Published by The National Air and Space Museum on October 5, 2010 in Astronomy, Planetary Science, Research and space.
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“Remote sensing” is a term used to describe many different types of observations carried out at a distance. Aerial photos, satellite images of the Earth and planets, and telescope views of our solar system are all forms of remote sensing used to understand geology, climate, hazards, and changes over time. Not all remote observations use the wavelengths of light visible to humans; there is a wealth of information contained in how a surface reflects or emits radiation across the spectrum from radio waves to gamma radiation. Scientists at the National Air and Space Museum’s Center for Earth and Planetary Studies use radar signals, transmitted from satellites in lunar orbit or from the largest radio dishes on Earth, to probe below the dusty surface of the Moon. Radio waves, which have a much longer wavelength than visible light (the Museum’s research uses signals with 12.6-centimeter and 70-centimeter wavelengths), penetrate up to 30-40 meters into dry material and reflect from buried layers or rocks suspended in the thick dust. By carefully measuring the time between the transmitted and received radar signals, and the subtle changes in frequency caused by the rotation of the Moon, the radar “echoes” can be assembled into an image that resembles a photograph, but revealing aspects of lunar geology often hidden from optical cameras. Studies using the new radar maps trace the outlines of ancient lava flows now buried by material hurled from giant impact craters, find rocky material in resource-rich areas that might pose hazards to robotic exploration, and “light up” for the first time areas near the poles that are in permanent shadow from the Sun. Ongoing work suggests that some areas of the smooth lunar “seas,” or maria, may have very rugged, boulder-covered lava flows hidden by billions of years of overlying dust; how such rough deposits might form remains a mystery. The lessons learned from studies of the Moon are guiding efforts to design a radar sensor for Mars that will look beneath that dust-covered surface to reveal additional geologic signatures of past and present water.

Aristoteles

A 12.6-centimeter wavelength radar view of the lunar crater Aristoteles (87 km diameter). Rugged areas, such the northern interior wall of the crater, appear bright to the radar, and smooth or dusty parts of the surrounding region appear dark. The radar lighting comes from the lower left, so the walls of the crater cast "radar shadows" just as they would for illumination by the Sun. The surrounding clusters and chains of smaller craters were formed by debris ejected from the main crater.

Bruce Campbell is a geologist in the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the National Air and Space Museum.

A ‘Spectacular’ Hoax Continues to Fool E-mail Readers

Published by The National Air and Space Museum on August 13, 2010 in Astronomy, Education, Planetary Science and space.
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As an astronomy educator here at the National Air and Space Museum, I’ve had the opportunity to interact with thousands of visitors, especially in our Public Observatory. I’ve enjoyed the many chances to discuss the wonders of the Universe and to answer visitors’ astronomy-related questions. However, I tend to dread the month of August because of an internet hoax involving Mars that’s been plaguing e-mail inboxes for seven years.

The e-mail in question is commonly referred to as the “Mars Hoax” or, more accurately, the “Mars Spectacular,” and is titled: “Two moons on 27 August or The Red Planet is about to be spectacular!”

It informs recipients that Mars will have an extremely close encounter with Earth during the month of August, culminating on August 27th when Mars is approximately 34 million miles away. The information in the previous sentence was only true during the month of August in 2003. This was a historic astronomical event. Mars was the closest it had been to Earth in 60,000 years. However, this already happened.

Before I get into the e-mail’s misinformation, let’s talk about what actually happens when Earth and Mars have a close encounter. Imagine two people are running a race around a track. One person is running in the innermost lane while the other is running in the outermost lane. The runner in the inside lane will complete one lap faster than the other person. This is similar to Earth’s and Mars’ orbits around the Sun. Earth takes 365 days to complete a lap around the Sun while Mars completes a lap in 687 days. If the runners continue running, eventually the runner on the inside (Earth) will catch up with the runner on the outside (Mars). When this occurs in the solar system, it is called opposition. It also means that Mars is opposite of the Sun in the Earth’s sky. An opposition for Mars occurs approximately every 2 years. The last three occurred on November 7, 2005, December 24, 2007, and most recently on January 29, 2010.

Opposition of Mars

An opposition occurs when the Sun, Earth and Mars line up with the Earth in the middle. This phenomenon, which happens every two years, brings Earth and Mars relatively close together. This diagram shows four recent oppositions and two future ones. The 2003 opposition was significant because Mars was very near its perihelion - the point in its orbit where it is closest to the Sun. At that time, Mars came within 35 million miles of Earth. Mars will be almost that close again during the opposition in July of 2018.

Why was the Mars opposition in 2003 so special? Most oppositions bring Earth and Mars between 34 and 63 million miles from each other. This is mainly due to Mars’ elliptical orbit. All planetary orbits are slightly elliptical meaning that a planet’s distance to the Sun changes as it moves in its orbit. When it’s closest, it’s called “perihelion” and when farthest, “aphelion.” Mars’ orbit is more elliptical than Earth’s. Every 15 to 17 years, Mars is in, or very close to, its perihelion point just as Earth “catches up” with Mars. This brings the two planets especially close together. In 2003, this perihelic opposition occurred on August 27, when Mars was closest to the Sun, and Earth near its most distant point from the Sun. This combination brought the Earth and Mars unusually close together. As a result, Earth and Mars were 34.6 million miles away from each other; the closest they had been in 60,000 years.

If you missed this historic event, you may be wondering what Mars looked like in the sky during August of 2003. According to the most recent versions of the Mars Spectacular e-mail, Mars will appear “as large as the full moon to the naked eye.” That’s huge! No wonder people are still excitedly forwarding this e-mail to everyone they know. The original e-mail, though, stated, “At a modest 75-power magnification Mars will look as large as the full Moon to the naked eye.” This is more or less true, just misleading. It’s referring to how Mars could appear if magnified 75 times by a telescope eyepiece. To see any significant detail on the Martian surface rather than a large, red, fuzzy blob one would have to peer through a telescope with an objective mirror or lens larger than 8 inches; a much larger telescope than what department stores sell.

Mars in the Night Sky

On August 27, 2003, Mars appeared as a bright star in the night sky. Even during this record approach it did not appear as large or as bright as the full Moon. Photo credit: John Nemy & Carol Legate of Whistler, B.C.

To the naked eye, Mars appeared as a bright, reddish, star-like object during the 2003 opposition. It was twice as bright as Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, but not quite as bright as Venus appears this month. Compared to the full Moon, Mars was only 1/75 of its size – certainly not a second Moon in the sky. Those who forward the Mars Spectacular e-mail probably don’t consider the implications of Mars appearing that large. Mars is around twice the size of our Moon. It would be have to be located at twice that distance (480,000 miles) for it to appear the same size – 33 million miles closer than it ever gets to Earth. If Mars does appear as our “second moon,” something has gone terribly wrong with the inner solar system or the laws of physics .

Mars Hoax

Some versions of the e-mail, referred to as the "Mars Spectacular" are in the form of a PowerPoint presentation. This particular (and completely untrue) slide has evolved from a misleading statement claiming that Mars will appear as large as the full Moon through a modest telescope.

The Mars Spectacular e-mail is still circulating. I know three people who received it in the past month from well-meaning relatives. One reason it still has life is because the actual year of the event was dropped from the e-mail text. Therefore, every August people receive this e-mail and believe Mars will be close to Earth that year. Unfortunately, “2010” has mysteriously appeared in recent versions of the e-mail which definitely does not allow the e-mail to go away quietly.

If you have received the Mars Spectacular e-mail, believed it to be true, and passed it along to friends, family, or perhaps even a news outlet, it’s okay. You’re not the first one to fall for its thrilling message and you certainly won’t be the last. A good lesson to come from the Mars Spectacular e-mail is: if it’s too fantastic to be true, it’s probably not. Being internet savvy means you know where to find trustworthy sources and can weed out the misinformation. To check the validity of e-mail content, one of the best online resources is Snopes. You’ll find the “Mars Hoax” in the #12 spot of their Hot 25 list of urban legends. NASA, as well as astronomy magazine sites such as Sky and Telescope and Astronomy are also good online astronomy resources.

Disappointed that you won’t be able to see a “spectacular” Mars? Don’t fret! Mars is viewable in the evenings throughout the month of August, 2010. It is currently low in the southwestern horizon after sunset, hanging out with Saturn and a very bright Venus. Check Sky & Telescope’s weekly “sky at a glance” page for observing tips and information on other astronomical events.

Shelley Witte is an astronomy educator at the National Air and Space Museum.

What are Your Favorite Aerospace History Conspiracy Theories?

Published by The National Air and Space Museum on August 10, 2010 in Astronomy, Aviation, Education, History, News & Events, Planetary Science, Research, space and Stories.
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We have been discussing at the National Air and Space Museum the possibility of pursuing an educational workshop on the place of conspiracy theories in modern America, especially as it relates to aerospace history but also in the broader context of our national history. Does it hold any interest for you? If we go forward with this idea it will be focused on teaching critical thinking and analysis of evidence. What do you think of this possibility?

Of course, as a society we embrace ideas of conspiracy as an explanation of how and why many events have happened all the time. Conspiracies play to our innermost fears and hostilities that there is a well-organized, well-financed, and Machiavellian design being executed by some malevolent group, the dehumanized “them,” which seek to rob “us” of something we hold dear.

Conspiracy theories abound in American history. Oliver Stone’s film, J.F.K., shows how receptive Americans are to believing that Kennedy was killed as a result of a massive conspiracy variously involving Fidel Castro; American senior intelligence and law enforcement officers; high communist leaders in the Soviet Union; union organizers; organized crime; and perhaps even the Vice President, Lyndon B. Johnson. Stone’s film only brought the assassination conspiracy to a broad American public. For years amateur and not-so-amateur researchers have been churning out books and articles about the Kennedy assassination conspiracy. It has been one of the really significant growth industries in American history during the last 45 years.

Numerous other instances of significant movements in American history have also been motivated at least in part by the possibility of conspiracy. The anti-Masonic crusade in the early nineteenth century was prompted by a fear that Masons were conspiring to overthrow the government and establish a totalitarian state in which they were supreme. Near the same time an anti-Catholic effort arose to fight a perceived “papal conspiracy” to take over the U.S. The Populist movement of the 1890s was predicated in part on a belief that there was a grand conspiracy of business interests in the East who sought to subjugate farmers by setting prices and making them dependent on “moneyed interests.” Some have argued that in 1941 President Franklin D. Roosevelt manipulated events in the Pacific to provoke the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor so he could join the Allies in a war against Nazi Germany. More recently, some argue that there is a conspiracy of scientists, politicians, and others to convince the world of global warming and thereby force changes in the economy and lifestyle. There is a counter-conspiracy that a well-organized conspiracy exists to defeat belief in global warming and thereby ensure that nothing of significance changes.

If we were to go forward with an educational program relating to aerospace conspiracies and their place in our history, I would ask for your list of major conspiracy theories in air and space. I will start with my list. Please understand that I do not specifically subscribe to any of these theories. What do you think of them? What else would you add? What do you think does not need to be discussed? I welcome your thoughts.

Here is my list of major aerospace conspiracies:

  • The Wright brothers were not the first to fly—small numbers of advocates argue that Alberto Santos-Dumont, John Joseph Montgomery, or some other experimenter was actually first and that a conspiracy—who is involved in the conspiracy is idiosyncratic—exists to keep the truth from the public.
  • Amelia Earhart did not die in a Pacific plane crash in 1937—she was really an American spy captured by the Japanese or she suffered some other such nefarious end.
  • Denials of the Moon landings—a small but vocal group insists that humans have never landed on the Moon and that the U.S. government is lying to us about it.
    • Saturn V

    The Launch of a Saturn V during the Apollo program. Some believe humans never landed on the Moon.

  • Extraterrestrials are visiting Earth, and have been since at least 1947 at the time of the “Roswell Incident”—advocates claim that the government knows the truth of this but denies the allegations. This is a broad area that includes Area 51, alien spacecraft, extraterrestrial bodies, and perhaps even live aliens residing in the U.S. while the government is withholding this truth.
    • Face On Mars

    This image was taken at Mars by NASA's Viking 1 orbiter in 1976. It caused a sensational speculation that it was an artificial construct built by an intelligent civilization on Mars.

  • The face on Mars—the Viking orbiter in 1976 took a single photograph of a part of the Martian surface that appeared to look like a human face staring up toward the sky. NASA insists it looks this way because of light and shadow on a hillside but conspiracy theorists belief that this is part of a cover-up to keep the truth of alien life on Mars quiet.
    • Face on Mars

    A later image from Mars Global Surveyor showing the same hill that supposedly had a human face.

  • The 9/11 attacks by airplane into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon were staged by government agents because…the reasons given are broad and often shocking.
  • The Apollo 1 astronauts killed on January 27, 1967, were eliminated by NASA dirty deeds to keep them from revealing…choose the secret of your choice.
  • The Air Force has a super secret spaceplane, the Aurora, which flies military missions into orbit on a regular basis.
  • Contrails from highflying aircraft are actually chemical or biological agents deliberately sprayed at high altitudes for some nefarious purpose undisclosed to the general public.
  • The Bermuda Triangle—a region in the western part of the Caribbean bounded roughly by Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico—is a place where presumably a mysterious force makes aircraft and surface vessels disappear and the U.S. government is lying about it.

Do you have other conspiracy theories relating to air and space history that we might discuss?

Roger D. Launius is a senior curator in the Space History Division of the National Air and Space Museum.

Apollo-Soyuz Test Project

Published by The National Air and Space Museum on July 26, 2010 in Astronomy, Behind The Scenes, Planetary Science and space.
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July 15-24 marked the 35th anniversary of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP), the famous “Handshake in Space.” ASTP was the first American-Soviet space flight, docking the last American Apollo spacecraft with the then-Soviet Soyuz spacecraft. This joint effort between the two major world players was based on an agreement signed in 1972, and it set a precedent for future joint efforts, such as the Shuttle-Mir Program and the International Space Station.

Handshake

Astronaut Stafford (foreground) shakes hands with cosmonaut Leonov on July 17, 1975. The historic handshake kicked off approximately 47 hours of docked operations in orbit. The picture is reproduced from a frame of 16mm motion picture film. (Credit: NASA)

ASTP also provided an opportunity for American astronauts to systematically observe and photograph the Earth from outer space, thus providing scientists with new data for exploring and studying the Earth from orbit. What most people don’t know is that the National Air and Space Museum played an important role in this aspect of the mission.

Dr. Farouk El-Baz was the founding Chairman of the Museum’s Center for Earth and Planetary Studies and he was the principal investigator for the Earth Observations and Photography Experiment on ASTP.  He was instrumental in getting this photogeology experiment included on the mission. Dr. El-Baz had previously trained Apollo astronauts to make visual observations while orbiting the Moon (you may have seen him portrayed in the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon), and now the target was Earth.  He worked with Research Assistants Delia Mitchell Warner and Sue McLafferty to plan flyovers that the astronauts performed in their T-38 aircraft so they could practice observing and photographing geologic features from above. While in space, the astronauts took some 2,000 pictures, about 750 of which were of good quality (e.g., not cloud-obscured).

Observations and Photography Experiment

A characteristic photograph from the Earth Observations and Photography Experiment: a view of part of southwest Africa in Angola, where unique drainage patterns are controlled by broad, partially vegetated dune fields. (Credit: NASA)

Dr. El-Baz gathered a team of scientists to analyze the images in the areas of geology, oceanography, hydrology, meteorology, and more. Orbital photographs, with their large aerial coverage, permit direct study of large structures, broad distributions, and remote and inaccessible parts of the globe where size makes conventional field surveys impractical. The applications of these photographs are widespread, including updating and correcting maps, monitoring Earth resources, studying dynamic geologic processes, and surveying ocean features. The Regional Planetary Image Facility (RPIF) in the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Museum houses an archive of hard copy ASTP images.

In the Museum’s Space Race gallery you can see the Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft in the docked configuration.  The Apollo command and service modules on display are test vehicles.  The docking module that joins the two spacecraft is back-up flight hardware, and the Soyuz spacecraft is a full-scale model built by Energia Design Bureau, the organization that originally built the Soyuz.

Apollo-Soyuz

A recreation of the Apollo-Soyuz rendezvous on display in the Space Race gallery at the National Air and Space Museum.

Meghan Cassidy is an intern in the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the National Air and Space Museum.

Mars Day!

Published by The National Air and Space Museum on July 14, 2010 in Education, News & Events, Planetary Science and space.
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The staff at the National Air and Space Museum are gearing up for the annual Mars Day!, a celebration of the Red Planet. On July 16 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., visitors at the Museum can partake of a variety of educational and family fun activities throughout the galleries.

Zimbleman

Dr. Jim Zimbleman of the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies shows a visitor a piece of Mars – a real meteorite that came from Mars! (Credit: Jennifer Griffes)

On Mars Day! visitors can interact one-on-one with Smithsonian and NASA scientists active in Mars research and mission planning, see a real meteorite that came from Mars, learn about Mars missions, explore the Museum’s new Mars exhibit with a curator, see amazingly detailed images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, view the surface of Mars in 3-D, learn about the geology of Mars, and more.

Mars

Left: Global view of Mars (Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), J. Bell (Cornell University), and M. Wolff (Space Science Institute, Boulder)); Right: Surface and atmosphere of Mars taken from low orbit (Credit: NASA Viking Orbiter Raw Image Archive)

Why is Mars so special that hundreds of scientists study it every day and it gets its very own day at the National Air and Space Museum? Here are just a few reasons:

  • Mars shows evidence that water may have once flowed on its surface, and water is a key ingredient for life.
  • Mars could have or still does support microbial life.
  • Mars has deserts, ice caps, valleys, and volcanoes like those on the Earth and impact craters like those on the Moon
  • Mars is tied to understanding the processes of habitability and global climate change.
Victoria Crater

Victoria Crater and its dunes on the surface of Mars taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

Check out the website for a full schedule of Mars Day! events. And don’t forget to turn your eyes to the sky—Mars itself can be seen in the evening western sky.

Mars Day! is made possible by the generous support of KRAFT Macaroni and Cheese.

Meghan Cassidy is an intern in the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the National Air and Space Museum.