Category Archives: Planetary Science

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

Posted on by
3

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?

Posted on by
20

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

Posted on by
Reply

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!

Posted on by
2

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.

Is Resistance Futile?

Posted on by
2

In Star Trek: The Next Generation the intrepid crew of the United Starship Enterprise repeatedly face the Borg, cyborgs intent on assimilating the biological creatures of the universe into their collective consciousness. Their meme, “resistance is futile,” serves as a convenient tagline for this ongoing plot device in the fictional series, but it also may foreshadow a more realistic future for humanity as we reach into space. When considering the far future and the potential for humans to colonize other bodies in the solar system and beyond, perhaps humanity will adapt to the space environment through modifications of the human body like those found on the Borg.

This idea was first broached by scientists Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline in a 1960 NASA study. They remarked: “Altering man’s bodily functions to meet the requirements of extraterrestrial environments would be more logical than providing an earthly environment for him in space.”  They proposed a variety of modifications that would allow humans to withstand radiation, the absence of atmospheric oxygen, and other hazards of space. They coined the term “cyborg” to describe this adaptation.

Sojourner and Astronaut on Mars

The classic image of humans and robots working together is depicted in this NASA artwork. Sojourner, the Mars Pathfinder rover named after former slave and famous abolitionist Sojourner Truth, is visited many years after its mission by a descendant of its namesake, in this artist’s rendering. Like the human, Sojourner the rover paved the way for those that followed. This image was produced for NASA by Pat Rawling.

Since that time, NASA has refrained from serious consideration of the ideas offered by Clynes and Kline, although a few studies in the 1960s investigated these possibilities. But what of the future, especially the distant future? To date, human presence in space has consisted of what might be characterized as extended camping trips, often a week or more but rarely exceeding a half year in length.  Yet space advocates continue to propose far lengthier stays, from planetary outposts to solar system colonization.

If colonization of the solar system, and the rest of the galaxy, is truly desirable, will it be done by Homo sapiens?  In undertaking this cosmic venture, humans might change, especially if very long periods of time are involved.  Humans born and raised on extraterrestrial locations would change naturally in response to different conditions.  Given advances in biotechnology, others might reengineer themselves.  The current debate over the superiority of humans versus robots in space could disappear in the presence of such alterations.

A provocative possibility appears in the rapid rise of biotechnology, suggesting that humans may become cyborgs through the application of sophisticated machinery in ways at least initially unrelated to space exploration. In many ways we are already there, with millions of people enjoying a better quality of life, or in some cases life itself, through the incorporation of pacemakers, joint and limb replacements, cochlear hearing implants, artificial organs, and a potential list of even more sophisticated enhancements. Future possibilities are astonishing.

How might we remake the human body to more effectively meet the rigors of space exploration? Skeptics may scoff at this possibility as nothing more than bioscience fiction, but space exploration was itself fiction in the truest sense of the word less than 75 years ago. Advances in biotechnology could take place with similar speed.

Robonaut

NASA’s Robonaut (foreground) is a step forward in terms of human/machine interaction. Here it performs a mock weld while Ames Research Center's K10 robot assists two EVA crew inspecting a previously welded seam.

The result, given sufficient time, may be the emergence of a new age of space exploration. Technological developments now beginning to take place might permit a true merger—humans equipped with robotic parts or machines possessing sentient qualities. In that sense, humans and robots would explore space together—really together.

The implications of such developments for the future of space exploration are fascinating.  They are made more interesting when one considers the degree to which humans might change during the millions of years available to colonize the galaxy. Who knows what derivations of the human form could emerge? Such developments would alter the traditional debate over space exploration in ways that provide a new paradigm quite different than the one casting humans with all of their biological limitations into the extraterrestrial realm. Such developments might make space travel more attainable, though in unconventional ways.

So, is there a Borg in our future? Possibly; even probably. In fact, we may already be there with all of the biotechnological enhancements now routinely offered to human beings. This possibility, moving as it does away from the necessity of maintaining organic life under Earth-like conditions throughout the cosmos, offers a fascinating option for space travel. If we did not require Earth-like conditions to survive, our ability to colonize strikingly diverse non-Earth-like worlds would expand. Many spheres, including those within the local solar system not currently suitable for human occupation, might prove acceptable. Is it possible that once cyborgs emerge—and undertake space travel—they will shoulder the burden of carrying the essence of humanity to other worlds? Resistance may be futile, if the Borg really are us. But they need not be feared.

Roger D. Launius is senior curator in the Space History Division of the National Air and Space Museum. Howard E. McCurdy is professor of public affairs at the American University,Washington, D.C. They pubished Robots in Space: Technology, Evolution, and Interplanetary Travel (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), from which the ideas here are taken.