Category Space

You might have heard the idiom “Once in a blue moon” at some point in time. But is there actually a blue moon?

Rare and blue

Blue moon is used to refer to the third full moon in a season which has four full moons. Also called a seasonal blue moon, this occurs once in two-and-a-half years, making it a somewhat rare phenomenon. Today, however, a blue moon is also used to refer to the second full moon that appears in a month, which is also a rare occurrence.

A misunderstanding leads to a new definition

The seasonal definition for the term blue moon dates back to 1937. The August 1937 issue of the Maine Farmers’ Almanac explained that moon appears full 12 times in a year, three times each season. However, occasionally there will come a year that has 13 full moons. This means that one of the four seasons will have four full moons, instead of the usual three. The almanac followed certain rules for naming each full moon, such as the last full moon of winter had to fall during Lent and was called the Lenten Moon, while the first full moon of spring was called the Easter Moon and had to fall within the week before Easter.

Thus, when a particular season had four full moons, the third full moon was dubbed a blue moon so that the other full moons could occur at proper times relative to the solstices and equinoxes.

In March 1946, in an article titled “Once in a Blue Moon” which appeared in the Sky and Telescope magazine, the author misinterpreted the Maine Farmers’ Almanac and stated that in a year with 13 full moons, each of the months will have one full moon, while one will have two. However, this definition would mean the blue moon would appear in a different time than the seasonal blue moon since the seasonal blue moon was fixed based on solstices and equinoxes. But this monthly definition became popular after a radio programme in 1980 used this article as a source.

Has the moon ever appeared blue?

While a blue moon appears just like any other full moon, there have been cases where the moon has appeared bluish to the observer. The first major instance when this was observed was after the volcano Krakatoa erupted in 1883. The huge amounts of dust in the air acted as a filter causing sunsets and the moon to turn green and blue all over the world.

Sometimes events such as forest fires and dust storms can also cause the moon to appear bluish.

 

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There are several spacecraft in space. But how do NASA and other space agencies communicate with these spacecraft?

Deep Space Network

Space agencies communicate with spacecraft using the Deep Space Network or DSN. The DSN is a collection of big radio antennas situated in different parts of the world. NASA’S DSN locations are near Canberra, Australia: Madrid, Spain, and Goldstone, California, the US. These sites are almost evenly spaced out meaning even as Earth turns, they never lose contact with the spacecraft.

ISRO, the Indian space agency’s DSN is located at Byalalu, near Bengaluru, Karnataka.

Space agencies use these DSN antennas to send instructions to the spacecraft while the spacecraft send images and other information to these antennas. The antennas also tell us about the location of spacecraft and how they are doing.

Connecting with the DSN antenna

Since spacecraft cannot carry a lot of weight as they need to leave Earth’s orbit and stay in space, all spacecraft are fitted with small antennas that can beam weak radio signals back to Earth. The farther away a spacecraft the larger the DSN antenna required to detect its signal and communicate with it. The largest antennas at each of NASA’S DSN sites is 70 mt in diameter.

Post connecting with an antenna

Once a spacecraft communicates with the DSN antenna, centres at each DSN site receive information. In the case of NASA, these sites send the information to the Space Flight Operations Facility at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Here, photos and other data are processed and shared with scientists and the rest of the world.

 

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The six-year-old Ryugu mission came to an end for Japan’s Hayabusa-2 spacecraft when it brought back a capsule of samples from the asteroid on December 6. The capsule landed near Woomera in South Australia. After preliminary inspection, it was flown to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) research centre. The extremely high precision required to carry out the mission thrilled many in Japan. The project’s manager, Yuichi Tsuda of JAXA, called the capsule a “treasure box.” What’s the mission Hayabusa-2 all about and what’s special about Ryugu?

The unmanned Hayabusa-2 spacecraft was launched on December 3, 2014 to Ryugu, an asteroid more than 300 million km away from Earth. It is a successor to the Hayabusa mission, which returned asteroid samples from Itokawa in June 2010.

Hayabusa-2 arrived at the Ryugu asteroid in June 2018 after which it deployed two rovers and a small lander onto the surface. The asteroid’s extremely rocky surface forced the mission’s team to revise landing plans, and the spacecraft managed to collect data and soil samples in the more than one-year time it spent by Ryugu. In its first touchdown in February 2019, the spacecraft collected surface dust samples. In June 2019, Hayabusa-2 blasted a crater into the asteroid’s surface and then collected underground samples from the asteroid, a first for space history. In late 2019, Hayabusa-2 left Ryugu on its year-long journey to return the samples to Earth which ended on December 6, 2020.

How did the samples reach Earth?

As it approached Earth, approximately at 220,000 km from space, Hayabusa-2 released a capsule and fired its engines to push off in another direction. The 16 kg capsule entered the Earth’s atmosphere and landed inside the Woomera Range Complex in the South Australian outback using a parachute. A recovery team collected the pan shaped capsule, about 40 cm in diameter. The capsule contains soil samples taken from two different sites on asteroid Ryugu. Some gases might also be embedded in the samples. The preliminary inspection was done at a lab in Australia. The Hayabusa-2 team wanted the sample in Japan within 100 hours of its entry into Earth in order to keep the space rock pristine. So the capsule was taken on a nine-hour flight to the JAXA.

What is special about Ryugu?

Ryugu is a Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) with orbits that pass dose by the Earth. It is classified as a potentially hazardous asteroid. Ryugu is an ancient fragment of a larger asteroid that formed in the cloud of gas and dust that spawned our solar system. It is an intriguing type of asteroid that’s rich in carbon, an element essential to life. The water composition of some asteroids is believed to be similar to Earth. By studying Ryugu, scientists hope to test this theory.

What can the asteroid samples tell us?

Asteroids orbit the Sun but are much smaller than planets. Scientists believe asteroids are made of the same stuff that went into forming the planets such as Earth They are among the oldest objects in the solar system and therefore may contain dues to how Earth evolved.

Scientists say the samples, especially those taken from under the asteroids surface contain data from 4.6 billion years ago unaffected by space radiation and other environmental factors. They are particularly interested in studying organic materials in the samples to learn about how they are distributed in the solar system and if or how they are related to life on Earth. The samples may help explain the origins of the solar system and how water helped to bring life to Earth. Fragments brought back from Ryugu can also tell its collision and thermal history.

Why is the mission such a big deal for Japan?

The first Hayabusa spaceship’s return was considered a miracle, given the troubles it encountered. JAXA’S subsequent Venus and Mars missions also were flawed. According to the Hayabusa-2 team, it used all the hard lessons learnt from the earlier missions to accomplish a 100 times better than “perfect outcome.

What is next for Hayabusa-2?

About an hour after the sample capsule separated from Hayabusa-2, the spacecraft was sent on another mission to the smaller asteroid. 1998KY26. That is an 11-year journey one way. The mission is to study possible ways to prevent big meteorites from colliding with Earth. Between 2021 and 2026, the spacecraft will also conduct observations of exoplanets.

As for the samples, some will be shared with NASA and other international scientists. About 40% of them will be stored for future research.

 

Picture Credit : Google

We have tested Coca-Cola (and Pepsi) in space. In 1985, we flew special dispensers from the manufacturers as an experiment aboard the Space Shuttle.

Soda in space is a bit problematic. In micro-gravity, the light gas bubbles won’t rush to the top of the liquid and escape. They will stay within the liquid. This means the astronaut will consume significantly more gas drinking a soda in space than one would drinking a soda on the ground. Drinking a carbonated beverage could be like drinking a foamy slurp.

That means there will be more of a need to burp, to release that gas. That would be okay, except burping in space is unpleasant, for the same reason mentioned above for the soda. On the ground, gases and liquids naturally separate in the digestive system because the lighter gases rise above the heavier liquids. But, in micro-gravity, that doesn’t happen. When one burps in space, it is often a “wet burp” which means some liquid is expelled. It’s kind of like acid reflux.

 

Credit : Quora

Picture Credit : Google

They don’t get dirty.

There is nothing in the vacuum of space to collect on the mirror.

Orbital debris is a potential problem, but experience with Hubble shows that it’s not too serious. But if the mirror does get hit, it’s not something you’ll be able to clean off…it’ll be a hole the size of a quarter.

Hubble’s biggest problems with debris has been impacts to its solar panels:

But Hubble is in a moderately low orbit – because that’s as high as the crappy Space Shuttle could get it.

These days, we’d put it MUCH farther from the Earth—far from the places where debris is common.

The James Webb Space telescope isn’t even going to be orbiting the Earth—it’s going to be parked in a Sun-centered orbit at the Earth/Sun L2 point.

 

Credit : Quora

Picture Credit : Google