Category The Universe, Exploring the Universe, Solar System, The Moon, Space, Space Travel

Do all the planets and their moons have active volcanoes?

For many years, scientists believed that Jupiter’s moon lo was geologically dead. This means it didn’t have things such as earthquakes, newly forming mountains or volcanoes. However, it turns out the scientists were wrong about lo. In 1979, when NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft took close up pictures of lo, the pictures showed a massive plume erupting from lo’s surface into space. That’s when they realise that lo did not just have volcanoes, it had active volcanoes. And, lo was no longer considered geologically dead. When these pictures were taken it was the first time an erupting volcano was found anywhere other than Earth. So that leaves us wondering, do all the planets and their moons have active volcanoes? Let’s take a look

Mercury: The planet once had active volcanoes, but not anymore. Scientists believe violent volcanic eruptions that shaped Mercury’s surface, likely ended about 3.5 billion years ago.

Venus: Venus, on the other hand is covered with volcanoes. The hottest planet in our solar system has over 1,000 volcanoes, including some that might still be active, according to what scientists think.

Mars: Mars is home to Olympus Mons, the solar largest volcano in our system. It is also the mountain in our solar largest led our solar system Mars is filled with tall volcanic mountains, and while scientists haven’t seen an eruption on Mars, they think there could be some in the future.

Jupiter: Scientists have found volcanoes and observed volcanic activity only on lo, Jupiter’s moon. Eruptions from lo’s volcanoes are so massive that it can been seen by a spacecraft that is pretty far from lo.

Saturn: Saturn’s moon Enceladus has cryovolcanoes. These volcanoes are similar to regular volcanoes, except they spew water and other gases like geysers.

Uranus: Since it is a gas planet, it does not have any volcanoes.

Neptune: While Neptune doesn’t have volcanoes as it is a gas planet, its frozen moon, Triton, has cryovolcanoes that are active.

 

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How hot or cold are other planets?

While we experience Earth’s many weather conditions each year, let’s see how the weather is on the remaining seven planets.

Mercury

Due to its closeness to the Sun the planet goes through extreme temperatures. In the

daytime, the Sun appears three times larger and over 10 times brighter than on Earth. This pushes temperatures to nearly 800 degrees Fahrenheit. And since there is no atmosphere in Mercury, the daytime heat cannot be trapped. Hence, temperatures can drop as low as 300 degrees Fahrenheit during night time

Venus

While Venus is farther away from the Sun than Mercury, it is the hottest planet in the solar system. This is because Venus is covered by a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide and clouds made of sulphuric acid. Together, these act like a greenhouse, trapping heat and warming the planet. On average, temperature on Venus can reach as high as 847 degrees Fahrenheit

Mars

Mars weather is the closest to Earth’s. Daytime temperatures on the planet can be close to Winter temperatures on Earth, reaching as high as 32 degrees Fahrenheit. However since it has a thin atmosphere, night temperatures can be as low as -200 degrees Fahrenheit

Jupiter

Since it is far away from the Sun, the planet is only slightly heated up by the star. Jupiter gets most of its heat from the inside of the planet. The temperature of the planet varies in the layers of Jupiter’s atmosphere. On average, Jupiter’s temperature is -234 degrees Fahrenheit.

However, closer to its core, the temperature can go up to 43,000 degrees Fahrenheit!

Saturn

Saturn is really far away from the Sun about 1.4 billion km away Hence, the planet has relatively freezing temperatures throughout which averages at -285 degrees Fahrenheit.

Uranus

The planet is known as an ice giant, and truly so. Is temperature is about 360 degrees Fahrenheit. Due to Uranus being tilted on its own axis, it also experiences different seasons like Earth.

Neptune

Neptune is the farthest planet in the solar system. It is about 3.7 billion km away from the Sun. While that would make it a freezing planet, its temperature is the same as Uranus (-360 degrees Fahrenheit). It is still a mystery to scientists as to why this is so.

 

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What is GPS and how it is connected to space?

Over the years, GPS has played an important role in getting people to places at the touch of a button. But what is GPS and how is it connected to space?

What is it?

GPS or Global Positioning System is a system of navigation satellites circling Earth that helps people identify where they are and how they can get to some place. GPS is accessible to people as an independent device as well as through features on their smartphone.

How does it work?

The GPS system is made up of three parts – satellites, ground stations and receivers. Thirty-one navigation satellites orbiting Earth are tracked and monitored by ground stations located in different places in the world. These ground stations check if the satellites are where they are supposed to be in orbit so that the signal received from them are accurate.

The receiver, such as the one found on a smartphone or the GPS device in some cars, constantly listens to signals from the navigation satellites. Once it manages to calculate its distance from four or more satellites, the receiver knows exactly where it is placed.

This system can help users determine where they are within a few metres of their actual location. Based on the strength of the receiver, the location’s accuracy increases. So, more advanced receivers can be accurate in determining location down to a few inches.

 

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Is there actually a blue moon?

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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How do NASA and other space agencies communicate with spacecraft?

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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What is the Hayabusa-2 mission?

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