#the moon is made up of the same basaltic composition as the earth

[serpentmythos]

The Moon was put in place so asteroids could draw pretty space flowers over us and I think that's beautiful.

[scifigeneration]

Martian moon may have come from impact on home planet

The weird shapes and colors of the tiny Martian moons Phobos and Deimos have inspired a long-standing debate about their origins.

The dark faces of the moons resemble the primitive asteroids of the outer solar system, suggesting the moons might be asteroids caught long ago in Mars' gravitational pull. But the shapes and angles of the moons' orbits do not fit this capture scenario.

A fresh look at 20-year-old data from the Mars Global Surveyor mission lends support to the idea the moons of Mars formed after a large impact on the planet threw a lot of rock into orbit, according to a new study in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, a publication of the American Geophysical Union.

The dataset held unplumbed clues to the stuff Phobos is made of, which may be more similar to the crust of the Red Planet than it appears, according to the study's authors.

"The fun part for me has been taking a poke at some of the ideas out there using an old dataset that's has been underutilized," said Tim Glotch, a geoscientist at Stony Brook University in New York and the lead author of the new study.

Marc Fries, a planetary scientist and curator of cosmic dust at NASA's Johnson Space Center, who was not involved in the new study, said the inability to explain the genesis of two moons around a neighboring planet is a glaring shortcoming in scientists' understanding of moon formation. Clearing it up will help with interpretations of how other moons and planets formed in our solar system and beyond. The new study does not clinch the mystery, but it is a step in the right direction, he said.

"The issue of the origins of Phobos and Deimos is a fun sort of mystery, because we have two competing hypotheses that cannot both be true," Fries said. "I would not consider this to be a final solution to the mystery of the moons' origin, but it will help keep the discussion moving forward."

Dark objects

The debate over the origin of Mars' moons has split scientists for decades, since the early days of planetary science. In visible light, Phobos and Deimos look much darker than Mars, lending weight to the adoption hypothesis.

Scientists study the mineral composition of objects by breaking the light they reflect into component colors with a spectrophotometer, creating distinctive visual "fingerprints." By comparing the spectral fingerprints of planetary surfaces to a library of spectra for known materials, they can infer the composition of these distant objects. Most of the research into the composition of asteroids has examined their spectra in visible light and in near-infrared light, which is just beyond human vision on the red side of the visible spectrum.

In visible and near-infrared light, Phobos and D-class asteroids look much the same -- that is, both their spectra are nearly featureless because they are so dark. D-class asteroids are nearly black as coal because, like coal, they contain carbon. This dark aspect of Phobos led to the hypothesis that the moon is a captive asteroid that flew a little too close to Mars.

But scientists looking at the orbits of Mars' moons argued they could not have been captured. These scientists believe the moons must have formed at the same time as Mars, or resulted from a massive impact on the planet during its formative millennia.

"If you talk to the people who are really good at orbital dynamics and figuring out why certain bodies orbit the way they do, they say that, given the inclination and the details of Phobos' orbit, it's almost impossible that it was captured. So you have the spectroscopists saying one thing and the dynamicists saying something else," Glotch said.

Heat fingerprints

Glotch decided to look at the problem in a different light: the mid-infrared, which is in the same range as body temperature. He looked at the heat signature of Phobos captured in 1998 by an instrument he describes as a fancy thermometer carried on the Mars Global Surveyor. The robotic spacecraft spent most of its lifetime looking down at Mars, but took a quick look at Phobos when it passed near the moon before settling into a closer orbit around the planet.

Heat energy, like visible light, can be split into a spectrum of "colors." Even objects that look black in visible light may glow in a distinctive infrared spectrum. Although Phobos is very cold, its heat spectrum has a discernable signature.

Glotch and his students compared the mid-infrared spectra of Phobos glimpsed by the Mars Global Explorer to samples of a meteorite that fell to Earth near Tagish Lake, British Columbia, which some scientists have suggested is a fragment of a D-class asteroid, and other rock types. In the lab, they subjected their samples to Phobos-like conditions of cold vacuum, heating them from above and below to simulate the extreme changes in temperature from the sunny to the shady sides of airless objects in space.

"We found, at these wavelength ranges, the Tagish Lake meteorite doesn't look anything like Phobos, and in fact what matches Phobos most closely, or at least one of the features in the spectrum, is ground-up basalt, which is a common volcanic rock, and it's what most of the Martian crust is made out of," Glotch said. "That leads us to believe that perhaps Phobos might be a remnant of an impact that occurred early on in Martian history."

Planetary crust baked in?

The new study does not argue Phobos is made entirely of material from Mars, but the new results are consistent with the moon containing a portion of the planet's crust, perhaps as an amalgamation of debris from the planet and the remnants of the impacting object.

Fries, the scientist who was not involved in the new study, said the Tagish Lake meteorite is unusual, and perhaps not the best example of a D-class asteroid available for a compelling comparison with Phobos. Fries added the new study was unlikely to be able to produce a definitive answer because Phobos is subject to space weathering, which affects its reflectance spectrum and is difficult to replicate in the lab.

But Fries said he found it interesting that a mix of basalt and carbon-rich material made an appropriate match for Phobos. Another possibility is that carbon-rich space dust in the vicinity of Mars has collected on the close-orbiting moons, darkening their surfaces, he said.

Scientists may get their answer to Phobos' origins in the next couple of years, if the Martian Moon eXploration spacecraft and the OSIRIS-Rex and Hayabusa2 asteroid explorers complete their missions to collect samples and return them to Earth for analysis. Hyabusa2 landed two mini robots on the asteroid known as Ryugu on September 21..

"The really cool thing is that this is a testable hypothesis, because the Japanese are developing a mission called MMX that is going to go to Phobos, collect a sample and bring it back to Earth for us to analyze," Glotch said.

[wavyunicornrider]

The aerospace market – Advanced Textiles Source

As NASA units a course for Mars and a return to the moon, and personal corporations interact in a new area race, textile corporations discover alternatives for high-performance fabrics and merchandise.

by Amy Goetzman

When does a single lemon value $2,000? When it’s in area. NASA stories that it prices about $10,000 in gasoline to launch one pound of payload into area—whether or not that payload is individuals, gear or supplies. Meaning the lemons astronaut Scott Kelly famously juggled on the Worldwide Area Station during his 2015−16 yr in area have been valued at about $2,000 each. Approaching it that method, it’s straightforward to see why supremely lightweight and powerful textiles play a important position in aerospace actions.

A  vary of entities make the most of material technologies of their aerospace gear, including NASA, army organizations, airline and aerospace corporations, universities and research establishments, climate and science packages, and Google and datacom corporations. And the growing personal area exploration business, spurred by initiatives together with Elon Musk’s Area X, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, guarantees to create space journey accessible to (well-heeled) people who aren’t educated as astronauts. The area financial system is right here, with opportunities for corporations in the specialty materials business that can meet the necessities of utmost environments beyond the clouds.

NASA astronaut Robert Behnken installs ammonia line Multi-Layer Insulation (MLI) blankets, manufactured by Aerospace Fabrication & Supplies, on the Worldwide Area Station during a maintenance and development extravehicular activity session. Photograph: NASA.

Out-of-this-world materials

The people who make area fabrics noticed this coming. Composite Materials of America (CFA), Taylorsville, N.C., a subsidiary of the century-old weaving company Schneider Mills, has seen steadily growing demand for its carbon fiber textiles, notably Textral, a multidimensional carbon fiber weave. The company also produces custom materials and tapes using carbon, aramid, basalt, Innegra, fiberglass and polyethylene fibers, obtainable in unidirectional, bidirectional and hybrid weaves. CFA is certified to AS9100 Rev D., the worldwide management system normal for the Aircraft, Area and Defense (AS&D) business, as well as ISO9001.

“Carbon fiber is very strong and durable. It starts as a textile, but when it’s encapsulated in a resin and cured, it holds a shape, yet it is very lightweight. That makes it an excellent solution for aerospace use,” says David Shippee, CFA government director of sales. “We have perfected how to weave fibers to create high-tech fabrics, which perform well for our space customers. We can produce fabrics that have structural integrity, resist temperature changes, are strong and durable—basically, they are lighter, stronger, better. They save on fuel and deliver very high performance.”

The firm works intently with clients to develop textiles that go well with their design and performance necessities. While CFA’s merchandise have been perfected for use in area, many specialty Earth-bound corporations discover these high-performance supplies work nicely on the bottom.

“Some customers require technical fabrics for applications such as boats, extended solar arrays, barrier systems, vehicles, aircraft seat frames or sporting equipment,” says Shippee, noting that many luxurious and racing cars are integrating carbon fiber material into their designs. On Earth, carbon offers the same gasoline financial savings and durability it demonstrates in area.

“In many applications, if it’s made from plastic, it can be made better with carbon fiber fabrics,” he says.

Go well with up and wrap up

The fabrics produced by CFA and other specialty material suppliers that innovate for area find yourself in a variety of products. But perhaps none are as exciting as area suits. David Clark Co., based mostly in Worcester, Mass., is a pioneer within the subject, partnering with the Mayo Clinic in the 1940s to develop anti-G fits to protect Allied pilots from blacking out throughout high-G maneuvers.

“Some of David Clark’s early prototypes leveraged his ‘straightaway garment,’ which was essentially the Spanx® of the day,” says Shane Jacobs, softgoods design supervisor, Aerospace Life Help Methods, David Clark Co. Publish-war, the corporate continued to refine its go well with designs for rocket aircraft check pilots. As the area race ignited, this experience turned to multilayer full-pressure go well with development.

“We’ve been involved in every human space and high-altitude program since Gemini, including the Apollo Block 1 suits, the space shuttle program suits and the suits in development now for the Boeing CST-100 Starliner [Boeing’s next-generation space capsule that will take people to and from low-Earth orbit],” Jacobs says.

“Every suit we design is a little different. Requirements vary for suborbital versus orbital missions; the user might be suited for the duration of the flight or just for the launch. Some suits are lightweight and minimal complexity, such as the suit designed for the Starliner. Others are for longer duration missions to deep space, such as the suits for NASA’s Orion spacecraft. Those integrate complex systems, such as a feeding port, waste management and liquid cooling system. A consistent focus is always to design each suit to be low bulk, highly mobile and comfortable.”

Sample designers and engineers check go well with elements by way of CAD modeling and prototyping before manufacturing, Jacobs says. Suits are tested in quite a lot of environments, including underwater to simulate microgravity.

“Inside the suit, you are essentially in your own personal spacecraft,” he says. “It needs to be airtight yet selectively permeable to allow water vapor to escape. Other requirements are fire retardancy and high strength. We use low-elongation fabrics that will hold their shape while allowing people to move. You have to design the suit from the inside and understand what the user is feeling. If the suit isn’t optimally sized or is designed improperly, it can be pretty painful when it is pressurized.”

Naturally, he’s tried one on, although Jacobs hasn’t yet gone into orbit himself. However he says the company has an in depth eye on efforts to get shoppers into area, and he hopes to someday be a part of them. Within the meantime, the applied sciences the company has innovated for area are discovering a task in purposes on Earth, akin to Reebok’s Floatride Run Fast footwear, which advanced from an area boot design the corporate developed.

Much less glamorous than area suits, but no much less important are Multi-Layer Insulation (MLI) Blankets, similar to those designed by Aerospace Fabrication & Supplies LLC, Farmington, Minn. Comprised of a thin plastic film materials simply zero.00025 to zero.00033 inches (6 to 8 microns) thick and low conducting material spacers, these engineered thermal management blankets are used to insulate essential gear within the Area Shuttle Orbiter, the Worldwide Area Station, geospatial satellites, datacom satellites and cryogenic purposes.

“Think about it the way you’d look at insulation for your house; these blankets serve as a passive thermal control device for spacecraft,” says Brent Anderson, owner of Aerospace Fabrication. “They help protect and maintain instruments at room temperature inside.” In line with the essential have to maintain weight down in aerospace products, the blankets function an alternating layer development. “They are extremely lightweight. The internal layers are a loose-weave, almost bridal veil type fabric and metalized plastic film. Even though we use up to 20 layers, it only weighs a couple of ounces per square foot. On the outside, the material is coated with metals. That shiny surface reflects incoming thermal radiation off the surface.”

Anderson’s firm is all the time on the lookout for new materials or mixtures of fibers, he says. Along with weight, low conductivity and optical properties, the textiles used in these purposes must endure the tough surroundings of area. “We end up going out often to talk with the fabric industry to see what is new,” Anderson says. “For instance, 3D weaving is really taking off. We are watching that to see how we might incorporate it into our products.”

Whilst area purposes improve, the company faces a challenge that many producers in the aerospace market experience: relatively small demand. To keep a gentle backside line, the corporate additionally produces technical tapes and printed circuits and cables for the electronics business. “We want specialized materials that do extraordinary things, but we don’t tend to buy a lot of any one thing, so the price goes up for us,” Anderson says. “It doesn’t tend to be something most suppliers want to support, because the business ebbs and flows so much. Even as the need for space textiles increases, it’s still a small market compared to others.”

Raven Aerostar is the only provider to the NASA Balloon Program Office, offering both Zero Strain and Super Strain Balloons (SPB) for scientific missions. This flight’s objective was to check and validate the SPB know-how with the objective of long-duration flight (100+ days) at mid-latitudes. Photograph: NASA.

Nearer to house

Not all aerospace textiles make it to outer area. The stratosphere, the second layer of the Earth’s environment within the zone above the clouds, is turning into increasingly crowded with specialty high-tech balloons and airships. Textile-based purposes are perfect for this zone, which is characterized by thin air, limited weather events, exposure to the ozone layer and high levels of ultraviolet radiation from the solar. Raven Aerostar, Sioux Falls, S.D., has been innovating high-altitude textiles and stratospheric balloons because the 1950s.

“These are products that will fly two to five times as high as airplanes, so we need to make sure they meet extremely high quality standards,” says Joe Beck, Raven Aerostar plant manager and program manager. “The materials and the construction must be very robust to endure the external conditions, which can range in temperature from -50°C to -90°C [-60°F to -130°F]. These are typically filled with helium, so impermeability is a critical factor as well.”

Composed of “lighter-than-air” engineered polymer-based movies, Raven Aerostar’s stratospheric balloons look as delicate as a butterfly, but they will carry payloads up to 4 tons, acquire info used in scientific analysis, carry out army surveillance and help in GPS, radar and remote communications endeavors. As a division of Raven Industries, Raven Aerostar works intently with Raven Engineered Films, the division that develops the specialty polymer film and sheeting used in these purposes.

“We have our material design expertise right next door, so it’s easy to develop new materials for specific customer needs,” Beck says. “Our goal is always thinner, lighter and stronger.”

The rising area financial system may even create demand for textile merchandise that never depart Earth. Take the work of SLO Sail and Canvas of San Luis Obispo, Calif. The company focuses on marine fabrication, but army and aerospace organizations—together with Area X, California Polytechnic State University, the Nixus Challenge Glider and drone operators—have taken advantage of its design and fabrication know-how.

Applying its experience in versatile yet taut marine merchandise, the company has taken on tasks resembling crash nets for drones and specialty tarps which are put in around missiles and rockets on the launch pad or during development, says Karl Deardorff, SLO proprietor. The tarps are constructed from anti-static material, a essential requirement in an surroundings where a rocket booster is perhaps sitting on 100,000 kilos of rocket gasoline. Some jobs may want particular qualities, similar to polyester, carbon or conductive threads.

“The point is to protect people and equipment from FOD—foreign object debris,” Deardorff says. “A rocket that’s 230 feet high can have six to eight levels of scaffolding, and if something falls, that’s a problem. An anti-FOD tarp may only be 6 to 9 inches wide, but that is enough to avert damage or loss.”

Between NASA’s brief and long-range objectives, a new area race between deep-pocketed personal corporations, and some great benefits of high-tech textiles in area exploration, the aerospace market presents great potential for specialty material suppliers, designers and producers that wish to make their mark in excessive purposes.

“This is a growing area with lots of opportunity,” Deardorff says. “There is a lot of work for us all. We enjoy working closely with our customers on these unique projects, and we enjoy the excitement of designing for an industry with such big ambitions.”

Amy Goetzman is a freelance author based mostly in Maplewood, Minn.

The post The aerospace market – Advanced Textiles Source appeared first on Techno Crats Blog.

[yourcelinesaconlineventeblr]

The aerospace market – Advanced Textiles Source

As NASA units a course for Mars and a return to the moon, and personal corporations interact in a new area race, textile corporations discover alternatives for high-performance fabrics and merchandise.

by Amy Goetzman

When does a single lemon value $2,000? When it’s in area. NASA stories that it prices about $10,000 in gasoline to launch one pound of payload into area—whether or not that payload is individuals, gear or supplies. Meaning the lemons astronaut Scott Kelly famously juggled on the Worldwide Area Station during his 2015−16 yr in area have been valued at about $2,000 each. Approaching it that method, it’s straightforward to see why supremely lightweight and powerful textiles play a important position in aerospace actions.

A  vary of entities make the most of material technologies of their aerospace gear, including NASA, army organizations, airline and aerospace corporations, universities and research establishments, climate and science packages, and Google and datacom corporations. And the growing personal area exploration business, spurred by initiatives together with Elon Musk’s Area X, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, guarantees to create space journey accessible to (well-heeled) people who aren’t educated as astronauts. The area financial system is right here, with opportunities for corporations in the specialty materials business that can meet the necessities of utmost environments beyond the clouds.

NASA astronaut Robert Behnken installs ammonia line Multi-Layer Insulation (MLI) blankets, manufactured by Aerospace Fabrication & Supplies, on the Worldwide Area Station during a maintenance and development extravehicular activity session. Photograph: NASA.

Out-of-this-world materials

The people who make area fabrics noticed this coming. Composite Materials of America (CFA), Taylorsville, N.C., a subsidiary of the century-old weaving company Schneider Mills, has seen steadily growing demand for its carbon fiber textiles, notably Textral, a multidimensional carbon fiber weave. The company also produces custom materials and tapes using carbon, aramid, basalt, Innegra, fiberglass and polyethylene fibers, obtainable in unidirectional, bidirectional and hybrid weaves. CFA is certified to AS9100 Rev D., the worldwide management system normal for the Aircraft, Area and Defense (AS&D) business, as well as ISO9001.

“Carbon fiber is very strong and durable. It starts as a textile, but when it’s encapsulated in a resin and cured, it holds a shape, yet it is very lightweight. That makes it an excellent solution for aerospace use,” says David Shippee, CFA government director of sales. “We have perfected how to weave fibers to create high-tech fabrics, which perform well for our space customers. We can produce fabrics that have structural integrity, resist temperature changes, are strong and durable—basically, they are lighter, stronger, better. They save on fuel and deliver very high performance.”

The firm works intently with clients to develop textiles that go well with their design and performance necessities. While CFA’s merchandise have been perfected for use in area, many specialty Earth-bound corporations discover these high-performance supplies work nicely on the bottom.

“Some customers require technical fabrics for applications such as boats, extended solar arrays, barrier systems, vehicles, aircraft seat frames or sporting equipment,” says Shippee, noting that many luxurious and racing cars are integrating carbon fiber material into their designs. On Earth, carbon offers the same gasoline financial savings and durability it demonstrates in area.

“In many applications, if it’s made from plastic, it can be made better with carbon fiber fabrics,” he says.

Go well with up and wrap up

The fabrics produced by CFA and other specialty material suppliers that innovate for area find yourself in a variety of products. But perhaps none are as exciting as area suits. David Clark Co., based mostly in Worcester, Mass., is a pioneer within the subject, partnering with the Mayo Clinic in the 1940s to develop anti-G fits to protect Allied pilots from blacking out throughout high-G maneuvers.

“Some of David Clark’s early prototypes leveraged his ‘straightaway garment,’ which was essentially the Spanx® of the day,” says Shane Jacobs, softgoods design supervisor, Aerospace Life Help Methods, David Clark Co. Publish-war, the corporate continued to refine its go well with designs for rocket aircraft check pilots. As the area race ignited, this experience turned to multilayer full-pressure go well with development.

“We’ve been involved in every human space and high-altitude program since Gemini, including the Apollo Block 1 suits, the space shuttle program suits and the suits in development now for the Boeing CST-100 Starliner [Boeing’s next-generation space capsule that will take people to and from low-Earth orbit],” Jacobs says.

“Every suit we design is a little different. Requirements vary for suborbital versus orbital missions; the user might be suited for the duration of the flight or just for the launch. Some suits are lightweight and minimal complexity, such as the suit designed for the Starliner. Others are for longer duration missions to deep space, such as the suits for NASA’s Orion spacecraft. Those integrate complex systems, such as a feeding port, waste management and liquid cooling system. A consistent focus is always to design each suit to be low bulk, highly mobile and comfortable.”

Sample designers and engineers check go well with elements by way of CAD modeling and prototyping before manufacturing, Jacobs says. Suits are tested in quite a lot of environments, including underwater to simulate microgravity.

“Inside the suit, you are essentially in your own personal spacecraft,” he says. “It needs to be airtight yet selectively permeable to allow water vapor to escape. Other requirements are fire retardancy and high strength. We use low-elongation fabrics that will hold their shape while allowing people to move. You have to design the suit from the inside and understand what the user is feeling. If the suit isn’t optimally sized or is designed improperly, it can be pretty painful when it is pressurized.”

Naturally, he’s tried one on, although Jacobs hasn’t yet gone into orbit himself. However he says the company has an in depth eye on efforts to get shoppers into area, and he hopes to someday be a part of them. Within the meantime, the applied sciences the company has innovated for area are discovering a task in purposes on Earth, akin to Reebok’s Floatride Run Fast footwear, which advanced from an area boot design the corporate developed.

Much less glamorous than area suits, but no much less important are Multi-Layer Insulation (MLI) Blankets, similar to those designed by Aerospace Fabrication & Supplies LLC, Farmington, Minn. Comprised of a thin plastic film materials simply zero.00025 to zero.00033 inches (6 to 8 microns) thick and low conducting material spacers, these engineered thermal management blankets are used to insulate essential gear within the Area Shuttle Orbiter, the Worldwide Area Station, geospatial satellites, datacom satellites and cryogenic purposes.

“Think about it the way you’d look at insulation for your house; these blankets serve as a passive thermal control device for spacecraft,” says Brent Anderson, owner of Aerospace Fabrication. “They help protect and maintain instruments at room temperature inside.” In line with the essential have to maintain weight down in aerospace products, the blankets function an alternating layer development. “They are extremely lightweight. The internal layers are a loose-weave, almost bridal veil type fabric and metalized plastic film. Even though we use up to 20 layers, it only weighs a couple of ounces per square foot. On the outside, the material is coated with metals. That shiny surface reflects incoming thermal radiation off the surface.”

Anderson’s firm is all the time on the lookout for new materials or mixtures of fibers, he says. Along with weight, low conductivity and optical properties, the textiles used in these purposes must endure the tough surroundings of area. “We end up going out often to talk with the fabric industry to see what is new,” Anderson says. “For instance, 3D weaving is really taking off. We are watching that to see how we might incorporate it into our products.”

Whilst area purposes improve, the company faces a challenge that many producers in the aerospace market experience: relatively small demand. To keep a gentle backside line, the corporate additionally produces technical tapes and printed circuits and cables for the electronics business. “We want specialized materials that do extraordinary things, but we don’t tend to buy a lot of any one thing, so the price goes up for us,” Anderson says. “It doesn’t tend to be something most suppliers want to support, because the business ebbs and flows so much. Even as the need for space textiles increases, it’s still a small market compared to others.”

Raven Aerostar is the only provider to the NASA Balloon Program Office, offering both Zero Strain and Super Strain Balloons (SPB) for scientific missions. This flight’s objective was to check and validate the SPB know-how with the objective of long-duration flight (100+ days) at mid-latitudes. Photograph: NASA.

Nearer to house

Not all aerospace textiles make it to outer area. The stratosphere, the second layer of the Earth’s environment within the zone above the clouds, is turning into increasingly crowded with specialty high-tech balloons and airships. Textile-based purposes are perfect for this zone, which is characterized by thin air, limited weather events, exposure to the ozone layer and high levels of ultraviolet radiation from the solar. Raven Aerostar, Sioux Falls, S.D., has been innovating high-altitude textiles and stratospheric balloons because the 1950s.

“These are products that will fly two to five times as high as airplanes, so we need to make sure they meet extremely high quality standards,” says Joe Beck, Raven Aerostar plant manager and program manager. “The materials and the construction must be very robust to endure the external conditions, which can range in temperature from -50°C to -90°C [-60°F to -130°F]. These are typically filled with helium, so impermeability is a critical factor as well.”

Composed of “lighter-than-air” engineered polymer-based movies, Raven Aerostar’s stratospheric balloons look as delicate as a butterfly, but they will carry payloads up to 4 tons, acquire info used in scientific analysis, carry out army surveillance and help in GPS, radar and remote communications endeavors. As a division of Raven Industries, Raven Aerostar works intently with Raven Engineered Films, the division that develops the specialty polymer film and sheeting used in these purposes.

“We have our material design expertise right next door, so it’s easy to develop new materials for specific customer needs,” Beck says. “Our goal is always thinner, lighter and stronger.”

The rising area financial system may even create demand for textile merchandise that never depart Earth. Take the work of SLO Sail and Canvas of San Luis Obispo, Calif. The company focuses on marine fabrication, but army and aerospace organizations—together with Area X, California Polytechnic State University, the Nixus Challenge Glider and drone operators—have taken advantage of its design and fabrication know-how.

Applying its experience in versatile yet taut marine merchandise, the company has taken on tasks resembling crash nets for drones and specialty tarps which are put in around missiles and rockets on the launch pad or during development, says Karl Deardorff, SLO proprietor. The tarps are constructed from anti-static material, a essential requirement in an surroundings where a rocket booster is perhaps sitting on 100,000 kilos of rocket gasoline. Some jobs may want particular qualities, similar to polyester, carbon or conductive threads.

“The point is to protect people and equipment from FOD—foreign object debris,” Deardorff says. “A rocket that’s 230 feet high can have six to eight levels of scaffolding, and if something falls, that’s a problem. An anti-FOD tarp may only be 6 to 9 inches wide, but that is enough to avert damage or loss.”

Between NASA’s brief and long-range objectives, a new area race between deep-pocketed personal corporations, and some great benefits of high-tech textiles in area exploration, the aerospace market presents great potential for specialty material suppliers, designers and producers that wish to make their mark in excessive purposes.

“This is a growing area with lots of opportunity,” Deardorff says. “There is a lot of work for us all. We enjoy working closely with our customers on these unique projects, and we enjoy the excitement of designing for an industry with such big ambitions.”

Amy Goetzman is a freelance author based mostly in Maplewood, Minn.

The post The aerospace market – Advanced Textiles Source appeared first on Techno Crats Blog.

[raylovesrp-blog]

The aerospace market – Advanced Textiles Source

As NASA units a course for Mars and a return to the moon, and personal corporations interact in a new area race, textile corporations discover alternatives for high-performance fabrics and merchandise.

by Amy Goetzman

When does a single lemon value $2,000? When it’s in area. NASA stories that it prices about $10,000 in gasoline to launch one pound of payload into area—whether or not that payload is individuals, gear or supplies. Meaning the lemons astronaut Scott Kelly famously juggled on the Worldwide Area Station during his 2015−16 yr in area have been valued at about $2,000 each. Approaching it that method, it’s straightforward to see why supremely lightweight and powerful textiles play a important position in aerospace actions.

A  vary of entities make the most of material technologies of their aerospace gear, including NASA, army organizations, airline and aerospace corporations, universities and research establishments, climate and science packages, and Google and datacom corporations. And the growing personal area exploration business, spurred by initiatives together with Elon Musk’s Area X, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, guarantees to create space journey accessible to (well-heeled) people who aren’t educated as astronauts. The area financial system is right here, with opportunities for corporations in the specialty materials business that can meet the necessities of utmost environments beyond the clouds.

NASA astronaut Robert Behnken installs ammonia line Multi-Layer Insulation (MLI) blankets, manufactured by Aerospace Fabrication & Supplies, on the Worldwide Area Station during a maintenance and development extravehicular activity session. Photograph: NASA.

Out-of-this-world materials

The people who make area fabrics noticed this coming. Composite Materials of America (CFA), Taylorsville, N.C., a subsidiary of the century-old weaving company Schneider Mills, has seen steadily growing demand for its carbon fiber textiles, notably Textral, a multidimensional carbon fiber weave. The company also produces custom materials and tapes using carbon, aramid, basalt, Innegra, fiberglass and polyethylene fibers, obtainable in unidirectional, bidirectional and hybrid weaves. CFA is certified to AS9100 Rev D., the worldwide management system normal for the Aircraft, Area and Defense (AS&D) business, as well as ISO9001.

“Carbon fiber is very strong and durable. It starts as a textile, but when it’s encapsulated in a resin and cured, it holds a shape, yet it is very lightweight. That makes it an excellent solution for aerospace use,” says David Shippee, CFA government director of sales. “We have perfected how to weave fibers to create high-tech fabrics, which perform well for our space customers. We can produce fabrics that have structural integrity, resist temperature changes, are strong and durable—basically, they are lighter, stronger, better. They save on fuel and deliver very high performance.”

The firm works intently with clients to develop textiles that go well with their design and performance necessities. While CFA’s merchandise have been perfected for use in area, many specialty Earth-bound corporations discover these high-performance supplies work nicely on the bottom.

“Some customers require technical fabrics for applications such as boats, extended solar arrays, barrier systems, vehicles, aircraft seat frames or sporting equipment,” says Shippee, noting that many luxurious and racing cars are integrating carbon fiber material into their designs. On Earth, carbon offers the same gasoline financial savings and durability it demonstrates in area.

“In many applications, if it’s made from plastic, it can be made better with carbon fiber fabrics,” he says.

Go well with up and wrap up

The fabrics produced by CFA and other specialty material suppliers that innovate for area find yourself in a variety of products. But perhaps none are as exciting as area suits. David Clark Co., based mostly in Worcester, Mass., is a pioneer within the subject, partnering with the Mayo Clinic in the 1940s to develop anti-G fits to protect Allied pilots from blacking out throughout high-G maneuvers.

“Some of David Clark’s early prototypes leveraged his ‘straightaway garment,’ which was essentially the Spanx® of the day,” says Shane Jacobs, softgoods design supervisor, Aerospace Life Help Methods, David Clark Co. Publish-war, the corporate continued to refine its go well with designs for rocket aircraft check pilots. As the area race ignited, this experience turned to multilayer full-pressure go well with development.

“We’ve been involved in every human space and high-altitude program since Gemini, including the Apollo Block 1 suits, the space shuttle program suits and the suits in development now for the Boeing CST-100 Starliner [Boeing’s next-generation space capsule that will take people to and from low-Earth orbit],” Jacobs says.

“Every suit we design is a little different. Requirements vary for suborbital versus orbital missions; the user might be suited for the duration of the flight or just for the launch. Some suits are lightweight and minimal complexity, such as the suit designed for the Starliner. Others are for longer duration missions to deep space, such as the suits for NASA’s Orion spacecraft. Those integrate complex systems, such as a feeding port, waste management and liquid cooling system. A consistent focus is always to design each suit to be low bulk, highly mobile and comfortable.”

Sample designers and engineers check go well with elements by way of CAD modeling and prototyping before manufacturing, Jacobs says. Suits are tested in quite a lot of environments, including underwater to simulate microgravity.

“Inside the suit, you are essentially in your own personal spacecraft,” he says. “It needs to be airtight yet selectively permeable to allow water vapor to escape. Other requirements are fire retardancy and high strength. We use low-elongation fabrics that will hold their shape while allowing people to move. You have to design the suit from the inside and understand what the user is feeling. If the suit isn’t optimally sized or is designed improperly, it can be pretty painful when it is pressurized.”

Naturally, he’s tried one on, although Jacobs hasn’t yet gone into orbit himself. However he says the company has an in depth eye on efforts to get shoppers into area, and he hopes to someday be a part of them. Within the meantime, the applied sciences the company has innovated for area are discovering a task in purposes on Earth, akin to Reebok’s Floatride Run Fast footwear, which advanced from an area boot design the corporate developed.

Much less glamorous than area suits, but no much less important are Multi-Layer Insulation (MLI) Blankets, similar to those designed by Aerospace Fabrication & Supplies LLC, Farmington, Minn. Comprised of a thin plastic film materials simply zero.00025 to zero.00033 inches (6 to 8 microns) thick and low conducting material spacers, these engineered thermal management blankets are used to insulate essential gear within the Area Shuttle Orbiter, the Worldwide Area Station, geospatial satellites, datacom satellites and cryogenic purposes.

“Think about it the way you’d look at insulation for your house; these blankets serve as a passive thermal control device for spacecraft,” says Brent Anderson, owner of Aerospace Fabrication. “They help protect and maintain instruments at room temperature inside.” In line with the essential have to maintain weight down in aerospace products, the blankets function an alternating layer development. “They are extremely lightweight. The internal layers are a loose-weave, almost bridal veil type fabric and metalized plastic film. Even though we use up to 20 layers, it only weighs a couple of ounces per square foot. On the outside, the material is coated with metals. That shiny surface reflects incoming thermal radiation off the surface.”

Anderson’s firm is all the time on the lookout for new materials or mixtures of fibers, he says. Along with weight, low conductivity and optical properties, the textiles used in these purposes must endure the tough surroundings of area. “We end up going out often to talk with the fabric industry to see what is new,” Anderson says. “For instance, 3D weaving is really taking off. We are watching that to see how we might incorporate it into our products.”

Whilst area purposes improve, the company faces a challenge that many producers in the aerospace market experience: relatively small demand. To keep a gentle backside line, the corporate additionally produces technical tapes and printed circuits and cables for the electronics business. “We want specialized materials that do extraordinary things, but we don’t tend to buy a lot of any one thing, so the price goes up for us,” Anderson says. “It doesn’t tend to be something most suppliers want to support, because the business ebbs and flows so much. Even as the need for space textiles increases, it’s still a small market compared to others.”

Raven Aerostar is the only provider to the NASA Balloon Program Office, offering both Zero Strain and Super Strain Balloons (SPB) for scientific missions. This flight’s objective was to check and validate the SPB know-how with the objective of long-duration flight (100+ days) at mid-latitudes. Photograph: NASA.

Nearer to house

Not all aerospace textiles make it to outer area. The stratosphere, the second layer of the Earth’s environment within the zone above the clouds, is turning into increasingly crowded with specialty high-tech balloons and airships. Textile-based purposes are perfect for this zone, which is characterized by thin air, limited weather events, exposure to the ozone layer and high levels of ultraviolet radiation from the solar. Raven Aerostar, Sioux Falls, S.D., has been innovating high-altitude textiles and stratospheric balloons because the 1950s.

“These are products that will fly two to five times as high as airplanes, so we need to make sure they meet extremely high quality standards,” says Joe Beck, Raven Aerostar plant manager and program manager. “The materials and the construction must be very robust to endure the external conditions, which can range in temperature from -50°C to -90°C [-60°F to -130°F]. These are typically filled with helium, so impermeability is a critical factor as well.”

Composed of “lighter-than-air” engineered polymer-based movies, Raven Aerostar’s stratospheric balloons look as delicate as a butterfly, but they will carry payloads up to 4 tons, acquire info used in scientific analysis, carry out army surveillance and help in GPS, radar and remote communications endeavors. As a division of Raven Industries, Raven Aerostar works intently with Raven Engineered Films, the division that develops the specialty polymer film and sheeting used in these purposes.

“We have our material design expertise right next door, so it’s easy to develop new materials for specific customer needs,” Beck says. “Our goal is always thinner, lighter and stronger.”

The rising area financial system may even create demand for textile merchandise that never depart Earth. Take the work of SLO Sail and Canvas of San Luis Obispo, Calif. The company focuses on marine fabrication, but army and aerospace organizations—together with Area X, California Polytechnic State University, the Nixus Challenge Glider and drone operators—have taken advantage of its design and fabrication know-how.

Applying its experience in versatile yet taut marine merchandise, the company has taken on tasks resembling crash nets for drones and specialty tarps which are put in around missiles and rockets on the launch pad or during development, says Karl Deardorff, SLO proprietor. The tarps are constructed from anti-static material, a essential requirement in an surroundings where a rocket booster is perhaps sitting on 100,000 kilos of rocket gasoline. Some jobs may want particular qualities, similar to polyester, carbon or conductive threads.

“The point is to protect people and equipment from FOD—foreign object debris,” Deardorff says. “A rocket that’s 230 feet high can have six to eight levels of scaffolding, and if something falls, that’s a problem. An anti-FOD tarp may only be 6 to 9 inches wide, but that is enough to avert damage or loss.”

Between NASA’s brief and long-range objectives, a new area race between deep-pocketed personal corporations, and some great benefits of high-tech textiles in area exploration, the aerospace market presents great potential for specialty material suppliers, designers and producers that wish to make their mark in excessive purposes.

“This is a growing area with lots of opportunity,” Deardorff says. “There is a lot of work for us all. We enjoy working closely with our customers on these unique projects, and we enjoy the excitement of designing for an industry with such big ambitions.”

Amy Goetzman is a freelance author based mostly in Maplewood, Minn.

The post The aerospace market – Advanced Textiles Source appeared first on Techno Crats Blog.

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New Post has been published on https://primortravel.com/mars-and-moon-landscapes-on-earth-the-travel-tester/

Mars and Moon Landscapes on Earth || The Travel Tester

Most of us will probably never set foot on the actual moon landscape, but did you know that you can visit mars and moon landscapes on earth?

Let’s be real: while most of us will probably never set foot on the actual moon landscape, there is a solution that will have you second-guess if you’re still on our home planet.

And that is to visit these Moon- or Mars landscapes right here on Earth! 

Through NASA’s Curiosity Rover, we got a close look at the surface of our neighbouring planet Mars and after doing a bit of research, I found plenty of bizarre terrains on Earth that actually are quite similar to what you might find on the surface of our neighbouring moons and planets.

In the “Catalogue of Planetary Analogues” by ESA, the European Space Agency, you can find all locations that show resemblance to some of the planets and moons in our solar system. 

From impact craters to tundra, deserts and volcanic areas, these destinations have similar microbial habitats along with the land formations that make them a good comparison to what’s out there.

You can read more about the Catalogue of Planetary Analogues (and download it whole for free) on the website of ESA >

But if you’re not so much a reader, or want to skip the difficult science parts of the document, here is a visual guide to the best moon-like landscapes you can find (and often easily visit) right here on our own planet Earth.

There are many surreal places not yet on the list below, but I’m keep adding to it, so make sure to come back soon for more!

  MARS & MOON LANDSCAPES ON EARTH

    MOON LANDSCAPES IN NORTH AMERICA

  Kīlauea & Mauna Kea, Hawaii, USA

Kīlauea is a volcano part of the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain, and one of five shield volcanoes that together form the island of Hawaii. It is the youngest and most active volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii.

This type of volcano is great to learn more about both Mars as the Moon, since it’s possible to study basaltic lavas, caves, lava tubes, collapse pits, skylights, life in the subsurface and in basalt and extremophiles (an organism with optimal growth in environmental conditions considered extreme).

Kīlauea also features volcanic deserts, gullies, alluvial plains and Mars-like outwash channels.

By studying Kīlauea, NASA scientists are also getting a better sense of the causes of volcanism on Io, one of Jupiter’s moons. They are finding that a tidal process, similar to what we see here on Earth, could be at play.

There is a visitors centre at the main vent of Kīlauea, but there are no huts or stations on the lava fields itself.

  Kīlauea, Hawaii, USA

  Mauna Kea is a dormant volcano and also often used by NASA for observation and training of their astronauts. No wonder it has gotten the nickname “Apollo Valley”!

You might be surprised to learn that a large part of astronaut training actually consists of geology lessons, teaching them all about volcanic and fiberglass-like formations, rock distribution, lava flows, lava tubes and soil composition. No better place to test drive your lunar rover, too!

At the peak of the Mauna Kea, there is a cluster of world-class observatories providing important astronomical observations. More information here >

If you are an experienced hiker, you can climb to the summit during the day on an eight-hour round-trip trek. Or go at night with your four-wheel drive, from the visitors center to the volcano’s summit to watch the sunset and gaze at the stars… while dreaming of stepping foot on the moon. 

  Mauna Kea, Hawaii, USA

    Utah Desert, USA

Hanksville in the US State of Utah is home to the Mars Desert Research Station. This two-story station was launched by the Mars Society and is a stand-in for the potential research station they are looking to build on Mars.

Although much warmer than Mars, the desert location was selected because of its Mars-like terrain and appearance. The programme allows extensive long-duration geology and biology field exploration operations to be conducted in the same style and under many of the same constraints as they would be on Mars.

Over 1000 people have been here since 2001, to participate in missions of about two to three weeks.

Want to volunteer? Head over to The Mars Society, which advocates for sending humans to Mars as soon as possible and is actively recruiting.

According to Elon Musk we could be living on Mars as soon as 2060 (Dutch organization Mars One seems to believe 2027 is doable…) and even Barack Obama is excited about this!

    The Utah Desert is large, so there are plenty of locations to visit to get a bit of an off-planet feel. How about:

Rainbow Bridge

Rainbow Bridge is one of the world’s largest known natural bridges and located in the red desert landscape of southern Utah, you can really get a good feel of the colours, geology and even the isolation you might feel when visiting another planet, such as Mars.

Walk through red canyons made of red-brown Kayenta sandstone and admire the pinnacles… almost like you’re standing in Mars’ own version of the Grand Canyon: Valles Marineris. 

  Rainbow Bridge, Utah, USA

  Goblin Valley State Park

I had never even heard of the term “hoodoo” before, but apparently, that’s what the shape of Goblin Valley’s rock formations are known as. They are the result of the varying hardness of the park’s sandstone.

The park, together with Bryce Canyon National Park, also in Utah, contain some of the largest occurrences of hoodoos in the world.

You can probably see why businessman Arthur Chaffin called the area “Mushroom Valley”, when he stumbled across them in the 1920s.

Do you remember the sci-fi comedy movie “Galaxy Quest”? It was filmed here!

  Goblin Valley State Park, Utah, USA

  Bryce Canyon National Park

Situated along a high plateau at the top of the Grand Staircase, Bryce Canyon’s high elevations include numerous life communities, fantastic dark skies, and geological wonders that defy description.

Bryce is not a single canyon, but a series of natural amphitheaters or bowls, carved into the edge of a high plateau. The most famous of these is the Bryce Amphitheater (that you can see on the photo below), which is filled with irregularly eroded hoodoos.

They have a special astronomy program where you can learn about and enjoy the splendor of the night sky, or you can go on a unique full moon hike!

There are two campground sites (one in winter) and lodging is available at the Bryce Canyon Lodge during the summer season. Hotel rooms are available in the park at Best Western PLUS Bryce Canyon Grand Hotel (see best prices here >).

Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah, USA

  Fly Geyser, Black Rock Desert, Nevada, USA

Did you know that Fly Geyser was created by accident in 1964 when scalding water began erupting through a man-made well? The dissolved minerals developed the mount and terraces that now surround the geyser.

It continues to grow and release water up to five feet (1.5 meters) into the air. The algae provide the outer-worldly colours on the geyser. 

The appearance of the geyser keeps changing and the site has only recently been opened to the public, since it is located on a plot of private land.

In June 2016, the non-profit Burning Man Project purchased the 3800 acres (1500 ha) Fly Ranch, including the geyser, for a mere $6,5 million US dollars.

The geyser can be seen from State Route 34 north of the town Gerlach and on location, you can participate in weekend Nature Walks, where you get to see a portion of the area. You cannot take photos during the walk itself, so you can connect with the land and each other, but you can do this afterwards.

  Fly Geyser, Black Rock Desert, Nevada, USA

    Death Valley, California, USA

Researchers have been coming to Death Valley for decades to study the desert’s many ancient yet accessible rock layers in this below-sea-level basin that is one of the hottest places on earth.

Despite its name, a great diversity of life survives in Death Valley!

Death Valley was used by NASA as a test location for Curiosity Rover, that landed on Mars in 2012.

The craters and below-sea-level basin of this national park in Southern California were used to test the 10 scientific instruments the rover would use on Mars.

For the results of the actual mission, please check the website of NASA.  

For directions to Death Valley, please refer to the park’s own website. Note that there is NO cellphone reception in the park and GPS Navigation has proven to be unreliable. Always carry up-to-date road maps to check the accuracy of GPS directions!

  Death Valley, California, USA

    Craters of the Moon National Monument, Idaho, USA

If we ever make it to Mars, we already know that due to its hostile environment, we will have to dive straight under the surface of the planet. 

That is exactly the reason why a team of NASA researchers gathered in 2017 at Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho: to create the first complete 3D scan of Indian Tunnel, one of the largest and most accessible lava tubes at the monument. 

Through their hard work, we will understand more about our own planet’s geologic past and it will also allow scientists to learn more about potential subterranean living on other planets, such as Mars.

Craters of the Moon’s visitor center is located 18 miles southwest of Arco, Idaho on U.S. Highway 20/26/93.

There are five caves you can explore within the Monument. Before entering any cave in the park, you must be “screened” for white-nose syndrome, a deadly fungal bat disease.

Plan your visit through the website of the park >

  Craters of the Moon National Monument, Idaho, USA Credit: Photo by Matthew Dillon, CC BY 2.0 (cropped)

    Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, USA

The North American Plate has moved over the last 17 million years by plate tectonics across a stationary mantle hotspot. The landscape of present-day Yellowstone National Park (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) is the most recent manifestation of this hotspot below the crust of the Earth.

The features of this area, such as hot springs and mineral deposits such as silica sinters are related to giant calderas and super volcanoes that have have existed on Mars.

Also the extremophilic microorganisms that thrive in the hot springs and geothermal areas of Yellowstone are astrobiological analogues to those that might have existed with martian geothermal features in the past.

Make sure to check out the “Chocolate Pots”, these are 42+ vents on and under the Gibbon river, 8 of which have formed small cones. The major cones spout up to 2 feet due to hydrostatic pressure.

Also the Grand Prismatic Springs are a sight of their own. This is the largest hot spring in the United States (diameter of 100m, and depth of 50m) with rings of colourful heat tolerant (thermophile) bacteria that ring the lake and produce the characteristic ‘prism’ effect.

Immediately adjacent is the Excelsior Geyser Crater, a hot spring and dormant geyser, with a large outflow channel leading directly into Firehole river.

  Grand Prismatic Springs, Yellowstone National Park, USA

    Arizona, USA

There are several surreal locations in the state of Arizona that are very similar to the conditions you would find on for example the moon. No wonder it’s a prima spot for astronauts to do their training!

Have a look at some of the wonderful places you can find here:

  Black Point Lava Flow

The alien-like black basaltic lava flow is part of Arizona’s San Francisco Volcanic Field. This is a group of geologically young (about 6 million to less than 1000 years old) volcanoes, lava flows and cinder cones located just north of Flagstaff in the state of Arizona.

This site is perfect for training and systems testing for future exploration missions to the moon, according to NASA.

    Cinder Lake

This is the site where in 1967, the United States Geological Survey turned an old volcano (that exploded around 1064) into a lunar training ground for astronauts. They did this by using 1153 pounds of dynamite and 28.650 pounds of nitro-carbo-nitrate to blast themselves over a hundred ‘lunar craters’.

The area was already covered in basaltic cinders from the volcanic eruption, which is much of the same material as the Mare Tranquillitatis, which was chosen as the landing site for the Apollo 11 mission on the moon. With the newly shaped landscape, they could test their equipment, knowledge and skills while still on Earth!

    Meteor Crater

In the northern Arizona desert you can find an imposing-looking crater. It wasn’t until the 1960s that they understood this was no volcanic crater, but an ancient meteor crash site.

Although this is a very important geological site, the crater is not protected as a national monument, because it is privately owned.

The crater is about 1200 meters / 3900 feet in diameter and about 170 meters / 560 feet deep. The rim rises 45 meters / 148 feet above the surrounding plains.

At the site, you there is an interactive educational experience for the entire family at the Meteor Crater Visitor Center. From here, you can visit the Widescreen theater, the indoor crater viewing area, you get Crater Trail access and can also visit the Interactive Discovery Center, the 4D Experience Room, or see Artifacts and Exhibits and browse the Gift & Mineral Shop.

For more information, visit the Meteor Crater website >>

  Meteor Crater Arizona, USA

    Sunset Crater

If you’ve ever wondered what happens when the earth cracks open and hot cinders and poisonous gases get spewed high into the air, you need to head over to Sunset Crater Volcano!

Just 1000 years old, Sunset Crater is the youngest in a string of the San Francisco volcanic field volcanoes.

There is a Visitor Center, which is open from 9AM to 5PM and there is a 34 mile scenic loop you can drive, winding from Highway 89 and the high Ponderosa Pine forests at Sunset Crater Volcano down nearly 2000 feet in elevation to the red rocks of Wupatki National Monuments.

Plan your visit to Sunset Crater >>

  Sunset Crater Arizona, USA

    Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

Venus is an inhabitable planet with a volcanic surface and clouds that rain sulfuric acid that bake the crust to about 471 degrees Celsius / 880 degrees Fahrenheit. It seems like we’re never able to land here!

For the hypothetical High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC) mission, NASA envisions solar-powered cloud cities that float above the surface, where the temperature and other conditions are a bit less hostile.

Want to experience what that would be like? Going up in a hot-air balloon seems to currently be the only way to do it!

The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque in New Mexico is the epi-center of balloons filled with hot-air, so head over in October for this 9-day festival to witness over 500 balloons launch in a spectacle you won’t soon forget!

I did a hot-air balloon ride in India, check the blog to read more about this bucket list experience >>

  Albuquerque International Balloon Festival, USA

    The Spotted Lake (Kliluk), Osoyoos, Canada

This almost alien-like lake in British Colombia’s desert contains large amounts of minerals, including calcium and sodium sulfates, that have seeped in from the surrounding rock.

In Summer, the water evaporates and the minerals are revealed in more than 300 separate pools, varying in colour from yellow to green and blue. They look like “spots”, hence the name of the lake.

Spotted Lake has been considered a sacred place for centuries by the indigenous people of the Okanagan Nation. They call it “Kliluk” and believe the lake has healing properties. 

If you want to see the lake, you can’t get too close due to a fence that has been erected to protect the culturally and ecologically sensitive area. But from the highway there are plenty of good vantage spots.

Read more on the website of the British Columbia tourist board >>

  The Spotted Lake, Osoyoos, Canada

    Greenland

On the 31st January of 2011, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft passed by several of Saturn’s moons, and shot images of Enceladus showing jets of water vapor and ice erupting from the south polar terrain of the moon.

That suggested that there was a reservoir of water below the frozen surface of the moon, but researches discovered something even more interesting: calculations showed there is a global ocean under the icy crust!

Curious to experience what it would be like to take a swim here? Head over to Greenland, where you can dive below icebergs, but be aware: dives with melting icebergs all around you can be very dangerous!

If you’re looking for something a little bit less risky, maybe the SCUBA training site at Morrison’s Quarry in Canada is an option for you. 

  Kulusuk, Greenland

    MOON LANDSCAPES IN SOUTH AMERICA

  The Atacama Desert, Chile

Years of erosion have turned the Atcama desert in Northern Chile and Southern Peru into one of the driest places on Earth.

Annual rainfall averaging less than one inch (25.4 mm) and the dramatic landscape consists of dry riverbeds, wind-sculpted rocks, salt-dusted mountains and jagged peaks. You can understand why they call one of the valleys in the desert “El Valle de la Luna” (Moon Valley)!

In a region about 100 km south of the port city of Antofagasta, which averages 3000 meters height, the soil has been compared to that of Mars.

You can expect almost void-of-life desert pavement (a surface covered with closely packed rock fragments), volcanic, impact and hydrothermal deposits, playas (dry lakes), channels, alluvial fans (triangular-shaped deposits of water-transported material), among other Mars-like features.

It might come as no surprise that scientists have tested several rover prototypes here (but also not that the movie “A Space Odyssey” was filmed here)

While you don’t need a permit to get into the desert, you absolutely need a 4-wheel drive, a GPS and make sure to plan your routes ahead of time using satellite imagery.

There is no infrastructure here, so camping is essential and you need to carry everything with you into the desert – and of course out of it again. Be aware though that the desert is not empty – there are many active mining operations and there are people traveling throughout,so do not leave anything unattended. Best time to visit is the Autumn or spring in the U.S.

  Atacama Desert, South America

    MOON LANDSCAPES IN OCEANIA

  Central Australia

If you have ever visited Central “Outback” Australia, you have probably already felt like you walked on Mars.

With the deep red and rocky landscape, the ancient terrains and arid regions of this part of the world, there are large parts where scientists can perform research.

Here, you can find mound springs (natural outlets where pressure forces underground water to the surface), barchan dunes (crescent-shaped dunes), impact craters, a variety of volcanic fields, so-called “Martian soils” and more features all analogous to those on the Moon and Mars.

Hydrothermal deposits (accumulations of valuable minerals) and hot springs are also observed with extremophiles (like we saw already in Hawaii), micro-fossils and stromatolites (read more about them further along in the section about Pilbara in Australia!).

Southern hemisphere Winter is the best time to visit, and to get anywhere in the desert areas a 4WD is a necessity. The nearest airport is in Alice Springs.

  Kings Canyon, Australia

Uluru (Ayers Rock), Australia

    Hamelin Pool, Pilbara, Australia

One of the most unique places I ever visited on my travels has to be Hamelin Pool in the state of Western Australia. Here, you can get up close with some of the Earth’s oldest micro-fossils, and something called “Stromatolites”.

Stromatolites are layered mounds, columns, and sheet-like sedimentary rocks that were originally formed by the growth of layer upon layer of cyanobacteria, a single-celled photosynthesizing microbe. They are considered ‘living fossils’ and play an important part in the Earth’s evolutionary history.

Hamelin Pool is one of only four places on earth where living marine stromatolites exist and the location contains by far the biggest colony on earth. They are believed to grow at a maximum of 0.3 mm per year!

This location can provide insights into the origins of life on both Earth as Mars and the preservation potential for life in general.

To visit, Hamelin Pool is about 1,5 hours drive from Denham and one hour 45 mins drive from Monkey Mia. Best time to visit is in the southern winter as summers can get very hot.

  Stromatolites at Hamelin Pool, Pilbara, Australia

    The Pinnacles, Nambung National Park, Western Australia

The yellow Pinnacle Desert in the Nambung National Park in Western Australia can really make you feel like you’re walking on the moon and makes for a great day trip.

The geological formations were formed about 25.000 years ago, after the sea receded this area and left deposits of sea shells. Coastal winds removed all of the surrounding sand over the years and left nothing but the exposed limestone pillars.

Make sure to also visit The Pinnacles Desert Discovery Centre, open daily, just like the rest of the park. The Pinnacle Lookout is located just behind the visitor center.

From the center’s car park, you can also step onto the “Desert View Trail”, which is an easy, 1.5 kilometer, 45 minutes return walk through the desert. Or just drive around the Pinnacles in your own car! You don’t need a 4-wheel drive here as the roads are sealed.

The best time of the year to visit is July, August, September and October.

Read our full article about The Pinnacles in Australia on the blog >

  The Pinnacles, Nambung National Park, Western Australia

    Glow Worm Caves, Waitomo, New Zealand

While it might not quite resemble the surface of the Moon or Mars, these unique caves in New Zealand are definitely otherworldly. It’s not every day that you can see such a unique phosphorescent glow in nature!

Glow worms aren’t actually worms, but fly larvae that emit the glow, through their waste and snot… Yum! But that aside, it’s actually really clever: the larvae make their prey believe they’re outside (the glow looking like a starry night sky) and trick them into their sticky threads inside the caves as they fly upward.

The caves were discovered by a local Maori chief in the late 19th century and since then, over half a million people visit the caves yearly. There are various options when it comes to tours, for example with Black Water Rafting, Spellbound or Caveworld.

  Glow Worm Caves, Waitomo, New Zealand

    MOON LANDSCAPES IN EUROPE

  Iceland

I am pretty sure that you didn’t know Iceland was the training ground of the Apollo astronauts back in the 1960s! And no, they didn’t train their moonwalks there, but in fact they did a lot of geological research.

In recent investigations, NASA has determined the Icelandic landscape is pretty similar to Mars due to the extreme size of the island’s volcanic eruptions (there are 30 active volcanic systems with associated geothermal activity), turning Iceland into a natural laboratory for analogue studies of Mars and the Moon.

The terrain has also proven helpful in deciding the best landing sites for spacecrafts for when humans finally make it to Mars.

Rugged Iceland provides a fantastic playground for planetary surface activities: there are basaltic lavas, lava tubes, caves, ridges, cones, hydrothermal deposits, Mars-like soils and pyroclastics, pillow lavas, hot springs and geysers and volcanic Aeolian (surfaces shaped by the wind) features such as dunes.

Satisfy your Interplanetary Wanderlust by visiting for example:

Iceland is easily reached via air and the main international airport is Keflavík located in the southwest of the country about 40 km from Reykjavík. Many sites can be driven to (in winter you need a 4WD – read all about driving in Iceland on the website of the tourist board >) with a short hike at the end. Any sites in the higher volcanic areas will require extensive hiking.

On the volcanoes there are many marked hiking trails and huts leading to the summits. The weather can change here without warning, so be prepared and if possible have a GPS and/or sat phone.

Mid-June to August is high season, but accessibility can be limited until as late as July because of snow. Many facilities outside Reykjavík are closed from September to May.

  Námafjall Hverir Geothermal Area

Hverfjall Crater

    Piramidi di Segonzano, Trento, Italy

In the region of Trentino in Northern Italy, you can visit the “Piramidi di Segonzano”, one of the most studied geological phenomena in the world. But chances are that you’ve never heard of them, am I right?

I know I hadn’t before I visited this otherworldly place recently.

At an altitude of 875 meters (2870 ft) in the Cembra Valley, the “pyramids of Segonzano” reach up to 40 meters (131 ft). They were formed about 50.000 years ago, when the movement of the Avisio glaciers and the consequent disintegration of the mountain sides produced enormous moraine deposits.

These deposits, consisting of earth and small pebbles, were covered by a landslide of large porphyry boulders. Under the weight of the boulder, that almost look like hats these days, the soil becomes more compact (almost like cement) and actually protects the pillars from rain erosion. Just like a giant stone umbrella!

It’s an amazing place to visit and makes for a great day out with the whole family. The site is open to visitors all year round and you can reach different viewing platforms by a specially equipped, clearly marked path.

Read our full article about Piramidi di Segonzano on the blog and make sure to check out our video below >

  Piramidi di Segonzano, Trento, Italy

    The Ries Impact Crater, Nördlinger, Germany

Several asteroid and comet collisions have shaped the surface of our planet Earth throughout history. One of them occurred about 14.5 million years ago.

A projectile of 1.5 km in diameter slammed into the Earth in the area we now know as Bavaria in Germany, leaving a 24 km in diameter, round shaped crater.

Of course you can imagine that this is a unique place to study the products of impact cratering, and some of the Apollo astronauts trained here prior to their missions to the Moon.

The medieval town of Nördlingen, that also hosts the Rieskrater Museum (Ries Crater Museum), is not just a great visit because it’s actually build inside the crater, but also because the buildings here are embedded with millions of microscopic diamonds, all a result of the asteroid impact.

The area is a registered Geopark, run and maintained by the Rieskrater Museum.

The impact structure is easily accessible along the “Romantische Strasse”, the Romantic Road that winds through Bavaria from Frankfurt to Munich. Stuttgart International Airport is about 150 km to the East, this is an easy drive and is the recommended route.

  Ries Impact Crater (Google Maps) with the town of Nördlinger enlarged at the top right

    Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain  

Volcanism helped shape Tenerife, the largest of Spain’s Canary Islands. The summit of the Teide stratovolcano reaches 3718 meters (12.198 feet) above sea level. But much of the volcano’s impressive height is unseen. If you include what’s below the water line, the volcano rises 7500 meters (24.606 feet) from the ocean floor! This makes it the third tallest volcanic structure on Earth.

About 190 square kilometers (73 square miles) of land around the summit are protected as part of Teide National Park. In 2007, the park was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The Las Cañadas caldera on top of Teide is used by space agencies to test planetary rovers, since the environmental conditions and geological formations are also similar to those on Mars.

Since 1964, you can observe the stars from the Teide Observatory (Observatorio del Teide). It became one of the first major international observatories with telescopes from different countries.

The Teide national park is open for public and accessible by road. Find out everything about guided (stargazing) tours on the visitor information website >>

  Teide National Park at Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain

    Mount Etna, Sicily, Italy

The stratovolcano Mount Etna in Sicily has never really stopped erupting, and with altering volcanic topographies, it’s a great place to do scientific and robotic studies for both Moon and Mars missions.

In 2017 tests with robots have been conducted by the German Aerospace Centre on the “Piano del Lago” area of the volcano, a desolate stretch of terrain buffeted by strong winds. Aim of the research was to improve robotic equipment that will be used in space.

Etna is one of the rare volcanoes in the world where it is possible to observe the birth of new eruptive mouths. There are no less than 300 lateral craters and 250 lava tubes.

When you visit, there are several options to do (hiking) tours for all levels of fitness. More information can be found on the website of the tourist board >

  Mount Etna, Sicily, Italy

    Svalbard, Norway

Scientists have been using the Norwegian archipelago Svalbard since 2003 as a testing ground for technology destined for Mars.

Because of its location near the Arctic circle, you will not only find harsh cold temperatures, but rocky outcrops, permafrost and volcanic geology in the area, mirroring several Martian environments, including the poles and equatorial craters of the Red Planet.

This place on Earth is a great place for testing Mars rover vehicles and sensors that have been tested here as prototypes are now being used aboard Curiosity on Mars and future instruments for the ExoMars mission.

You can read more about this research on the website of the European Space Agency (ESA) >>

  Svalbard, Norway

    Aurora Borealis, Norway / Iceland / Sweden / Finland

During solar storms, the sun ejects particles that only planets with magnetic fields and an atmosphere turn into amazing light shows.

Our lucky planet for example, is able to show dancing ribbons of green, blue, red and purple shades in the night sky (near our North and South Poles), because the particles interact with our atmosphere’s gases.

A similar phenomenon has been witnessed around the poles of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. We call them “Aurora Borealis” in the North (Northern Lights) and “Aurora Australis” in the South.

You need a bit of good luck to witness this phenomenon however, but there are many tours offering you a chance to see it with your own eyes.

The best time for these tours is between September and April (in Northern Scandinavia), because the skies are the most dark and the nights the longest at this moment.

In the United States, visit the website of the Geophysical Institute in Fairbanks, Alaska, as they keep an eye on the current state of the aurora and offer an aurora forecast.

  Aurora Borealis, Norway / Iceland / Sweden / Finland

    MOON LANDSCAPES IN AFRICA

  The Namib Desert, South Africa / Angola / Namibia

The Namib Desert extends about 2000 km from the Olifants River in South Africa to the Carunjamba River in Angola and is the oldest desert in the world.

The desert provides analogues for both the Moon and Martian features such as deserts, sand and gravel, sand seas and dunes.

The sand dunes, some of which are 300 meters high and span 32 kilometers long, are the second largest in the world and are closest in size to those on Mars.

As for testing ground, this is the perfect place to study life in conditions of low water availability and high temperatures. A lot of studies are done at the Gobabeb Namib Research Institute.

Chemically, the Namib Desert is almost completely lacking water bodies on the surface as most rivers flow underground and/or are dry for most of the year, mimicking conditions proposed for Mars today and in the past.

Windhoek is the nearest airport. There is limited fuel away from the main cities and roads, so bring your own supplies and drinking water. The nearest town, Walvis Bay, is 120 kilometres away.

The best time to travel is in the southern hemisphere winter. However, it’s also high tourist season so accommodation and vehicles may have limited availability. Book well ahead of time.

  The Namib Desert

    Bahariya and Farafra Depressions, Egypt

The “White Desert” in Egypt is known for its wind-shaped chalk rock formations made of white limestone, some of the rarest landscapes and geological formations in Egypt, covering less than 1% of the Egyptian Sahara.

Here, you can find dinosaurs fossils and remnants of other species that have been left here after an ice age that occurred 30 million years ago.

About 126 km northeast of the White Desert, you’ll find the “Black Desert”, where hundreds of black powder-covered hills form the Alien landscape. The black powder is due to volcanic activity during the Jurassic Period.

In 2002, the desert was recognised as a Natural Protectorate by the Egyptian government and since then, all human development in or near the desert has been banned to preserve the area.

This also means that there are no tourism facilities in the area, but with a local Bedouin guide you can go on a camping trip where you stay warm by the camp fire and dream of distant planets in the night sky above you.

  Farafra, Egypt

    Danakil Depression, Ethiopia

If you’re looking for an inhospitable landscape, here you go. The sunken volcanic landscape of the northern part of the Afar Triangle in Ethiopia is full of acidic hot springs, bubbling lavas, salty sands and toxic vapors.

The Danakil Depression is the hottest place on Earth and also one of the lowest places on the planet (100 m below sea level). There is no rain for most of the year. The wet environments of the hot springs are being investigated to help understand how life might arise on other planets and moons.

Even though it seems nothing could survive here, microorganisms thrive among the region’s sulfuric pools and mineral chimneys!

You might also know this location where in 1974, archaeologists found the famous Australopithecus fossil Lucy, which has been dated 3.2 million years old. Or maybe you don’t. My dad is an archaeologist, so that’s why this facts was exciting to me, haha!

  Danakil Depression, Ethiopia

    MOON LANDSCAPES IN THE MIDDLE EAST

  Wadi Rum, Jordan

The UNESCO World Heritage site of Wadi Rum in Southern Jordan has an incredible landscape of cliffs, gorges, caverns, natural arches, and Mars-like red sand. 

This valley (“wadi” in Arabic) is cut into the sandstone and granite rock. Wadi Rum has been inhabited by many human cultures since prehistoric times. The combination of 25,000 rock carvings with 20,000 inscriptions trace the evolution of human thought and the early development of the alphabet.

Also known also as “Wādī al-Qamar”, or the “Valley of the Moon”, this is the place were space movies such as “Star Wars episode 9 – Rise of Skywalker” and “The Martian” starring Matt Damon were shot.

Spend the night at Sun City Camp in a real Martian Dome! Check best prizes on booking.com >

  Wadi Rum, Jordan

    MOON LANDSCAPES IN ASIA

  Dongchuan Red Land of Kunming, Yunnan, China

The Dongchuan District is one of seven districts of the city of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province in China.

The area has become famous through photographers who discovered the unique local landscape and its Red Earth scenery. The soil is rich in iron and aluminum, with little organic matter, strong acidity and heavy clay.

You can capture the red fields just after ploughing and before the crops grow in Summer, or in Autumn.

  Dongchuan Red Soil, China

    The Stone Forest of Kunming, Yunnan, China

Another sight you don’t want to miss in the Yunnan region is the Stone Forest of Kunming, a notable set of limestone formations of about 500 square kilometers.

Since 2007, two parts of the site, the Naigu Stone Forest and Suogeyi Village have been UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

The Stone Forest area was a shallow sea some 270 million years ago, but extensive deposits of sandstone overlain by limestone accumulated over time in the basin. Exposure to wind and running water shaped these limestone pillars into their current form.

The Stone Forest Scenic Region is open all year round. Try and avoid days with heavy rain (mostly between May and October).

  The Stone Forest of Kunming, China

    Yehliu Geopark, Taipei, Taiwan

Yehliu Geopark, part of the Daliao Miaocene Formation in Northern Taiwan, is home to a number of unique geological formations.

The cape stretches around for 1700 meters and was formed as thousands of years of geological movement forced the Datun Mountains to change their shape, jutting out into the ocean.

A distinctive feature of the cape is the hoodoo stones that dot its surface. Many of them have been given distinct names, such as “Queen’s Head”, “Sea Candles”, “Fairy Shoe”, “Ginger Rocks”, “Elephant Rock”, “Ice Cream Rock”, “Kissing Rock” and “The Beehive”.

Have a close-up look at the hoodoos on the website of the geo park >>

      MOON LANDSCAPES ON ANTARCTICA

  The Antarctic Dry Valleys

The Antarctic Peninsula was formed by uplift and metamorphism of sea-bed sediments during the late Palaeozoic and the early Mesozoic eras. This was accompanied by igneous intrusions and volcanism during the Jurassic Period.

East Antarctica is geologically very old, dating from the Precambrian era, with some rocks formed more than 3 billion years ago!

The McMurdo Dry Valleys are a row of valleys west of McMurdo Sound and got their name because of their extremely low humidity and lack of snow and ice cover. They are considered to be the most ‘Mars-like’ environment on Earth and contain a range of features found on Mars in the past and today.

These include: a cold dry desert, sublimation polygons, gullies, cold-based glaciers like those observed on Arsia Mons on Mars, crypto-endoliths (an organism that lives inside rock) and extremophiles (like we saw in Hawai and Australia already), high concentration of salts in soils and waters.

Antarctica is also useful for human mission testing and mission scenarios as carried out at the Concordia Research Station. Here studies are also conducted into glaciology, astronomy, human biology and medicine, habitat and Large Space Simulation (LSS) in extreme conditions, surface Extravehicular activity (EVA) in terrestrial gravity and confinement tests.

This site has been used by the NASA from January 2008 to February 2009 to test an inflatable habitat in an extreme environment.

Gaining access to Antarctica is, as you might expect, very difficult and achievable mainly by military aircraft or research vessels.

  Antarctic Dry Valleys – Credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS/ASTER

    DISCOVER MORE SPACE EXPERIENCES ON EARTH >>

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[whenjocastasayyesnobodycansayno]

GEO Test

-Earth is 4.56 billion years old, we know bc radioactive decay of certain elements known since 1952 -13.8 billion years old is the universe, more significant -Powers of 10 used to express super small or large numbers (logs) -All parts of Universe are flying away from each other, 15 billion years ago they were all in one place. Then bigbang happened STARS -Use light spectrum to determine what it is, using prism. Dark lines will pop out due to the wavelength of certain gases absorbing the light. Different chemical elements absorb different wavelengths. -Red to purple, fast to slowest. Slower colors refract more. -Radio, radar, infrared, visible, ultraviolet, x-rays, gamma -Electrons get excited and absorbs energy and goes from ground to excited. Amount of energy absorbed can be attributed to an exact element. BIGBANG -Georges Lamaitre was like “cosmic egg that exploded -Edwin Hubble was like “Red Shift”, which was stars further away from us show greatest shift in their absorption lines towards red art in spectrum. -Doppler effect, change in frequency from velocity of object. can be used to calculate retreat velocity. Light is not effected because it moves too fast. However, the change in frequency does not represent the earth and sun moving in different directions but just the relative velocities they have, they’re moving in the same direction, one is just faster. Galaxies that are farther away are moving faster. SYNTHESIS OF ELEMENTS -He H and a bit of Li in the beginning -pther elements came from large stars through nuclear fusion -Use up hydrogen/helium? they explode. become supernova. one supernova per century per galaxy. These keep converting 2% of galaxies H (73%) and He (25%) into heavier elements. -To do this, nuclear fusions occur at 15 million degrees STARS HEATING -It gets bigger and heavier elements burn at the center, creating heavier elements. Needs more heat to do this. NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS -heavier elements hit each other lose kinetic energy and get hot and form a ball -dust particles hit each other and make planets. Planetesimals make terrestial planets, -Mars sized planet hit Earth, a bunch of debris is released. Gravity pulled it back in and it eventually became the Moon. It tilted the Earth too. CHEMISTRY -Planets dominated by Fe. Si, O, Mg -Odd numbered protons of elements are less abundant METEORITES -hits planets and could fall on Earth, like from Mars EARLY EARTH -accretion of meter sized bodies -transfer of kinetic energy to heat -compression (gravitational collapse) -radioactive decay of elements CORE OF EARTH -200-100 million years after accretion, temperatures at depths of 400-800 km below Earth’s surface reach Fe’s melting point -Fe pulled into center’s core, 1/6 of the volume and 1/3 of the mass. Moon doesn’t have much iron. LAYERS OF EARTH -Crust until 40 km -Mantle until 2890km -Liquid iron Outer Core until 5150 -Solid iron inner core until 6370 EARTH -Oxygen 30% -Iron 35% -silicone 15% -Mg 13% -others are calcium aluminum sulfur and nickel -crust has more of everything MINERAL -a homogenous natural solid, with a definite but not fixed chemical composition -formed by inorganic processes usually IONIC BONDING -ions of opposite charges attracted to each other. non-directional bonds (NaCl) -covalent bonding is when electrons are shared between atoms. much stronger and more stable. Directional (CO2 or diamonds) -metallic bonds, moderately strong and non directional (copper) good electric conductor -van der waals, weak, electostatic, nondirectional SIZES -Cations smaller than all anions -Ionic Radius determines what can fit around it, known as co-ordination POLYMORPHS -have same chemical formulas different structures -sheets bonded together with van der waals bonds MINERALS -SOHCNBSPS -oxygen is the most common anion -silicone is the most common cation in the crust -silicates are most common in crust. feldspar most common one -Difference in Electronegativity correlates with ionic bonding in silicates -tetrahedrons make up silicates, Si-O is the strongest bond. Negative triangles bonded thru positively charged ions -Types: isolated (olivine) ,Single chain (pyroxene), double chain (Mica), sheet silicate (Muscovite or Talc), and framework silicate (feldspar or quartz) CARBONATES -absorbs CO2 - second most abundant group in crust -common in limestone -calcite (double refraction occurs), aragonite, dolomite -CO4 impossible bc carbon cation is too small. CO3 forms instead.  HARDNESS diamond > corundum > topaz > quartz > feldspar > apatite > fluorite > calcite > gypsum > talc CLEAVAGE -mineral breaks into specific planes and places. into a specific orientation -fracture, the way a mineral breaks in the absence of cleavage (conchoidal, fibrous, and irregular)  -idiochromatic is when color is always the same, allochromatic is when trace elements can be seen, opaque just reflect light off their surface -Earth is cooling down by radiation conduction and convection of heat -We know this bc meteorites and seismic waves. Earthquakes happen when bodies of rock move past each other. A fault is a locus of earthquake movement. Normal Faults, Thrust faults (cause tsunamis). Long term predictions are imprecise and short term ones are precise but hard.  SEISMIC WAVES -waves that begin in the initial compression or tension of the rock -measured with seismographs -p-waves (compressional) 6-8 km per second. parallel to direction of movement. Similar to sound waves. -s-waves (shear) 4-5 km per second. Perpendicular to direction of movement. Do not pass through liquids. Similar to ocean waves.  -Surface waves, slowest but most damaging -Velocity depends on the type of material and pressure -when waves move from one type of material to another, they change speed and direction. -In light (refraction), velocity decreases as density increases bc denser things have more chemical bonds which slow the light down. -Seismic velocities, upward curves in p and s waves in mantle show that it’s increasing downwards. Refraction occurs in outer core bc liquid for p-waves.  DENSITY OF EARTH -continental crush 2.8 g/cm3 -oceanic crust 3.2  -asthenosphere 3.3 -in seismic topography, hotter regions are less dense  ISOSTASY -Buoyancy of low-density rock masses that are “floating on” higher density rocks. this explains roots of mountain belts - continents are like icebergs. what’s above the surface is balanced by material below surfaces. Higher ones must be thicker. GLACIAL REBOUND -glacier forms and thickens. crust bends downwards to support. warming happens, ice melts. ground rebounds. EARTH’S INTERNAL HEAT -original heat -conduction -convection -radioactive decay -temperature increases with depth, the geotherm curve MAGNETIC FIELD -declination is the horizontal angle between the magnetic north and true north -inclination is an angle made with horizontal. -Magnetic reversals exist, a change in polarity. Abrupt, takes only 1000 years.  -Magnetic Epoch is a period of time when magnetism is dominantly one polarity -north oriented polarity is called normal, south oriented polarity is called reverse -geomagnetic time-scale helps us track reversals ROCKS -Igneous, melting of rocks in hot deep crust and upper mantle, formed by crystallization. -genetic classification, intrusive means they were crystallized from slowly cooling magma intruded from the crust. extrusive means they were crystallized from rapidly cooling magma extruded on the surface of the earth as lava or pyroclastic material.  -others include felsic, intermediate, mafic, ultramafic.  -sedimentary, weathering and erosion of rocks exposed at surface, formed by deposition, burial, and lithification -resulted from consolidation of previously existing rock and accumulated in layers. classified based on size of particles.  -ice is a transport medium. sediments using this are called tillite.  -metamorphic, rocks under high temperatures in deep crust and upper mantle, formed by recrystallization with new minerals.  ROCK CYCLES Metamorphic + Migmitization and Melting = Igneous  + Weathering, Erosion, Deposition, and transportation= sedimentary + Burial, Heat, Pressure= Metamorphic PLATE TECTONICS -Outer portion of Earth has 20 plates that move relative to each other. This causes mountain ranges. Can help predict locations of earthquakes and volcanoes -Lithosphere- outer rigid shell of earth. Where plates are -asthenosphere- mantle beneath lithosphere, acts as its conveyor belt -transform fault boundary, slide horizontally by each other, divergent boundaries, plates move apart and create new lithosphere, convergent boundaries, plates collide and one is pulled into the mantle and recycled.  -three types of convergent boundaries, ocean-ocean (linear belts of high seismic activity, high heat flow arc of volcanoes, bordered by submarine trenches)  , ocean-continent (active volcano, compression of upper crust), continent-continent (subduction or deformation of crust) CONTINENTAL DRIFT - The concept that large-scale horizontal movements of outer portions of the earth are what’s responsible for major topographical features such as mountains or ocean basins.  -Geographic fit of all the continents is used as evidence. Pangea -Evidence from sea floor included the age of the ocean’s crust, bathymetry, magnetic data. Sea floor had significant variance in magnetic field. These changes reflected Earth’s changes in the magnetic field. None of the rocks were older than 100-200 Ma, while on continents they could be up to 4000 Ma ROCKS ACHIEVING MAGNETISM -Magnetic objects align with Earths magnetic field once they cool below 580 celsius or Curie’s Temperature -Anomaly, change in intensity of magnetic field at some point.  OCEAN? -Ocean crust being constantly formed, crystallized from magma and into basalt -Earth maintains a constant diameter, so despite the new growth, old crust is being destroyed in trenches and sent back to the mantle DEFROMATION -happens alongside metamorphism -different fabrics form different grade  - Diagenesis, Low Grade, Intermediate Grade, High Grade TRANSPORT IN SEDIMENTARY ROCKS -affects roundness and sphericity and sorting  -sorting is the measure of variation in the range of grain sizes of a rock or sediment. If they’re well-sorted, they’ve been acted on by water or wind. Poorly sorted sediment hasn’t left it’s original place or was deposited by a glacier.  PROPORTIONS OF SEDIMENTARY ROCK -Siltstone and Mudstone and Shale is 75% -carbonate rocks are 14% -sandstone conglomerate are 11% -calcium carbonate is less soluble in warm water WEATHERING TERMS -bedrock is unaltered rock -broken pieces of rock above the bedrock is the regolith -mineral and organic material is called soil MECHANICAL WEATHERING -Frost is when water expands by 9% upon freezing  -Thermal Expansion is when different thermal expansion of minerals causes stress in rocks -Organic Activity could be from tree roots to microorganisms -Mechanical Abrasion is when things go bump CHEMICAL WEATHERING -Principal agent is water -minerals need this bc when they’re formed deep inside Earth they can’t be stable on conditions on the surface of Earth -bicarbonate ions hasten weathering CARBON CYCLE -Low temperatures and decreases in CO2 reduce weathering leading to an increase in CO2, leads to warming which leads to more weathering which reduces CO2 which leads to cooling.  WIND -rate of sand transport moves exponentially with wind speed.  -Deflation is when strong winds gradually lower the elevation of the ground by removing sand particles.  -Desert Pavement is a surface of gravel too big for wind to transport, a deflation lag. Concentrated by selective removal of finer-grained sediment. -Loess is wind blown dust WATER -Only 4.04% of Earth’s water is freshwater.  POROSITY -Percent void space in a rock or sediment.  -amount of water that could be potentially stored in rock -Varies with sorting, amount of cement, fracturing  PERMEABILITY -ability of a material to transfer a fluid -aquifer is a geological unit capable of storing water in sufficient quantities to supply wells -Types of Aquifer’s include: Unconfined (the permeable layer extends to surface), confined (p. layer is overlain and underlain by less p. layer) WATER TABLE -top of saturated zone in groundwater -level that water will rise in a hole -level to which water will rise in an unconfined aquifer HYDROTHERMAL SYSTEMS -Hot springs, which form when heated groundwater reaches the surface -Geysers form when a complicated plumbing system allows steam pressure to be built up, causing intermittent eruptions. RHYTHM OF ICE AGES -Eccentricity of Earth’s orbit around the sun (100k years) -Tilt of Earth’s rotation axis (41k) -Precession (rotational wobble, 19k-21k years) -Earth went from greenhouse to icehouse SNOWBALL EARTH HYPOTHESIS -some say all of Earth was covered in glacial ice and only melted when volcanoes erupted, raising CO2 content, facilitating global warming -Earth seems to do this in cycles. Ice builds up due to runaway albedo effect, with white ice reflecting radiation back into space. Then without weathering due to the ice, CO2 couldn’t be taken up by it. Buildup of CO2 causes warming again. RELATIVE DATING -How old a rock is compared to surrounding rocks -Younger ones on the top -principle of superposition is when the oldest rocks are on the bottom -Principle of Original Horizontality is when layered strata are deposited in horizontal or nearly horizontal or nearly parallel to the Earth’s surface ABSOLUTE DATING -actual number of years since rock was formed PALEONTOLOGY -study of life in past based on the fossil of plants and animals -used to help determine r. age and envionment of deposition -unconformity is a buried surface of erosion -disconformity is a break in deposition. no erosion -If there is deformation, angular unconformity is produced Carbon has a half life of 5730 years

AGES -Universe is about 15Ga Solar system is 4.6 Ga Oldest rock is 4000 Ma ZIRCON DATING used to help determine age. Uranium can substitute in small quantities.  -its dense and easy to separate. Each Zircon makes it possible to obtain two ages and see if they agree.  OLDEST PARTS OF CONTINENTS -shields or cratons  -central, older portions of continents -lower elevation and relatively flat -basement complex of metamorphic and igneous rocks

[sciencespies]

Geologists suspect there's a trove of precious metals locked beneath the lunar surface

https://sciencespies.com/nature/geologists-suspect-theres-a-trove-of-precious-metals-locked-beneath-the-lunar-surface/

Geologists suspect there's a trove of precious metals locked beneath the lunar surface

  When it comes to knowing what kinds of minerals we might find inside the Moon, we’ve literally just scraped the surface. For one small team of Earth scientists from the US and Canada, that’s enough to suggest there’s treasure hiding deep below. 

Mining for riches is the last thing that’s on the researchers’ minds, though. By knowing more about lunar chemistry, they might be able to resolve a conflict over an apparent shortfall in precious elements thought to make up the Moon’s mantle.

While we’ve been staring up at half of the Moon’s face since forever, we only received our first real clues on what lies beneath its surface when astronauts brought back several hundred kilograms of lunar material about half a century ago.

“We have a grand total of 400 kilograms of sample that was brought back by the Apollo and lunar missions… it’s a pretty small amount of material,” says Earth scientist James Brenan from Dalhousie University in Canada.

“So, in order to find out anything about the interior of the Moon we have to kind of reverse engineer the composition of the lavas that come onto the surface.”

One bit of retro-engineering on basalts brought back from the Apollo 15 and 17 missions was used back in 2007 to estimate the amount of siderophile, or ‘iron-loving’, elements making up the Moon’s mantle.

A good proportion of these should have come from a rain of left-over building materials as the Solar System wound up its construction phase, so it’s a handy indicator of the kind of assault the Moon endured soon after it formed.

Strangely, the measurements were 10 to 100 times lower than expected.

Even after applying models adjusting the way meteorite impacts might erode the Moon rather than contribute to its mass, the numbers never quite made sense, leaving plenty of room for questions.

Part of the problem could be in how researchers often start with an assumption that the Moon’s geochemistry is more or less the same as our own.

It’s not exactly an unreasonable assumption to make, given widely-held theories suggest the Moon was made from our planet’s own flesh and bones.

But for all of their similarities, there are enough differences to make it worthwhile going back to basics.

So the team of scientists combined the results of experiments on the solubility of sulphur with models on the pressure and thermodynamics of cooling magma to pin down a more accurate set of constraints on the makeup of the lunar mantle.

They found those missing siderophile elements were more than likely up there. They just hadn’t been squeezed out onto the surface.

“Our results show that sulphur in lunar volcanic rocks is a fingerprint for the presence of iron sulphide in the rocky interior of the moon, which is where we think the precious metals were left behind when the lavas were created,” says Brenan.

While the results don’t provide a solid estimate on the composition of precious metals in the mantle, they’re enough to make it clear we can’t rely on existing rock samples to come to any solid conclusions either.

Before you book your place next to Jeff Bezos on the first tourist lunar lander out of town, you should know these metals probably won’t be found as concentrations of ore ripe for easy picking.

Whether they’re worth mining at all in the future will depend on what future missions find, and whether the economics make sense.

Explorations of deep rock formations exposed by impacts over the Moon’s southern regions could help constrain figures on iron-loving elements in the mantle even further.

“It’s pretty exciting to think that we might return to the Moon,” says Brenan.

“And if so, the South Pole seems like a good choice for sampling.”

This research was published in Nature Geoscience.

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[jeanbaltsubsta-blog]

How do geologist use relative dating in their work

Chapter 6 Rocks and Fossils Flashcards They also provided a driving force for crustal deformation, and a new setting for the observations of structural geology.  For example, the famous White Cliffs of Dover are on the coast of southeastern England.  Nicolaus steno to determine the principle of a given us understand the relative dating worksheet answer questions we use the past.  What if they are on different continents? Advances in seismology, computer modeling, and mineralogy and crystallography at high temperatures and pressures give insights into the internal composition and structure of the Earth.  The clay has large amount of the element iridium.

Geology Online Subchapter They occur where older rock layers eroded away completely before new rock layers were deposited.  It gets much, much worse for other worlds.  That's why geologic time is usually diagramed in tall columnar diagrams like this.  Relative ages are not numbers.  These foreign bodies are picked up as magma or lava flows, and are incorporated, later to cool in the matrix.  That something else is impact craters.

How do index fossils determine the age of rocks? A similar situation with igneous rocks occurs when xenoliths are found.  They may cover very broad areas, especially if they formed at the bottom of ancient seas.  Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth by providing the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates.  For example, sulfur smells like rotten eggs.  Gaps in the geologic record, called unconformities, are common where deposition stopped and erosion removed the previously deposited material.  Older rocks are at the bottom and younger rocks are at the top.

Fossils,Dating Rocks & Geologic Time Flashcards Rock layers with the same index fossils must have formed at about the same time.  Broadhead, relative-age time periods are two of relative ages of uniformitarianism - absolute geologic events.  Here is a graphic showing the chronostratigraphy for the Moon -- our story for how the Moon changed over geologic time, put in graphic form.  The other way we use craters to age-date surfaces is simply to count the craters.  Long before I understood what any of it meant, I'd daydream in science class, staring at this chart, sounding out the names, wondering what those black-and-white bars meant, wondering what the colors meant, wondering why the divisions were so uneven, knowing it represented some kind of deep, meaningful, systematic organization of scientific knowledge, and hoping I'd have it all figured out one day.  Figure is a different kind of the geologic time scale.  This includes the study of sediment and soils, including studies in geomorphology, sedimentology, and paleoclimatology.

How do geologists use the principles of relative dating to learn about the past In the science of geology, there are two main ways we use to describe how old a thing is or how long ago an event took place.  Subsequent layers would follow the same pattern.  Learning target - processes that occur in order the many useful for various principles.  This law follows two basic assumptions: 1 the beds were originally deposited near horizontal, and 2 the beds were not overturned after their deposition.  Maine Connections Lesson Plans Webquests Videos Games Additional Resources.  As the environment changes, living creatures adapt.

Glad You Asked: How Do Geologists Know How Old a Rock Is? While the oldest known rocks on Earth are about 3.  Links to age dating in petroleum exploration.  Scientists have also made improvements to the standard radiometric measurements.  Trilobites are older than Ammonites.  The principle of original horizontality states that the deposition of sediments occurs as essentially horizontal beds.

Chapter 6 Rocks and Fossils Flashcards Law of Superposition In a sequence of rock strata, the oldest layer will lie below or underneath the youngest.  Index For This Page: I wish this page was unnecessary.  Responsible stewardship of Utah's geologic and energy resources.  Image demonstrating a common use of the principle of lateral continuity Principle of Cross-Cutting tells us that the light colored granite must be older than the darker basalt dike intruding the granite.  If an impact event was large enough, its effects were global in reach.  Most often, the events that we are age-dating on planets are related to impacts or volcanism.  Before the Phanerozoic, life was microscopic.

Relative Dating (Steno's Laws) : How Geologists Tell Time : Teacher Resources : University of Vermont At its simplest, surfaces with more craters have been exposed to space for longer, so are older, than surfaces with fewer craters.  These include the formation of the major mountains or the extinction of the dinosaurs.  Using Index Fossils Index fossils are commonly used to match rock layers in different places.  Values: The generation and dissemination of geologic information.  The brown splotch denotes ebbing and flowing of mare volcanism.  There are lots of ways to guesstimate ages, and geologists.  When I write for magazines, my editors always ask me to put absolute numbers on the dates of past events.

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Chinese robots are on a mission to beat NASA to the far side of the moon

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/chinese-robots-are-on-a-mission-to-beat-nasa-to-the-far-side-of-the-moon/

Chinese robots are on a mission to beat NASA to the far side of the moon

NASA’s new initiative to go back to the moon at the behest of President Donald Trump is an intriguing notion, but for now, we’re still relegated to studying and exploring the lunar surface with the help of robots. But it’s not NASA’s robots we ought to be paying attention to—there aren’t any. Instead, China currently has the leg-up in lunar exploration, and it’s poised to make a splash with its Chang’e 4 spacecraft, launched last Saturday. The four-ton lander entered lunar orbit on Wednesday and should touch down on the surface of the moon sometime in January, unloading a brand new rover out into the landscape.

All of that sounds pretty standard for lunar missions, except for one crucial detail that makes all the difference: this will be the first time humans have made a soft landing of a spacecraft on the far side of the moon, a region which we have never explored before.

“As a part of a comprehensive robotic exploration campaign, you want to go to places you haven’t been before,” says John Logsdon, a space policy expert at George Washington University. “Going to the far side [of the moon] is, in a sense, the logical next step in the program. It’s an indication China is serious about having a comprehensive program of space exploration. It’s determined to be one of the leading space-faring countries.”

The fourth formal mission of the Chang’e program and the second robotic rover sent to the moon, Chang’e 4 is part of an extensive and ambitious effort by China to explore the moon like only NASA has before. And in some respects, the Chang’e program aims to to outdo U.S. efforts—hence the reason the latest spacecraft is dropping a rover off on the far side.

Although Pink Floyd has made it popular to think the far side is a world of perpetual blackness, it actually receives about as much sunlight as the side we can see. It’s just that the moon itself blocks the ability of anyone or anything located on the far side to communicate directly with Earth, which is why we’ve hardly attempted to observe it save for few images snapped by orbiters (and a crash landing by NASA’s Ranger 4 probe in 1962, which failed to return any useful scientific data).

The far side isn’t too different from the near side, but there are some physical differences that could shed light on the moon’s origin and history. It is home to much less maria (large basaltic plains formed by ancient volcanic activity which often appear dark) than the near side, as well as more visible craters. The exact reasons why are unknown, but Chang’e 4 will be tasked with analyzing chemical compositions of lunar rocks and soils and using ground-penetrating radar in an effort to find an explanation. The spacecraft is expected to land in the moon’s South Pole-Aiken basin, which is probably home to rocks that are quite different than the ones brought back to Earth during the Apollo program.

Beyond that, Chang’e 4 will also be tasked with measuring lunar surface temperatures, studying cosmic rays, and observing the behavior of coronal mass ejections expelled by the sun toward Earth. The weirdest and most exciting thing is that the lander is also carrying a student experiment—a miniature, protected biosphere home to silkworm eggs as well as potato and mustard seeds. The aim is to grow those lifeforms using natural sunlight, as a way to study respiration and photosynthesis on the moon.

Some of the technologies Chang’e 4 is testing might pave the way to future space exploration in the region and elsewhere. The rugged topography of the South Pole-Aitken basin means China has to attempt a steeper-than-usual landing, so Chang’e 4’s descent will demonstrate some real prowess.

More importantly, China is planning to circumvent the far side’s communications obstacles through Queqiao, a satellite launched earlier this year and placed in an Earth-moon orbital zone called L2. That kind of technology isn’t exactly a stretch of the imagination, but it may be a valuable test for how to establish larger communications efforts not just at the moon, but on other worlds like Mars as well. “The fact that China is beginning to build a lunar communications infrastructure is notable,” says Logsdon.

Like NASA under its current leadership, China certainly has its eye set on sending astronauts to the moon relatively soon. Chang’e 4 is not a direct part of those plans, but there’s no question it is something of a step forward for the country’s ambitions to send taikonauts to the moon in the 2030s timeframe.

“When we start to return humans to the moon, I think the odds are overwhelming that it will be to the side facing the Earth,” Logsdon says. “In the long scheme of things, if humans return to the moon, they’ll want to to go to the whole sphere. The information Chang’e 4 will have gathered will by then be relevant to humans.” Still, he cautions, “that’s relatively far in the future.”

But the mission is nevertheless a reflection of why the U.S. ought to keep close tabs on China if it plans to maintain leadership in lunar spaceflight and exploration. Logsdon says it’s worth noting how the Chinese set out their plans, execute them, and almost never change them in the process—quite the stark contrast to the multiple pivots the U.S. space program can undergo thanks to changes in the White House, who’s leading Congress, how much money members of the government are willing to devote to space activities, and efforts to leverage opportunities opened up by the rise of the commercial sector.

Just a little over two years ago, NASA had absolutely no plans to send humans back to the surface of the moon, and was firmly set on advancing a path Mars. That’s certainly not the case today. China, on the other hand, has never much wavered on its intentions and plans. It’s a safe bet to take them at their word and expect they’ll do as they say.

And that certainly makes sense—it’s a regime that can operate more quickly and efficiently, but without accountability and oversight. For all of the headaches produced by NASA’s recent directive to return us to the moon, at least it’s happening under the direction of leadership that has to answer to the American public. “China doesn’t have to have Congressional appropriations, after all,” says Logsdon. “I think it reflects the authoritarian nature of the society. I don’t think we want to imitate that.”

Still, a soft landing on the far side of the moon will be a first-of-a-kind achievement that may very well lead to more of the same. The pursuits of this mission “have never been done before,” says Logsdon. “More power to China for being willing to try it.”

Written By Neel V. Patel

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NASA is preparing for future space missions by exploring underwater volcanoes off Hawaii

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NASA is preparing for future space missions by exploring underwater volcanoes off Hawaii

Humans have been exploring the cosmos for nearly 60 years, but in all that time we haven’t found evidence of life in our solar system, outside of our own planet. Scientists still think other lifeforms might be out there, but some of the best possible habitats are hidden below thick crusts of ice on moons like Europa and Enceladus. Planned planetary missions like Europa Clipper and possible future missions to Enceladus could look for evidence of habitability, or maybe even microbial life in the oceans beneath those crusts, but before we arrive at these alien worlds to determine their habitability, NASA needs to better understand what these environments might be like. As it turns out, one of the best places to do this is right here on Earth.

Nearly two and a half miles under the surface of the water, the volcanic seafloor of Hawaii will soon host a new NASA mission called SUBSEA (Systematic Underwater Biogeochemical Sea Science and Exploration Analog). Its goal is to explore the habitability of the Lō`ihi seamount off the coast of the Big Island as an analog for icy moons like Enceladus.

Space on Earth

In order to thoroughly explore the region, SUBSEA will operate off of a ship called Nautilus where it will deploy two submarine-type remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) called Hercules and Argus. “We’re going to be examining this from the standpoint of understanding ocean sciences in general, but also because it offered a really good analog to other potential hydrothermal systems at places like Enceladus and Europa,” says Dr. Darlene Lim, Principal Investigator of SUBSEA.

The Nautilus was set to embark on its scientific missions late last week, but was delayed by the encroaching Hurricane Lane. It’s now in transit to the underwater volcano, and you can follow along with Dr. Lim and the Nautilus by watching livestreams from the ship here or below once the scientific mission gets underway.

When the Cassini spacecraft flew through the plumes of Enceladus, it smelled, tasted and analyzed the chemical composition of the water, even pinpointing the probable temperature of the source of the plumes. “We’ve used the deep ocean as an analog for other ocean systems in our solar system,” says Lim, “but many times the analogs that have been used have been mid oceanic ridge systems like black smokers and a lot of people have that come to mind when they think of deep ocean vents.”

But the catch with these black smokers—underwater chimneys that release iron sulfide—is that their temperatures linger around 700 degrees Fahrenheit and according to Cassini data the likely temperature for Enceladus plumes are around 300 degrees Fahrenheit. This is not an ideal match. Luckily, at Lō`ihi there are white smokers (these release barium, calcium and silicon which make these particular vents white) whose temperatures stay around 392 degrees. As a bonus, the underwater pressure where they’re located in Hawaii is expected to be similar to pressure that a mission might experience at Enceladus.

That’s not all that Earth and Enceladus have in common. White smokers on Earth create a chemical known as molecular hydrogen, and just this year NASA announced that before the Cassini spacecraft ended its mission, it detected molecular hydrogen in the plumes of Enceladus. Lim says, “Data like this helps build the case that similar processes are likely happening in both locations.”

Searching for life

Deep sea exploration might conjure images of anglerfish, tubeworms and bioluminescent creatures out of your nightmares, but hydrothermal vents like those found in this region of the seafloor are more likely to harbor different kinds of microbial life than these surreal beings. Since life on the icy moons in our solar system could resemble those microbes, researchers are interested in knowing more about these deep water communities.

During its three week mission, the ship’s two ROVs will drift down 2.4 miles below the water’s surface to study the interactions between the water and the rocks at the volcano. These specific conditions yield life here on Earth, and could be doing the same in the solar system. “We want to study the water/rock interactions so we can begin to understand, ok, we have this kind of basalt interacting with this kind of water. This is what happens and that may be what is happening on Enceladus as well, ” says Lim. “ It’s not clear to what extent what type of microbial populations there are around the area. We’re still expecting an interesting diversity from the hydrothermal venting points.”

Both robotic vehicles will collect rock and water samples and allow the team to study the geology of the area through the eyes of planetary scientists for the first time. By collecting this kind of data at Lō`ihi, the SUBSEA team can create models and hypothesise about what we might see at Enceladus and other icy moons believed to have hydrothermal systems on their ocean floors.

Preparing for Space

Searching for life at Lō`ihi isn’t all the SUBSEA team is setting out to do. They will be livestreaming their three week long mission as a way to study the inherent time latency built into deep space missions. There is only a couple second communication delay between Earth and the moon, but light has to travel 14 minutes one way to get to Mars and up to 90 minutes to get to Enceladus. These lags in data have to be accounted for when remotely operating a rover or maybe even a submarine. “Building up some foundational knowledge for how to explore in deep space is extremely exciting to me,” says Lim. “This is a high fidelity analog that we’re going to be using as a baseline for how decisions can get made using this low latency telepresence architectures. It will help us build teleoperations not only on Mars but for the moon, for asteroids and so forth.”

While the mission is taking place on a ship in Hawaii, the SUBSEA mission control is actually located in Rhode Island, a distance of over 5,000 miles. By live streaming the underwater cameras and data collection to the team across the globe, it will inherently build in a time delay. By testing out this system on Earth in this way, it will help inform other missions about how challenging data relay might be when it’s attempted off planet. If we can’t send high resolution video to another location on Earth for example, then how can we expect to do it at Mars? Since it is likely that a first human mission to Mars could include remotely operating a rover or scientific instrument of some kind from orbit, tests like these can help build out that much needed infrastructure, long before it’s needed on a mission to Enceladus.

Next year when the Nautilus heads back out to sea, Lim and her team will introduce a time delay to mimic the natural light-time delay between Earth and Mars though rounding it down to around 10 minutes instead of 14, just to gauge how many challenges arise.

“This mission is so exciting because one of the areas in our solar system that we may want to look at in terms of present day life are some of these ocean world systems,” says Dr. Lim. “So being able to use a terrestrial system as a mechanism to make some hypothesis come together about what might be possible at an ocean system is great and very exciting.”

Written By Shannon Stirone