Atomic Clocks

 



    The Critical Need For High Fidelity Atomic Clocks


    The Deep Space Atomic Clock, developed by NASA, may be the most stable atomic clock ever sent into space. But what exactly does it imply, and how do clocks relate to space navigation?


    • The planned launch date for a technological demonstration that may change the way humans explore space is June 24, 2019. 
    • The Deep Space Atomic Clock, developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, is a significant improvement over satellite-based atomic clocks that, for example, allow GPS on your phone.


    In the end, this new technology may allow spaceships to go to faraway places such as Mars on their own. But, first and foremost, what is an atomic clock? 

    What makes the Deep Space Atomic Clock unique is how it is utilized in space navigation. 




    What is the purpose of using clocks to travel in space?


    Navigators transmit a signal to a spacecraft to calculate its distance from Earth, which the spacecraft subsequently returns to Earth. 

    • Because the signal travels at a given speed, the time it takes to complete the two-way trip indicates the spacecraft's distance from Earth (the speed of light).
    • While it may seem difficult, most of us utilize this idea on a daily basis. It's possible that the food shop is a 30-minute walk from your home. 
    • You can calculate the distance to the shop if you know you can walk a mile in 20 minutes.

    Navigators can determine a spacecraft's trajectory: where it is and where it is going, by transmitting various signals and collecting several measurements over time.


    • Quartz crystal oscillators are utilized in almost all contemporary clocks, from wristwatches to satellites. 
    • When voltage is given to quartz crystals, they vibrate at a specific frequency, which is used in these devices. 
    • The crystal's vibrations work like a grandfather clock's pendulum, keeping track of how much time has passed.
    • Navigators require clocks with precise time resolution - clocks that can measure billionths of a second - to determine the spacecraft's location to within a meter.
    • Clocks that are very steady are also required by navigators. 

    "Stability" relates to how consistently a clock counts a unit of time; for example, the length of a second must be constant across days and weeks (to better than a billionth of a second).



    What are the connections between atoms and clocks?


    • Quartz crystal clocks aren't particularly steady by space navigation standards. 
    • Even the best-performing quartz oscillators may be off by a millisecond after just one hour (one billionth of a second). 
    • They may be wrong by a whole millisecond (one thousandth of a second), or 185 miles, after six weeks (300 kilometers). 
    • This would have a significant effect on determining the location of a rapidly moving spacecraft.


    To attain better stability, atomic clocks combine a quartz crystal oscillator with an ensemble of atoms. 

    After four days, NASA's Deep Space Atomic Clock will be off by less than a nanosecond, and after ten years, it will be off by less than a microsecond (one millionth of a second). 


    This is the equivalent of being one second off every ten million years.


    Atoms are made up of a nucleus (protons and neutrons) that is surrounded by electrons. 

    • On the periodic table, each element represents an atom with a specific number of protons in its nucleus. 
    • Although the number of electrons swarming about the nucleus may vary, they must all occupy distinct energy levels, or orbits.
    • An electron may ascend to a higher orbit around the nucleus after receiving a shock of energy in the form of microwaves. 


    To accomplish this leap, the electron must receive precisely the correct amount of energy - which means the microwaves must have a very particular frequency.


    • The energy needed to get electrons to shift orbits varies per element, but it is constant for all atoms of a particular element throughout the universe. 
    • For example, the frequency required to alter the energy levels of electrons in a carbon atom is the same for all carbon atoms in the universe. 
    • Mercury atoms are used in the Deep Space Atomic Clock; a different frequency is required to cause those electrons to shift levels, and that frequency will be constant for all mercury atoms.
    • "It's really the essential element for atomic clocks because the energy difference between these orbits is such a precise and stable number," said Eric Burt, an atomic clock scientist at JPL. 
    • "It's because of this that atomic clocks can outperform mechanical clocks."


    The ability to detect this constant frequency in a specific atom provides science with a universal, uniform time measurement. 


    • The number of waves that travel through a given location in space in a given unit of time is referred to as "frequency."
    • It is therefore feasible to estimate time by counting waves.
    • In reality, the frequency required to have electrons jump between two particular energy levels in a cesium atom determines the official measurement of a second.


    The frequency of the quartz oscillator is converted into a frequency that is applied to a group of atoms in an atomic clock. 


    • Many electrons in the atoms will shift energy levels if the calculated frequency is accurate. 
    • There will be much fewer electrons jumping if the frequency is wrong. 
    • This will establish whether and how much the quartz oscillator is off-frequency. 
    • The quartz oscillator may then be steered back to the proper frequency using a "correction" defined by the atoms. 

    The Deep Space Atomic Clock calculates and applies this kind of adjustment to the quartz oscillator every few seconds.



    What makes the Deep Space Atomic Clock special?


    Onboard the GPS satellites that circle the Earth, atomic clocks are employed, although even these need to be updated twice a day to counteract the clocks' inherent drift. 

    Those updates are provided by more reliable atomic clocks on the ground, which are enormous (typically the size of a refrigerator) and not built to withstand the physical rigors of space travel.


    NASA's Deep Space Atomic Clock is designed to be the most stable atomic clock ever flown in space, up to 50 times more reliable than the atomic clocks on GPS satellites. 


    • Mercury ions are used to produce this stability.
    • Ions are atoms that are not electrically neutral but have a net electric charge. 
    • Atoms are confined in a vacuum chamber in any atomic clock, and in certain of those clocks, atoms interact with the vacuum chamber walls. 
    • Changes in the environment, such as temperature, will induce comparable changes in the atoms, resulting in frequency inaccuracies. 
    • Because the mercury ions have an electric charge, they may be confined in an electromagnetic "trap" to avoid this interaction, enabling the Deep Space Atomic Clock to reach a new degree of accuracy.

    Such accuracy makes autonomous navigation feasible with little communication to and from Earth for missions traveling to distant destinations like Mars or other planets, which is a significant advance over how spacecraft are presently guided.


    General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems of Englewood, Colorado supplied the spacecraft for the Deep Space Atomic Clock. It is supported by NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate's Technology Demonstration Missions program and NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate's Space Communications and Navigations program. The project is overseen by JPL.


    ~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan


    Courtesy - NASA.gov


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    Deep Space Atomic Clocks - Spacecraft Autonomy




    The technological demonstration marks a major milestone in the development of robotic explorer navigation and the functioning of GPS satellites.


    To figure out where they are and where they're heading, spacecraft that go beyond our Moon communicate with base stations on Earth. 

    NASA's Deep Space Atomic Clock is trying to give far-flung astronauts greater navigational autonomy. 


    The expedition announces success in its effort to enhance the capacity of space-based atomic clocks to measure time reliably over extended periods of time in a new article published today in the journal Nature.


    • This characteristic, known as stability, has an effect on the functioning of GPS satellites that help people navigate on Earth, thus this research may help next-generation GPS spacecraft become more autonomous.
    • Engineers transmit signals from the spacecraft to Earth and back to determine the course of a faraway spacecraft. 
    • On the ground, they employ refrigerator-sized atomic clocks to record the timing of those signals, which is crucial for accurately calculating the spacecraft's location. 
    • However, for robots on Mars or at farther locations, waiting for the signals to complete the journey may take tens of minutes or even hours.
    • Those spacecraft could compute their own location and orientation if they carried atomic clocks, but the clocks would have to be very reliable. 


    To assist us get to our destinations on Earth, GPS satellites contain atomic clocks, which must be updated many times a day to maintain the required degree of stability. 


    • More reliable space-based clocks would be required for far space missions.
    • The Deep Space Atomic Clock has been running onboard General Atomic's Orbital Test Bed spacecraft since June 2019, and is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. 
    • According to the latest research, the mission team established a new record for long-term atomic clock stability in space, surpassing the stability of existing space-based atomic clocks, including those on GPS satellites, by more than ten times.


    Each Nanosecond Is Mission Critical


    All atomic clocks have some level of instability, resulting in a difference between the clock's time and the real time. 

    • If not rectified, the offset, although little at first, quickly grows, and in spacecraft navigation, even a minor offset may have significant consequences.


    One of the primary objectives of the Deep Space Atomic Clock mission was to track the clock's stability over time. 


    • After more than 20 days of operation, the team reports a level of stability that results in a time variation of fewer than four nanoseconds, according to the new study.
    • According to Eric Burt, an atomic clock physicist for the project at JPL and co-author of the new study, “an error of one nanosecond in time equates to a distance uncertainty of approximately one foot.” 
    • “To maintain this degree of stability, certain GPS clocks must be refreshed multiple times a day, which implies GPS is heavily reliant on ground connection. 
    • The Deep Space Atomic Clock can extend this out to a week or more, providing an application like GPS a lot more autonomy.”


    The new paper's stability and subsequent time delay are approximately five times better than the team's last report from the spring of 2020. 


    • This is an improvement in the team's measurement of the clock's stability, not in the clock itself. 
    • Longer operational durations and almost a year's worth of extra data allowed them to increase their measurement accuracy.



    The Deep Space Atomic Clock mission will end in August, but NASA announced that work on the technology will continue: 


    • The Deep Space Atomic Clock-2, a better version of the cutting-edge timekeeper, will fly to Venus on the VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy) mission. 
    • The new space clock, like its predecessor, is a technology demonstration, which means its aim is to improve in-space capabilities by creating sensors, hardware, software, and other technologies that don't exist now. 
    • The ultra-precise clock signal produced by this technology, developed by JPL and supported by NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD), may aid autonomous spacecraft navigation and improve radio scientific observations on future missions.


    “NASA's choice of Deep Space Atomic Clock-2 for VERITAS testifies to this technology's promise,” said Todd Ely, principle investigator and project manager for the Deep Space Atomic Clock at JPL. 

    “On VERITAS, we want to put this next-generation space clock to the test and show how it may be used for deep space navigation and science.”



    General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems of Englewood, Colorado supplied the spacecraft for the Deep Space Atomic Clock. 


    It is supported by NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program and STMD's Technology Demonstration Missions program at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. 

    The project is overseen by JPL.


    ~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan


    Courtesy - NASA.gov


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    NASA Asteroid Missions


    Asteroid day is celebrated every day at NASA. We are constantly gazing to the sky, from expeditions to asteroids in our solar system – some of which even return samples to Earth – to attempts to locate, track, and monitor near-Earth objects and safeguard our planet from possible impact dangers.


    Several ambitious missions to investigate unusual asteroids will be launched in the coming years. 


    In October and November 2021 NASA will be launching, 




      • Lucy is the Trojan Asteroids' First Mission
      • These primordial entities may contain crucial insights about the solar system's past, as well as the beginnings of biological stuff on Earth.



      • NASA has entrusted the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission to the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), with assistance from several NASA centers including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Johnson Space Center (JSC), Glenn Research Center (GRC), and Langley Research Center (LaRC).
      • DART is a planetary defense-driven test of technology aimed at preventing an asteroid from colliding with Earth. DART will be the first time a kinetic impactor will be used to alter an asteroid's velocity in space. 
      • The DART project is now in Phase C, directed by APL and administered by Marshall Space Flight Center for NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office and the Science Mission Directorate's Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC, under NASA's Solar System Exploration Program.


    Followed by,



      • The Psyche mission will go to a rare metal asteroid that orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. 
      • The asteroid Psyche is unusual in that it seems to be the exposed nickel-iron core of an early planet, one of our solar system's building components.


      • OSIRIS-REx has arrived at the near-Earth asteroid Bennu and is bringing back a tiny sample for examination. 
      • The mission took off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on September 8, 2016. 
      • In 2018, the spacecraft arrived on Bennu, and in 2023, it will return a sample to Earth.




      • It has verified infrared sightings of over 39,100 objects in our solar system to far.
      • From December 2009 to February 2011, NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) was a NASA infrared-wavelength astronomical space telescope. 
      • The spacecraft was revived in September 2013, renamed NEOWISE, and given a new mission: to help NASA in identifying and characterizing the population of near-Earth objects (NEO).


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    International Space Station Sun Transit



    The International Space Station, which has a crew of seven onboard, is silhouetted in this composite picture created from seven frames as it transits the Sun at approximately five miles per second on Friday, June 25.


    Image Credit & Courtesy of: NASA.gov / Joel Kowsky


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    Mars Robotics - Robotic Exploration of Mars



    NASA's Mars Exploration Program (MEP) is managed by JPL. For many years, this program has been conducting a series of robotic missions to investigate Mars. 


    • The success of the Mars Pathfinder, Mars Exploration Rover, and Mars Science Laboratory missions has shown that autonomous rovers can effectively and efficiently explore the surface of Mars and collect scientific data in small regions. 
    • As a consequence, the MEP has created an ambitious long-term strategy for in situ exploration based on a consensus among top Mars scientists. 
    • The hunt for past or current life on Mars is the highest priority objective. 


    For instance, a JPL website addresses the question, “Why Explore Mars?” 


    • Mars has the most pleasant environment in the solar system after Earth. 
    • It was once so welcoming that it might have supported primitive, bacteria-like life. =
    • Outflow channels and other geologic structures on Mars' surface offer sufficient evidence that liquid water flowed billions of years ago. 
    • Although liquid water may exist deep under Mars' surface, the temperature is presently too low and the atmosphere is too thin for liquid water to exist at the surface. 

    What caused the climate on Mars to change? 

    Were the prerequisites for the emergence of life ever exist on Mars? 

    Is it possible that microorganisms in the subsurface are still living today? 

     

    These are the kinds of questions that motivate us to go to Mars. 

    Mars' environment has clearly cooled significantly.... 



    We must initially ask the following questions when we begin to explore the cosmos and seek for planets in other solar systems: 


    Is there evidence of life on another planet in our solar system? 

    What are the bare minimum requirements for the emergence of life? 


    Four topics were prioritized by the Mars Exploration Program 


    1. Look for traces of a previous existence. 
    2. Investigate hydrothermal environments. (The chances of finding evidence of past and current life have considerably increased.) 
    3. Look for the current moment. 
    4. Investigate the development of Mars. 


    The hunt for proof of previous life was the main short-term aim. If hydrothermal vents were identified (which they haven't yet), the search would be narrowed down to those areas. 

    The hunt for current life would “follow on from previous orbiting or landing missions discovering that current Mars conditions have the capacity to sustain life.” 

    Only if the... presently accepted theories for Mars' climatic history are wrong will the subject of Martian evolution be highlighted. 


    If future missions show that there is no convincing evidence of wet conditions on ancient Mars involving standing bodies of water, as has been interpreted from orbital remote sensing to date, the program's current focus on the search for surface habitats will be lowered significantly — unless, of course, liquid water is discovered on or near the surface of Mars today. 

    With this unexpected finding would arise the conundrum of how the terrestrial planets developed so differently, despite their striking resemblance. 

    Liquid water, on the other hand, is unstable at Mars' surface temperatures and pressures. 

    As a result, standing pools of liquid water cannot exist on or near Mars' surface. 

    Liquid water might theoretically exist far under the surface, where temperatures are greater, and liquid water under pressure could sometimes rush up to the top owing to a subterranean event, where it would rapidly freeze. 

                                                                    

    The loss mechanisms and sinks for water and CO2 on Mars would be studied throughout time, as well as comparisons of the parallels and differences between the three terrestrial planets: 


    Venus, Earth, and Mars. More than 130 terrestrial and planetary scientists gathered at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to study early Mars. 

    The report's primary topic was the hunt for life on Mars. In their 26-page study, the term "life" appears 119 times, or almost five times each page. 

    According to the report's introduction, "perhaps the single most compelling reason scientists find this early period of Martian geologic history so compelling is that its dynamic character may have given rise to conditions suitable for the development of life, the creation of habitable environments for that life to colonize, and the subsequent preservation of evidence of those early environments in the geologic record." 



    “Did life emerge on early Mars?” was listed as one of the three “top scientific questions linked to early Mars.” 

    “The issue of Martian life contains basically three fundamental aspects,” the study continues. 



    • The first was the idea that Mars might have had its own separate genesis of life. 
    • The second was the possibility of life developing on one planet and then being transported to another via impact ejection and gravitational capture (i.e., panspermia). 
    • The third looked at the possibility of life on Mars having survived and developed after its first appearance. The study goes on to say that “how life starts anyplace remains a basic unsolved mystery,” and that “the closeness of Earth and Mars raises uncertainty as to whether Earth and Mars had genuinely separate beginnings of life.” 


    Microorganisms may have been transferred between the two worlds as a result of meteoritic collisions, such as those that brought Martian meteorites to Earth. 

    In the distant geologic past, impact events were much more common and significant, including at the time when life started on Earth. 

    As a result, it's impossible to say if the finding of life on Mars entails the discovery of a genuinely separate genesis of life. 

    Because liquid water is thought to be a required (but not sufficient) prerequisite for life to develop from inanimate materials, the Mars scientific community puts a high priority on finding evidence of liquid water's previous effect on the surface (it cannot exist there under present conditions). 

    The hunt for evidence of previous circumstances that might have supported life on Mars is still a major focus of the mission. 


    The key issue for Mars exploration, according to the MEP, is: Is there life on Mars? 


    Among the many discoveries we've made about Mars, one stands out above the rest: 

    the possibility of liquid water on Mars, either in the distant past or now in the subsurface. 

    Water is essential because life exists nearly everywhere on Earth where there is water. 

    If Mars previously had liquid water, and if it still does now, it's intriguing to speculate about whether microscopic life might have evolved on its surface. 



    Is there any proof of life on the earth in the past? 

    Is it possible that any of these small live organisms survive today? 


    Consider how thrilling it would be to say, "Yes!" 


    • The first science goal is to find out whether life has ever existed on Mars. 
    • NASA will need to undertake multiple missions over the next several decades to determine if life ever existed on Mars. 
    • Similarly, the hunt for life lies at the heart of NASA's exploration of other planets in the solar system and beyond. 
    • A hunt for life on Titan, Saturn's moon, and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) using radio telescopes are among them. 

    The focus on life in the NASA community has swayed a number of otherwise competent and even prominent scientists to develop programs, papers, and reports to analyze, hypothesize, and imagine the possibility of liquid water and life on other planetary bodies, with a particular focus on Mars—and the press has exaggerated these occasional musings. 

    Mars scientists are under a lot of pressure to discover implications for water and life in their research. 


    An interesting article reports on an interview with Steve Squyres, the project scientist for the Mars Exploration Rovers mission. 


    The following are two extracts from the article: 

    According to reports, Squyers believes the rovers would provide answers to two questions: 

    "Are we alone in the universe?" and "How did life come to be?" 


    Most significantly, they've discovered signs of water on Mars. There is life where there is water. It's hard to believe Squyres really stated this. 


    How can the media say such ludicrous things? 

    What proof is there that a planet with liquid water had life at some point? 

    Isn't it possible to tell the difference between essential and sufficient? 

    Although water is essential for life, is it sufficient? 

    There is no proof that it is. And who in their right mind thinks the MER rovers will provide a solution to the issue of how life forms? 


    This isn't science at all. It's the worst kind of pseudoscience. 

    In regular news releases ascribed to renowned and competent space experts, the Internet is full with crazy erroneous claims. 


    P.S ~ When did science go from proving hypotheses with measurements, cautious understated conclusions, and carefully verifying ideas before going public—to wild untested statements, baseless claims, and repeated press releases reporting nonsense?


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    Mars Exploration And The Search For Life



    The Apollo human trips to the Moon must be considered one of mankind's greatest technical accomplishments, especially given the rudimentary electronics available at the time. 


    • That was undoubtedly the pinnacle of NASA's accomplishments. 
    • Since then, NASA has been debating what should happen next in terms of people in space.
    • There seems to have been a strong desire to get humans into space, which led to the creation of the Space Shuttle. 



    While it is true that any human mission in space requires access, the problems with the Shuttle were that, 

    (i) the development and operation of the Shuttle required so much funding that there wasn't much left over to support what humans would do once they did get access to space, and 

    (ii) the Shuttle's reliability deteriorated over time, until the main goal seemed to be merely to land sat. 



    Following the Shuttle, NASA began on the Space Station, which, like the Shuttle, proved to be a money drain while delivering even less value. 

    Michael Griffin was the NASA Administrator at the time, and his perspective aligned with Robert Zubrin's: 


    • The NASA budget allocates funding to its constituencies for technology development in the belief that if enough technical work is done, the building blocks for missions will be available (Zubrin 2014). 
    • As Zubrin put it, "technology and hardware components are created in accordance with the desires of different technical groups" under this manner. 


    These initiatives are therefore justified by the premise that they may be helpful in the future when large-scale flying programs are restarted. 


    • In theory, if executed intelligently and successfully, this method has considerable value. 
    • However, we know from experience that establishing and maintaining a link between technology development and mission requirements is difficult. 



    Furthermore, the requirement to connect technology to particular objectives may suffocate innovation and hinder development on higher-paying technologies. 


    • Griffin, unlike his predecessors, was committed to what Zubrin referred to as the Apollo Mode: first, a destination for human space travel is selected. 
    • After that, a strategy for achieving the goal is devised. Following that, technologies and designs are created to put the strategy into action. 
    • The mission is then flown once these designs have been constructed. 


    Griffin's strategy was to choose a particular destination and devote a significant portion of NASA's budget to developing technologies to get there. 


    • By rapidly phasing out the Shuttle and the Space Station and diverting NASA Center technology money to shorter-term initiatives directly meeting the requirements of his destination-driven mission idea, his goal was to establish a pool of resources inside NASA for executing his vision. Griffin made the decision to return to the Moon. 
    • He most likely postponed a trip to Mars because the finances were just not available. 


    An interview with Griffin may provide some insight into Griffin's thoughts (2010). 


    • He said in the interview that the Obama administration's strategy "does not bring us out beyond low Earth orbit in a timely and efficient manner." 
    • Transporting people to the Moon, he said, was an essential step toward ultimately sending humans to Mars. 
    • He also said that "the Moon is fascinating in and of itself." “I believe the experience of learning how to live on another planet just three days from home is extremely valuable...” he said. 
    • Griffin's objective, however, was not able to be realized due to a lack of funding in the NASA budget. 
    • Griffin's Constellation project was hampered by continued funding for the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. 



    Furthermore, after further consideration, the benefit of returning to the Moon seemed to be extremely speculative. 

    President Barack Obama canceled the Constellation program in 2010, and NASA seems to have returned to a constituency-driven model since then. 

     

    While NASA has made some crazy promises about sending people to Mars in the 2030s, beautiful PowerPoint slides do not seem to be enabling for this trip. 


    • How, where, and when life emerged from inorganic materials is an unanswered question. 
    • One fundamental piece of information we have is that life lived on Earth in a rudimentary form over 3 billion years ago (BYA). 
    • This was discovered in dated strata using fossil remnants of early forms of life. 


    What was the method through which lifeless matter gave birth to life in its earliest stages? 

    Is there life beyond the solar system or somewhere in the solar system? 



    All of these issues are subordinate to the main question: 


    • Is the emergence of life from inanimate matter a probable (or perhaps predictable) process given enough time, a warm environment, liquid water, and a scattering of chemical elements from the lower periodic table? 
    • Some scientists have used logic and creativity to concoct a broad range of possible scenarios for the emergence of life, many of which are based on little evidence. 


    To this writer, they seem to be extremely questionable. 


    • Science despises the lack of solutions to critical problems, just as nature despises a vacuum. 
    • As a consequence, scientists have come up with a variety of "explanations" for how life started.
    • There are many articles on livable worlds. Surely, there must be a large number in the different galaxies. But the issue isn't whether there are livable planets; there are. 



    What is the likelihood that life would emerge spontaneously on such a planet? 


    • The commonly held idea seems to be that any planetary body with enough heat, water, and a few components would spontaneously develop life. 
    • Given this viewpoint, Mars seems like an obvious location to look for alien life. 



    As a result, NASA's exploration missions are primarily focused on looking for life on Mars. 

    But how likely is it that life will develop on such a planet?

    Is NASA looking for an ephemeral fantasy with a very little chance of occurring?


    ~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan


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    Is NASA On The Lookout For Aliens?





      The hunt for extraterrestrial life is one of NASA's main objectives. 


      NASA has yet to discover any convincing evidence of alien life, but it has long been investigating the solar system and beyond to help us answer basic issues such as whether we are alone in the cosmos. 

      The astrobiology program of the agency studies the origins, development, and dispersion of life beyond Earth. 

      NASA's scientific missions are working together to discover unambiguous evidence of life beyond Earth, from investigating water on Mars to exploring potential "oceans worlds" like Titan and Europa, to searching for biosignatures in the atmospheres of our cosmic neighborhood and planets beyond our solar system. 



      Is there a chance that life exists anywhere else than Earth? 



      There is a chance, if not a certainty, that life exists somewhere other than Earth. Science is motivated by a desire to learn more about the unknown - yet science is ultimately based on evidence, and alien life has yet to be discovered. We will, however, continue our search. 



      Do intelligent extraterrestrials exist? 


      There is no known evidence for sentient life elsewhere, intelligent or otherwise, based on study at the SETI Institute, examination of Martian meteorites, new discoveries of methane inside the Mars atmosphere, and other similar investigations. 

      The hunt for life in the cosmos, on the other hand, is one of NASA's main objectives. 

      NASA is in charge of the US government's hunt for alien life, whether it's here on Earth, on the planets and moons of our solar system, or farther out in space. 



      How does NASA go about looking for life? 


      The hunt for life at NASA is complex. The research approach for NASA's astrobiology program focuses on three fundamental questions: 


        • What is the origin of life and how does it progress? 
        • Is there life somewhere else in the universe? 
        • What methods do we use to look for life in the universe? 

      • Astrobiologists have discovered a plethora of hints to these major issues during the last 50 years. In addition to utilizing missions like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and the Hubble Space Telescope to look for habitable exoplanets, NASA's hunt for life involves using the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and the Hubble Space Telescope. 
      • Missions such as the forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope will look for biosignatures in the atmospheres of other planets - finding oxygen and carbon dioxide in other planets' atmospheres, for example, may indicate that an exoplanet supports plants and animals in the same way as ours does. 



      Is NASA on the lookout for technosignatures? 


      Technosignatures are a kind of biosignature that is defined as any observable indication of living or dead organisms. 

      • Technosignatures are technological indicators that may be used to infer the presence of intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos, such as narrow-band radio transmissions or pulsed laser searches for alien intelligence. 


      The terms SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) and technosignatures are often used interchangeably. 


      • NASA funds technosignatures research, but not ground-based radio-telescope searches, owing to NASA's policy of supporting astrophysical research using space-based assets. 
      • NASA also sponsored a Topical Workshops, Symposia, and Conference to create a research agenda to prioritize and direct future theoretical and observational investigations of non-radio technosignatures, as well as to produce a publishable report that can be used to start creating a technosignatures library. 

      Given that a planet may support life for billions of years before intelligent life evolves to create technology that can be detected from other solar systems – our own planet, for example, has only been creating detectable technosignatures for a little over a century – we have a much better chance of finding life if we look for other biosignatures instead of just technosignatures. 



      Is NASA looking for or studying UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena)?


      NASA does not go out of its way to look for UAPs. NASA, on the other hand, gathers significant data about Earth's atmosphere via our Earth-observing satellites, frequently in cooperation with other international space organizations. 


      • While these data are not intentionally gathered to detect UAPs or extraterrestrial technosignatures, they are publicly accessible and anybody may scan the atmosphere with them. 
      • While NASA does not actively look for UAPs, if they are discovered, it will offer up new scientific topics to investigate. 
      • Scientists from the atmosphere, aerospace, and other fields may all contribute to a better understanding of the phenomena. 


      Exploring the unknown in space is fundamental to our identity.


      Courtesy: NASA.gov


      ~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

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      How Does NASA's Perseverance Rover Take Selfies On Mars?



        The historic photo of the rover next to the Mars Helicopter turned out to be one of the most difficult rover selfies ever shot. 




        The procedure is explained in detail in this video, which also includes additional audio. 





        Have you ever wondered how rovers on Mars snap selfies? 


        NASA's Perseverance rover took the historic April 6, 2021, picture of itself alongside the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter in color video. 

        The sound of the arm's motors spinning was recorded by the rover's entry, descend, and landing microphone as an added bonus. 


        Engineers may use selfies to evaluate the rover's wear and tear. They do, however, inspire a new generation of space aficionados: 


        • Many members of the rover crew may recall a favorite picture that first piqued their interest in NASA. 
        • Vandi Verma, Perseverance's lead engineer for robotic operations at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, stated, "I got into this when I saw a photo from Sojourner, NASA's first Mars rover." 
        • Verma served as a driver for the agency's Opportunity and Curiosity rovers, and she was involved in the first selfie taken by Curiosity on Oct. 31, 2012. 
        • “We had no idea when we snapped that first selfie that these would become so iconic and routine,” she added. 
        • The rover's robotic arm twists and maneuvers to capture the 62 pictures that make up the image, as shown on video from one of Perseverance's navigation cameras. 
        • What it doesn't show is how much effort went into creating the first selfie. Let's take a deeper look. 






        Teamwork. 


        Perseverance's selfie was made possible by a core group of approximately a dozen individuals, including rover drivers, JPL engineers who conducted tests, and camera operations engineers who created the camera sequence, analyzed the pictures, and stitched them together. 


        It took approximately a week to plan out all of the necessary individual instructions. 

        • Everyone was working on “Mars time,” which meant being up in the middle of the night and catching up on sleep throughout the day (a day on Mars is 37 minutes longer than on Earth). 
        • These members of the crew would occasionally forego sleep in order to complete the selfie. JPL collaborated with Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) in San Diego, which designed and operated the selfie camera. 




        The camera, dubbed WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering), is intended for close-up detail pictures of rock textures rather than wide-angle images. 


        • Engineers had to order the rover to snap hundreds of separate pictures to create the selfie since each WATSON image only captures a tiny part of a scene. 
        • Mike Ravine, MSSS's Advanced Projects Manager, stated, "The thing that required the greatest care was putting Ingenuity into the proper position in the selfie." 

        “Considering how tiny it is, I think we did fairly well.” The MSSS image processing experts got to work as soon as the pictures from Mars arrived. 


        • They begin by removing any imperfections produced by dust that has collected on the light sensors of the camera. 
        • They next use software to combine the individual picture frames into a mosaic and smooth out the seams. 
        • Finally, an engineer warps and crops the mosaic to make it seem more like a standard camera picture that the general public is familiar with. 






        Simulations on a computer. 



        Perseverance, like the Curiosity rover (seen taking a selfie in this black-and-white video from March 2020), has a spinning turret at the end of its robotic arm. 


        • The WATSON camera, which remains focused on the rover during selfies while being tilted to record a portion of the landscape, is housed in the turret among other scientific equipment. 
        • The arm serves as a selfie stick in the final result, staying just out of frame. 
        • Perseverance is considerably more difficult to get to video its selfie stick in action than Curiosity. 
        • Perseverance's turret is 30 inches (75 centimeters) wide, compared to Curiosity's 22 inches (55 centimeters). 
        • That's the equivalent of waving a road bike wheel a few millimeters in front of Perseverance's mast, the rover's "head." 
        • JPL developed software to prevent the arm from colliding with the rover. 
        • The engineering team changes the arm trajectory every time a collision is detected in simulations on Earth; the procedure is repeated hundreds of times to ensure the arm motion is safe. 
        • The last instruction sequence brings the robotic arm as near to the rover's body as possible without touching it. 

        Other simulations are performed to verify that the Ingenuity helicopter is properly positioned in the final photo, or that the microphone can catch sound from the robotic arm's motors, for example. 





        Microphone Onboard




        Perseverance has a microphone in its SuperCam instrument in addition to its entrance, descent, and landing microphones. 


        • The microphones are a first for NASA's Mars mission, and audio will be a valuable new tool for rover engineers in the coming years. 
        • It may be used to give crucial information about whether something is functioning properly, among other things. 
        • Engineers used to have to make do with listening to a test rover on Earth. 


        “It's like your car: even if you're not a technician, you may hear an issue before you know there's a problem,” Verma said. 


        The humming engines sound strangely melodic when echoing through the rover's chassis, despite the fact that they haven't heard anything alarming thus yet. 





        More Information about the Mission. 



        • Astrobiology, particularly the hunt for evidence of ancient microbial life, is a major goal for Perseverance's mission on Mars. 
        • The rover will study the planet's geology and climatic history, lay the path for human exploration of Mars, and be the first mission to gather and store Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust). 
        • Following NASA missions, in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), spacecraft would be sent to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for further study. 


        The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA's Moon to Mars exploration strategy, which includes Artemis lunar missions to assist prepare for human exploration of Mars. 


        The Perseverance rover was constructed and is operated by JPL, which is administered for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California. 



        For additional information about Perseverance, go to: 

        mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/ 

        nasa.gov/perseverance


        Courtesy: NASA.gov


        ~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

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