Scottish children make a new constellation

Posted: 1 July 2009

    Schoolchildren from Scotland have had a go at creating their own constellations for a competition as part of the International Year of Astronomy. Eight schools in Scotland took part, and each one was partnered with an important astronomical location in the country. For example, the Coupar Angus Primary School were teamed up with the Mills Observatory in Dundee, which is 65 years old. So the Coupar Angus Primary School were given the star Aldebaran, which is 65 light years away so its light that we see today left it around the same time the Mills Observatory was built. That’s because a light year is the distance that light can travel in one year.  

1st Prize - ‘Wee Sleekit Beastie ‘ by Laura, age 11, from the Dalmeny Primary School

      Anyway, once the schools had their stars, they had to use that star as a starting point to design their own constellations (constellations are patterns of stars that we see in the sky, like Orion). The winning entry was by Laura, a year 7 pupil at Dalmeny Primary School in Edinburgh, who created the constellation of the Mouse (‘Wee Sleekit Beastie’, or ‘Ode to a Mouse’). She said, “Science is fun and extremely fascinating. There is so much to learn. Astronomy is my main interest now and I will stick with it for life I hope.”
      Other constellations that the children created were ‘Mermida the Mermaid’, an upside down elephant called ‘Lost in the Jungle’ and ‘Seraurora, the Whisperer of Lights’ to represent the Northern Lights.

2nd prize 'Mermida' by Laura, age 9, from Lauder Primary School.

Equal 3rd prize - 'Lost in the Jungle' by Abdur, age 11, from Glendale Primary School.

Equal 3rd Prize - 'Seraurora, the Whisperer of Lights' by Ruby, age 12, from Broadford Primary School

You could have a go at creating your own constellation from the stars in the sky – would you name it after an animal, a person, a vehicle, or maybe even a cartoon or computer game character?

LCROSS will determine if any water ice exists in dark craters on the Moon.

You can watch a video of the launch and the rocket's journey into space on YouTube by clicking on the image above.

Back to the Moon

Posted: 19th June

     Last night two NASA missions lifted off on the same rocket and are now headed to the Moon to begin the biggest survey of our nearest neighbour yet. The missions are part of NASA's bigger plan to eventually return humans to the surface of the Moon to work and live there.

       The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) will create detailed maps of the Moon's surface to identify safe but scientifically interesting landing sites for future astronauts to visit. It will also collect information about the kind of radiation environment that the astronauts will have to work in – because the Moon has no atmosphere its surface is exposed to the harsh conditions of space.

     The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) will send a probe crashing into a shadowed crater at the south pole of the Moon, to see if the impact throws up any signs of water ice existing there. Water would be an essential resource for humans living on the Moon. LCROSS will perform its experiment in October this year.

     LRO will spend the next four days travelling to the Moon and once all of its instruments have been tested in space, it will spend roughly one year mapping the Moon's surface.

     NASA hopes that once humans can live and work on the Moon, we might even send humans on to Mars!

What would you say to an alien?

Posted: 15 May 2009

     What would you say if you could meet an alien? This is what scientists who work for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) wonder about each day. They search for messages from other alien civilisations, perhaps broadcast across the Galaxy by powerful radio transmitters, or encoded into a powerful laser beam that we can see from many light years away. We have never received a message from aliens, so we don’t know if they are out there, or if we are alone. However, if we did receive a message, what would we say in reply?
      Now SETI scientists are giving you the chance to submit your own message. You can find the ‘Earth Speaks’ project at http://messages.seti.org, where anybody from around the world can leave their own message for aliens. When you submit your message, you can give it a label saying what kind of message it is so the scientists can spot general themes amongst the hundreds of thousands of messages that the public will send in.

     If we did receive a message from aliens, it would probably have travelled many hundreds of light years. Because radio signals travel at the speed of light, it would take hundreds of years for any reply we send to reach them, and the same again for them to send a message back. That means any reply that we did send would have to be very concise and to the point, because the conversation would be very slow! Your messages won’t be beamed into space – at least not yet – because no one has decided whether we should reply to aliens if we ever received a signal from them. But who knows, if we do, maybe your message will be among those that we send in reply?

     So what would you say to aliens? Maybe ask them what their planet is like, or tell them a little bit about Earth, or yourself. Or you could ask if they play sports or watch TV like we do, and what games their children play. The list is endless – just use your imagination!

• In 1974 scientists beamed a message to the globular cluster M13, 25,000 light years away. The message was sent with the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, and told aliens about what we look like, and where they can find Earth. We have no idea if there is anyone living in M13 – it was just a random guess, and it will be 50,000 years before we get a reply!

• The two Voyager spacecraft launched in the 1970s carry gold records that have recorded on them music, sounds and greetings from people all over the Earth, just in case any aliens should stumble across the spacecraft. They also carry details on the record covers about where to find Earth.

• In 1977 a SETI scientist called Dr Jerry Ehman detected an unusual signal coming from outer space. It lasted for 72 seconds, and there was no message contained in the signal, and we don’t know where it came from. It has never been heard since. But Jerry was so amazed by it that it ended up being called the Wow! signal. We may never know whether it was a natural radio emission from space or a real alien signal.

• Unlike in Star Trek, aliens probably don’t speak English, or any of Earth’s many languages. So that might be a bit of a communication barrier! What do you think would be the best way to convey messages in a way that aliens might understand?

The Allan Telescope Array is a new set of radio telescopes that will scan space for signals from aliens. Image: SETI Institute.

This is the digital signal that scientists sent towards the globular star cluster M13 in 1977. It does look very primitive compared to today's digital technology! It is all in binary code. The first line at the top is just the numbers one to ten in binary code. The next three lines show details of atoms like oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and phosphorous, which help explain the next part of the message – a DNA double helix and the human genetic code. Then you can see a stick figure of a human being, a desciption of the Solar System below the human with Earth highlighted (the third square from the big 'Sun' square on the left) and then a picture of the Arecibo radio telescope that sent the signal at the bottom. Image: Frank Drake/Arecibo Observatory.

Up, up and away!

Posted: 12 May 2009

     Space shuttle Atlantis blasted off yesterday with seven astronauts onboard to fix the Hubble Space Telescope. Over eleven days and five dangerous spacewalks, the astronauts will attach a new camera and science instrument to Hubble, repair old cameras, put in new batteries and guidance sensors, and generally give Hubble a tuning up!
     One of the new cameras is called the Wide Field Camera 3, and will take amazing pictures of planets, stars, nebulae and galaxies. The other instrument is called the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph. What this will do is map the distribution of galaxies and gas across the Universe.
     The first spacewalk begins on the afternoon (UK time) of Thursday 14 May, and by the time all the spacewalks are complete and the repairs have been made, Hubble will be 70 times more sensitive than before. The repairs will also extend Hubble’s lifetime for another five years at least, until 2014 – that means that it should almost reach its 25th birthday in space (it was launched in 1990).
     This is the 126th space shuttle mission, but it will also be one of the last, because the shuttles are getting old and will be retired in a few years. This also means that this will be the last time that Hubble can be repaired because the space shuttle is the only vehicle that can fly all the way up to Hubble, over 480 kilometres high, and grab the telescope with its robotic arm.

Space shuttle Atlantis launched from the Kennedy Space Centre yesterday evening. Image: NASA.

Keep reading Starlight for more updates, and you can watch the spacewalks on NASA TV at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv.

If Spitzer Could Talk: An Interview with NASA's Coolest Space Telescope by NASA/JPL

Posted: 5th May

Interviewer: It's cold in here.
Spitzer: Sorry. Even though I'm warming up, I still need to be quite chilly for two of my infrared channels to continue working.
Interviewer: Why do infrared telescopes need to be cold?
Spitzer: Good question. Infrared light is produced by heat. So, engineers reduce my own heat to make sure that I'm measuring just the infrared light from the objects I'm studying. This is the same reason why I circle around the Sun, far behind Earth, and why I have big sun shields -- to keep cool.
Interviewer: Tell me, Spitzer, about what you consider to be your greatest discovery?
Spitzer: Probably my work on exoplanets, which are planets that orbit stars other than our sun. I hate to brag, but I was the first telescope to see actual light from an exoplanet. I was also the first to split that light up into a spectrum. Oh, sorry, there I go again with the techie talk. Light is made up of lots of different wavelengths in the same way that a rainbow is made up of different colours. I was able to split an exoplanet's light up into its various infrared wavelengths. This spectral information teaches us about planets' atmospheres.
Interviewer: What did you learn about the planets?
Spitzer: For one thing, I learned that the hot gas exoplanets, called "hot Jupiters," are not all alike. Some are wild, with temperatures as hot as fire and almost as cold as ice. Others are more even-keeled. I also created the first temperature map of an exoplanet, and watched a storm of colossal proportions brewing across the face of one bizarre exoplanet – it has an orbit that swings in really close to its star and then back out to about where Earth sits in our Solar System.
Interviewer: You seem to really like planets.
Spitzer: Well, you know, I wasn't even originally designed to see exoplanets! It was a complete surprise to me that I had this amazing ability. I can tell you that I do, and always will, have a thing for planetary discs. Because I have infrared eyes, I can see the warm and dusty planetary materials that swirl in discs around young stars. I can also see older discs littered with the remnants of planets. In fact, I've probably looked at thousands of discs so far. What's been fun is finding them around all sorts of oddball stars, such as those that are dead, doubled up as twins and even as small as planets. Bottom line is that the process of growing planets seems to happen quite easily all over the Galaxy, and perhaps the Universe.

Interviewer: Does that mean aliens could be everywhere?
Spitzer: I can't really give you a good answer for that. Yes, the studies of discs are showing us that rocky planets are common, but we don't know if the planets could have life. Also, keep in mind that, as of now, nobody has detected any planets that are just like Earth. These would be rocky worlds around stars like our Sun that have the right temperature for lakes and oceans. That job will most likely fall to NASA's Kepler mission, which will begin hunting for them soon.

Interviewer: Did you look at other objects besides discs and planets?
Spitzer: Oh yes, certainly. I have looked at comets in our Solar System, the farthest galaxies known, and everything in-between. I was really excited to find hundreds of hidden black holes billions of light-years away. Astronomers had known they were there because they shoot X-rays into space that can be detected as a diffuse glow. But the objects themselves were choked in dust. My infrared eyes, unlike your human eyes, can see through dust, so I was able to round up a lot of these missing black holes.
Interviewer: Is there any other discovery you want to mention?
Spitzer: There are too many to list, but I am particularly proud of this huge mosaic I took of a large swath of our Milky Way galaxy. It looks stunning when you print it out to poster size, and it's the best view ever of the bustling central portion of our Galaxy. You see, the middle of the Milky Way is hopping with stars and dust. It's chaos, and visible-light cannot escape. These observations not only look cool, they also helped astronomers remap the structure of our galaxy. The new map shows just two spiral arms of stars instead of four as previously believed. How crazy is that!
Interviewer: So what lies ahead?
Spitzer: Well, I'm really looking forward to the warm mission, because now that I have just two infrared channels working, I have more time to look at larger chunks of space for longer periods of time. I can help astronomers answer some really important "big picture" questions, which we didn't have time for before.
Interviewer: Can you list some specific projects you'll be working on?
Spitzer: I plan to continue studying exoplanets, including new "hot Jupiters" that Kepler is expected to find. I will also refine estimates of the rate at which our local Universe, or space, is expanding. And I will stare at the very distant Universe, trying to see some of the farthest objects possible. Oh, and I am also going to survey thousands of asteroids in our neck of the solar system, and get the first real estimate of their size distribution. This will tell us approximately how often big asteroids might come close to Earth.
Interviewer: That sounds scary.
Spitzer: Actually, this information will help us prepare for them. And NASA tracks near-Earth objects diligently. More information can only help.
Interviewer: Will you still take the pretty pictures?
Spitzer: You think my pictures are pretty? Thank you! Yes, I will still snap a lot of pictures. For instance, I will continue to probe cloudy star-forming regions in our Galaxy, which often make dramatic pictures.
Interviewer: Anything else you'd like to add?
Spitzer: My cool years have been more than I could ask for, and I look forward to more adventures to come. I'd also like to thank all of the scientists and engineers who have worked so hard to make my mission an ongoing success. And, if any of my fans out there want more info, they can go to www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer.

Mini brainiacs impress professional astronomers

Posted: 24 April 2009

     Starlight editors Keith and Emily were at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science this week, where professional astronomers from all over the world meet to discuss their research. This year had some special guests - the Mini Brainiacs - aged just 11 and 12, who presented their research on astroarcheology to the conference.

    Archeoastronomy is the study of how people in the past have understood the night sky. The audience learnt how to find the pole star, as well as how the stars in Orion's belt line up perfectly with the three pyramids at Gisa. We also heard about stone circles like Stonehenge and how the stones are used as compass points and to mark from which direction the Sun rises and sets.

     From scientists to journalists, after stopping for a video interview with Astronomy Now and Starlight, and to pose for photos with the Mars Rover prototype Bridget, the students joined members of the media in the EWASS press room to write up the day's events for the Newsround blog.

     The team of young scientists will be repeating their presentation in a longer allocated slot at 8pm on Tuesday 28 April at The Open Dome at the Clifton Campus of Nottingham Trent University.

The Mini Brainiacs in the Mars sandpit at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science conference held at the University of Hertfordshire earlier this week.

You can watch an interview with the Mini Brainiacs on You Tube. Just click the image above!

Image: NASA/ESA/M Livio/Hubble Heritage TEAM (STScI/AURA).

A team of astronauts are preparing to visit the Hubble Space Telescope next month, in order to carry out important maintainence work.

Hubble has a winner!

Posted: 7th April

    With help from your votes, the Hubble Space Telescope took this brilliant picture of three galaxies all huddled together during the 100 Hours of Astronomy event at the beginning of April.
    You might remember there was a contest held earlier this year to vote on what object you’d most like to see Hubble take a picture of. There were six to choose from in total, including galaxies, star-forming regions and planetary nebulae. In the end these galaxies, known together as Arp 274 (which means they are object number 274 in a catalogue of interesting galaxies by the astronomer Halton Arp) won, with 67,021 votes out of 140,000 cast in total.
     So what can we see in these galaxies? Two of them are spiral galaxies, a little bit like what our Milky Way looks like. The little one on the left looks like a dwarf galaxy, and is forming lots of stars, as is the blue spiral on the right. We can tell this because they have lots of blue light, and blue light comes from young, hot stars that have just formed. Yellow light comes from older stars. The two shining lights above the spiral galaxy on the right are foreground stars in our own Galaxy, which just happen to be in the way. They aren’t really that close to the galaxies in real life.
     Together, these three are 400 million light years away from Earth, which is a long, long way from here.

Telescopes at

the ready!

Posted: 27 March 2009

    Next week is the first of several special Moonwatch weeks organised by the Society for Popular Astronomy, a key event of the International Year of Astronomy (IYA).

    The IYA is celebrating 400 years of astronomy since Galileo Galilei and Thomas Harriot first used a telescope to look at the night sky.  Four centuries on, amateur and professional astronomers across the UK will help members of the public repeat those early observations but with modern telescopes.

     Spring Moonwatch runs from 28th March to 5th April, and there are also Autumn and Schools Moonwatch weeks (which will take place in October and November - we’ll remind you of those nearer the time!).

     As part of Moonwatch the Society for Popular Astronomy (SPA) gave away 1,000 telescopes to schools. But don’t worry if you didn’t get one, a pair of binoculars (or even your naked eyes) still gives a spectacular view of the Moon! Basic equipment makes it easier to see the craters, mountain chains and lava-filled basins that dominate the lunar landscape, though.
     Next week is ideal for studying the Moon because it changes its phase, starting as a crescent and ending with more than half the visible side illuminated (when it is described as ‘gibbous’). Throughout this time, the Sun will cast long shadows from lunar features, making is easier to see its rugged topography.

    For a complete guide to the Moonwatch weeks go to the SPA's dedicated website here.
 

The SPA's President Helen Walker shows schoolchildren how to use the free telescope that their school won as part of the IYA Telescopes for Schools project. Image: (c) National Maritime Museum.

The Moon goes through many phases over the course of the month!

Discovery streaks into the the evening Florida sky. Image: NASA.

Discovery blasts off!

Posted: 16th March

    The space shuttle Discovery roared into space at a quarter to midnight (GMT) last night from its launch pad at Cape Canaveral to fly seven astronauts to the International Space Station. The astronauts are going to do three space walks over the next ten days to attach a brand new array of solar panels to the space station. The solar panels are 13.7 metres long in total and, after Discovery has docked with the space station on Tuesday evening, the robot arms on the space station and the space shuttle will pick the solar panels out of Discovery’s cargo bay and get them ready for the astronauts to fasten the solar panels in place while on their space walks.
    Two of the astronauts, Joseph Acaba and Richard Arnold, used to be teachers and NASA has a scheme that trains teachers to become astronauts. They won’t be giving lessons in space though: the astronauts also need to replace the water recycling system on the space station. Yes, they even need plumbers in space!
You can follow all the updates of all the exciting events that happen while Discovery is in space both on here and by following us on Twitter. Or you can visit the official NASA website at:

http://www.nasa.gov/ to learn more about the mission, see more pictures and even watch a video of the shuttle launch.

The hunt for other Earths begins!

Posted: 9 March 2009

    NASA's Kepler mission successfully launched into space in the early hours of Saturday morning in order to begin its three and a half year quest to seek out other Earth-like planets in our Milky Way Galaxy.

    Since the 1990s, astronomers have known that planets can exist in other solar systems around other stars, but of the 342 extrasolar planets already known, most of them are giant gas planets like Jupiter. The Kepler mission is going to do what no planet hunting mission has ever done before, and that is to seek out small rocky planets like our own Earth, orbiting their stars at similar distances as the Earth orbits the Sun in our Solar System.

   Kepler will detect the exoplanets by monitoring the brightnesses of over 100,000 stars over the three and a half year mission. If the brightness of one of those stars dips periodically, then it might mean that a planet has crossed in front of the star, temporarily blocking its light. One of the mission scientists said that trying to detect Jupiter-size planets crossing in front of their stars is like trying to measure the effect of a mosquito flying by a car’s headlight, but that finding Earth-sized planets is like trying to detect a very tiny flea in that same headlight. So you can see that Kepler has a quite a challenge! But any result will tell us more about how common (or rare!) Earth-like planets are in the Universe.

    Stay tuned to hear more about mission as it progresses!

Kepler will help find out if there are any more Earth's in the Universe.

Kepler is only going to be looking at a tiny part of the sky, but it will still study over 100,000 stars to see if they host planets.

The new Hubble image will be taken in the first week of April and promises to reveal never-before-seen details in this spectacular galactic collision.

Hubble has a winner!

Posted: 3rd March

     Last month, the Hubble team invited the public to vote on a future observation to be made by the nation's favourite space telescope. Now the votes have been counted, the winner is revealed as this pair of interacting galaxies that look like they're shaking spiral arms!

     Out of the 139,944 people that voted, nearly 50 percent favoured the galaxy pair over the other five candidates. 

     Hubble has already shown that interacting galaxies are extremely complex. Their gravitational pull weaves lanes of dust and stars, and sometimes triggers the formation of new stars.

Choose Hubble's next discovery!

Posted: 29 January 2009

    As part of the International Year of Astronomy celebrations, NASA is giving everybody the chance to use the world's most famous space telescope to explore the sky and boldly look where the Hubble Space Telescope has never looked before.

     NASA is inviting people to vote for one of six candidate objects (shown right) which Hubble has not yet photographed. Hubble's camera will make a high resolution image to reveal brand new details about the winning object, and the image will be released during the International Year of Astronomy's "100 Hours of Astronomy" event scheduled to run from 2-5 April.

     To learn more about these objects and to cast your vote, visit http://YouDecide.Hubblesite.org

     Everyone who votes will also be entered into a random draw to receive one of 100 copies of the winning photograph.

Which one do you want to turn into a high-resolution colourful image? Cast your votes before 1 March.

The map of Mars shown above and below shows localised spots where the methane was detected. Red spots show the greatest amounts, through to blue and purple for the least amounts. The regions correspond to places where ice or flowing water was thought to exist in the past.

The combination of carbon dioxide, water and internal heat below the surface might be responsible for the methane plumes, but scientists aren't ruling out life yet.

A step closer to finding life on Mars?

Posted: 21 January 2009

    Scientists have detected methane in Mars' atmosphere that could be coming from life forms buried below the Martian surface. Though there could be other possible, non-biological processes responsible for the methane, it is the strongest clue to date that the red planet may not be a dead world.

     The scientists made the observations using the Infrared Telescope Facility and Keck Telescopes in Hawaii to look at Mars in infrared wavelengths. They found that methane was emitted from several different plumes, and that they were emitted during the warmer seasons, spring and summer. This might be because ice blocking cracks and fissures vaporized in the warmth, allowing methane to seep into the Martian air. This also fits with the observation that the plumes were detected over areas that show evidence of ice or flowing water in the distant past.

     But what why are scientists getting so excited about methane? Well, methane is usually destroyed very quickly in the atmosphere, so discovering it in relatively large quantities and over many years means that something must be replenishing it. The really exciting part is that on Earth, the majority of methane produced comes from biological sources (yes, like cows, although we don't expect there to be any cows on Mars!). 

     But Mars is very different to the Earth, so a different process could be taking place. For example, methane could be being produced by the oxidization of iron (and in fact this is what gives Mars its red colouring). Another way could be through the interaction of subsurface water, carbon dioxide, and geological heat. But even taking this into account there is reason to be optimistic about the possibility of life forms on Mars, even if none have ever been detected at the surface. On Earth, microbes thrive in all sorts of places, including several kilometres below the ground. If the Martian surface really is too harsh for life, there’s a fighting chance that it could still exist below ground level. Future missions like the Mars Science Laboratory will be able to dig below the surface and try and answer some of these questions.

Welcome to the International Year of Astronomy!

Posted: 02 January 2009

    Welcome to 2009, and to the International Year of Astronomy (IYA). This year is all about celebrating 400 years since Galileo used a telescope to look at the Moon for the first time, and 40 years since men first landed on the Moon, as well as inspiring people with the wonders of the Universe and sharing your passion for astronomy with others. There are loads of events and projects going on around the world that will help to do just that, and here are some ideas of how you can get yourself, your friends and family more involved. Why not make one of these your new year's resolution?!

     -Simply tell one friend about why you like astronomy: show them a picture of your favourite star, planet or galaxy to help spread the word as to why astronomy is so great!

     -Join an astronomy club. Your local town will likely have an astronomy society that meets once a month, or there is the UK's Society for Popular Astronomy that has a special section, the Young Stargazers, aimed at under 16s. Find out more or join online at: www.popastro.com/youngstargazers

     -Show a friend this website and tell your school teachers about Starlight and get them to sign up to our Newsletter distribution list.

     -Get your school to register for the Telescopes for Schools project that will see 1,000 telescopes given away to schools that apply. Find out more at: www.popastro.com/moonwatch

     -Get your telescopes out for Moonwatch week to enjoy looking at the cratered world of our neighbour the Moon. More details about when, what and how to observe the Moon can be found on the Moonwatch website at www.popastro.com/moonwatch

     Other IYA projects include The Cosmic Diary, where people employed by organisations like ESA and NASA will be writing online diarys about the work they do; 100 Hours of Astronomy which will see as many people look through a telescope in 100 hours as possible; and From the Earth to the Universe, which will see large-scale images come to everyday locations like parks, shopping centres and train stations to bring astronomy to the public. Information about all of these exciting projects and more can be found at the IYA website http://www.astronomy2009.org/

The official logo for the International Year of Astronomy. The Universe is yours to discover!

1,000 schools will receive a free telescope to help promote astronomy in teaching and after school astronomy clubs. Find out how to get involved at www.popastro.com/moonwatch

IYA2009 celebrates 400 years since Galileo looked at the Moon through a telescope, and 40 years since men first landed on the Moon!

Jupiter moon plays "peek-a-boo"

Posted: 22 December 2008

    NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has caught Jupiter's moon Ganymede playing a game of "peek-a-boo." In this image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, Ganymede is shown just before it ducks behind the giant planet.

    Because Ganymede orbits Jupiter once every seven days and its orbit is tilted nearly edge-on from the Earth, we can often see the moon passing in front of and disappearing behind Jupiter. Ganymede is the largest moon in the Solar System and this picture shows features like impact craters in crisp detail. Click the image to go to a bigger picture and see how many craters you can spot! One large crater, called Tros, appears white in the image, and bright rays of material thrown from the crater streak across the moon.

     Ganymede has ancient large dark patches of terrain broken up by strips of lighter and younger material that are mixtures of rock and ice. The grooves and ridges probably formed by tectonic processes that made the surface crack and fracture apart.

     The new Hubble image also shows the Great Red Spot in Jupiter's atmosphere, which is a storm the size of two whole Earth that has been raging for over 300 years!

Click the image to enlarge! Image: NASA, ESA, and E. Karkoschka (University of Arizona).

Ganymede is the biggest moon in the Solar System and is covered with impact craters, like our own Moon. Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.

Scientists have already tested what it might be like to fire penetrators into the Moon by firing them into big mounds of sand, as these videos show. The penetrators and the electronics inside all worked fine during and after the test, so the technology is well on the way to finding itself on the Moon one day! Video: MSSL/UCL. Experiment conducted at the QinetiQ facility at Pendine.

UK scientists to design Moon mission

Posted: 22 December 2008

    UK scientists have been giving funding to design and test a mission to the Moon called MoonLITE. If they demonstrate that the mission will work and won’t cost too much, Britain could be sending the mission to the Moon in 2014.

     The mission will see four dart-like objects, called penetrators, delivered to the Moon’s surface. Although they look a bit like missiles they contain a suite of instruments that will teach scientists about the inside structure of the Moon. The penetrators will also contain sensitive instruments that will measure the strength and frequency of moonquakes - an important thing to know about if humans will eventually live and work on the Moon!

A teddy bear’s picnic... in space!

Posted: 9 December 2008

    The 11 and 12 year old winners of a science competition have seen their experiment put to the test - putting teddy bears in space for the ultimate teddy bear picnic! The competition was run by The Cambridge University Spaceflight team and was designed to get more kids interested in spaceflight, science and engineering.

     The ‘teddy-nauts’ took a flight on a helium balloon that climbed to a height of 30 kilometres to the edge of space. Four teddies were prepared for the flight, dressed in special space suits designed to keep them warm. Despite the outside temperatures reaching -60 degrees celsius, the teddy bears stayed at -35 degrees. The bears took instruments and cameras with them on the journey to make measurements of the space environment and to take pictures looking back at Earth.

    All four teddies survived the two hour flight.

Images: University of Cambridge.

The teddys launched in a giant helium balloon and went to the edge of space.

Join the SPA as a Young Stargazer and you'll receive Popular Astronomy magazine four times a year as well as a whole host of other goodies.

In January, the Young Stargazers will be announcing a fantastic competition to win a MySKY. It's like a ray gun that you shoot at a star in the sky, and the MySKY will tell you what you are looking at! Perfect for learning the constellations.

For more details on how to join the SPA as a Young Stargazer or for gift subscriptions, visit www.popastro.com/youngstargazers or download a joining form here.

All I want for Christmas...

        ...is a subscription to the SPA's Young Stargazers!

Posted: 27 November 2008

    The Society for Popular Astronomy is now offering Young Stargazer gift subscriptions, making it the perfect present for any budding astronomer.

     As well as the society magazine four times a year, and news circulars six times a year, Young Stargazers will receive the Young Stargazer’s File, packed with information on how to get started in astronomy, guides to observing, A-Z of terms and a glossary of useful websites, plus stickers and a pen. Anyone who joins from now and throughout 2009 will also get the Starlight Newsletter delivered direct to their door, too! And all this for just £10 per year!

     As a celebration of the International Year of Astronomy the Young Stargazer’s will be giving away a Meade MySKY worth nearly £300 (thanks to Telescope House), as well as a whole stack of other fantastic prizes include DVDs, books and a year’s subscription to the Young Stargazers, in a competition to be announced in the January issue of the society’s Popular Astronomy magazine.

Planets outside our Solar System photographed!

Posted: 25 November 2008

     Planets outside our Solar System are called extra-solar planets, or exoplanets for short, and currently over 300 have been discovered since the first one in 1991. Until now only one planet had been photographed, but amazing new pictures show a number of planets around stars like our Sun!
      One planet orbits a star called Fomalhaut (pronounced Fom-al-hawt), which is actually the seventeenth brightest star in the sky, but because it is so near the horizon from Britain it is difficult to see. This planet was discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope, and is three times more massive than the planet Jupiter (and Jupiter itself is 318 times more massive than Earth, so we are talking about a huge planet). Nobody will be able to live on Fomalhaut’s planet though – it is a gas giant 115 times further from its star than Earth is from the Sun.

Planet trio
      Another family of three planets were also photographed orbiting a star known only as HR 8799 by a giant observatory called the Gemini North Telescope on top of a mountain in Hawaii. The planets are ten, ten, and seven times the mass of Jupiter, so they are even bigger than the Fomalhaut planet. They are 24, 37 and 67 times farther from their star than Earth is from the Sun. If any of these planets were put in our Solar System, they would live near the outer edge, with the icy comets, where it is very cold and the Sun is very small and faint in the sky.
      Usually the stars are so bright that their glare makes the planets invisible. Using hi-tech scientific equipment, astronomers were able to block the light of the star to make the planets visible. The planets are still quite young, maybe 50 million years old, and are bright enough to be seen because they are still hot from after they were made. We can’t see any details on the planets – they just look like bright points of light, but with bigger telescopes we should be able to see more detail in the future.
     Two other suspected planets have been photographed, one around a star called 1RXS J160929.1-210524 (astronomers really need to come up with better names than this don’t you think?) and another around a star called Beta Pictoris. However they are not proven yet. Astronomers need to take more photographs to make sure they are moving around their stars like Earth moves around the Sun.

Name a planet!
      The planets don’t have any fancy names like our planets – they just have letters, like Fomalhaut ‘b’ and HR 8799 ‘b’, ‘c’ and ‘d’. We reckon they should have proper names, so here is a challenge: send in your names for these planets, and why you’ve chosen that name, and we’ll put the best ones on our website!

Image credits: Gemini Observatory; ESO/A–M Lagrange et al; WM Keck Observatory; NASA/ESA/P Kalas, J Graham, E Chiang, E Kite (UC, Berkeley)/M Clampin (GSFC)/M Fitzgerald (LLNL)/K Stapelfeldt, J Krist (JPL).

Can you find the new planets in each of these images? Click on the image for a larger picture!

1RXS J160929.1-210524

HR 8799

Beta Pictoris

Formalhaut

Get your teacher to apply for a telescope for your school, completely free, by going to www.popastro.com/moonwatch.

You could be the next Galileo if you get your hands on a Telescopes for Schools telescope! He first used a telescope to look at the Moon 400 years ago.

1,000 free telescopes for schools!

Posted: 19 November 2008

    Do you want to get your school a free telescope for the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009)? The Society for Popular Astronomy (SPA), the Science Facilities and Technology Council (STFC) and the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) have clubbed together to come up with 1,000 telescopes to give to secondary schools across the UK next year.

     The project, called Telescopes for Schools, is just one of the many activities that will be taking part in 2009 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Galileo first using a telescope for astronomy, as well as the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landings. An English astronomer, Thomas Harriott, also first used a telescope to observe the Moon 400 years ago.     

     You can follow in the footsteps of these great astronomers by getting your school to apply for a telescope. Just tell your teacher to look at the SPA’s special moonwatch website at www.popastro.com/moonwatch for more information and details on how to apply. The telescopes are 70 millimetre refractors, which means that you will be able to see the craters on the Moon, the rings of Saturn, the moons of Jupiter and even other galaxies!

     As well as the telescope, your school will also receive a DVD explaining how to set up and use the telescope, and what you can look see at different times of the year. The DVD also contains interviews with enthusiastic astronomers to give you an idea of what it is like to be a professional astronomer.

     The people involved with setting up the project hope that it will inspire the next generation of great astronomers by encouraging students to learn more about science.

Win win win!

Posted: 28 October 2008

    Be a Cassini scientist for a day, win a trip to La Palma in the Canary Islands and watch the launch of a Virgin Galactic space flight. We round up the lastest out of this world competitions.

Design a Christmas card for a trip to La Palma or an iPod shuffle:

STFC and the BNSC are looking for space artists to come up with a Christmas card design that reflects areas of their science research. Hurry though, the deadline is 4pm on 3rd November. Full details here.

Titan, Tethys or Mimas? You decide where to point Cassini!

Take control of the Cassini spacecraft:

Be a space scientist for a day - take control of the multi-million pound Cassini spacecraft as it swoops around the Saturn system. There are three targets to choose from and you have to explain which one you think would be the most scientifically interesting. Register your interest by 14th November and find out more here.

Watch the launch of Space Ship Two from the Mojave Spaceport in California.

Attend the launch of a Virgin Galactic flight: The competition is open to teams of four to six 11-14 year olds who have to design a marketable product that uses elements that have been incorporated into the Virgin Galactic space travel programme. If you're up for the challenge of Mission Virgin Galactic, get your teacher to register here by 12th December.

Win a trip to the USA and cash prizes:

Take the UK Aerospace Youth Rocketry Challenge and design, construct and launch a rocket to carry one egg to an altitude of 230 metres in 45 seconds. Register by 5th December. Full details here.

Chandrayaan-1 will make detailed maps of the Moon's surface and tell scientists exactly what it is made of. One day, humans may even live and work on the Moon. Image: ISRO

Next stop, the Moon!

Posted: 22 October 2008

    Earlier this morning India’s first mission to the Moon, Chandrayaan-1, blasted off towards are nearest rocky neighbour where it will look at the Moon’s geology and environment in space in greater detail than ever before, and will drop a probe onto its surface to see what kind of material is thrown up.

    Chandrayaan-1 is a joint mission between Europe and India, with one of the instruments, called C1XS, built by scientists and engineers from the UK. C1XS will measure how much of different minerals such as iron, calcium,
titanium, magnesium and aluminium exist on the Moon’s surface, which will teach lunar scientists about how the Moon evolved since it formed. The mission will also create a three-dimensional map of the Moon.

    Exploring the Moon is important since in the next twenty years or so we could start building permanent bases there, but first we must know what kinds of materials are available for building or for creating a power source, and what sort of an environment we might expect. Chandrayaan-1 will help to do that, so watch this space!

The Great World Wide Star Count

Posted: 17 October 2008

    Get ready for the International Year of Astronomy 2009 by joining in with the Dark Skies Awareness cornerstone project The Great World Wide Star Count during the weeks 20 October to 3 November 2008. Why not carry out the project in half term, or see if your local astronomy society is taking part?

    The project is part of the Windows to the Universe program, an international event that encourages everyone, including people that may never have looked at the night sky before, to measure their local light pollution by counting stars in a given constellation and report their observations online.

     All you need to do is follow the simple instructions given on the Star Count Website, and summarised here:
      1. Choose your constellation. If you live in the northern hemisphere you are requested to observe Cygnus the swan, while southern hemisphere observers should choose Sagittarius.
      2. Find the constellation at night, one hour after sunset. (Advice on how to locate the constellation is provided on the website)
      3. Match your night-time sky to one of the magnitude charts given on the website to determine the faintest stars that you can see in your location.
      4. Report your results online.
      5. View the results of this international event online!

     Last year people from 64 countries contributed more than 6,600 observations to the Star Count. Why not try and help double this number by taking part yourself!

For more information go to the Star Count Website.

Cygnus is the constellation to find if you live in the northern hemisphere.

Does the sky that you see look like that above or below? Depending on how good (or bad!) the light pollution is in your area, you may be able to see tens of stars in the constellation or perhaps just two. The top chart means that the faintest stars you can see are magnitude 1, while the bottom stars mean you can see magnitude 7 stars. Magnitude is a scale that describes how bright a star is, but it is a bit confusing, because the bigger the number, the fainter the star.

A second look at Mercury

Posted: 08 October 2008

     NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft flew past Mercury earlier this week for the second time in its mission, revealing parts of the surface that have never been seen before. Combined with data from the first flyby, and pictures from the Mariner 10 mission in the 1970s, we now have the first complete picture of the whole planet.

     The top image here is one of the highest resolution images ever taken of Mercury. The whole image is about 340 kilometres across and shows hundreds of impact craters of varying size. The one at the top is about 133 kilometres wide and has numerous smaller craters inside of it. Smooth material lines the crater floors which scientists think was made by volcanic lava.

     In the bottom image, two long cliff faces, known as scarps, cross over each other to make a 'X' shape. The one nearest to the top right cuts through an impact crater, this tells planetary scientists that the crater must have formed first, so it teaches them about relative ages of different surfaces of the planet.

     MESSENGER will make one more flyby of Mercury in September next year, before ending up in an orbit around the planet in March 2011 where it will be able to study the environment around Mercury in much more detail, such as how it interacts with the Sun.

     You can see more new images and find out more about the mission on the MESSENGER mission homepage.

Jules Verne burn-up!

Posted: 30 September 2008

    After the end of a successful mission to the International Space Station (ISS), the Jules Verne vehicle was de-orbited, burning up in the Earth's atmosphere and creating a fantastic fireworks display over the Pacific Ocean.

    Jules Verne spent five months attached to the ISS. It delivered around six tonnes of cargo to the ISS including fuel, food, clothes and spare parts. It demonstrated a new type of vehicle that could automatically rendezvous and dock with the space station, boosting to higher orbits and even performing quick moves to dodge out of the way of an old satellite that could have crashed into it!

    In its final journey back to Earth, it took away two and half tonnes of waste from the ISS, which burnt up with the vehicle as it plummeted through the atmosphere. The re-entry was filmed from the ground and by astronauts who watched it from the safety of the space station.

The Jules Verne ATV as it moves away from the ISS.

Click to link to ESA video of the burn-up.

Could this be the cover of your next school magazine? If you enter the Space Challenge 2009 competition then this is the view your experiment could get of the Earth.

     Five winning teams will see their payloads soar to an altitude of 25 kilometres, but first you need to write a report about the capabilities of your experiment. Full details of the competition can be found here. The closing date is 1 December 2008, so you have a couple of months to get going! Good luck!

Win your experiment a trip to the edge of space!

Posted: 26 September 2008

     The Cambridge University Spaceflight team has announced their UK Space Challenge 2009. The challenge is to design an experiment that will be taken to the edge of space by a high-altitude balloon, and the competition is open to students aged 14-18, or science clubs and youth clubs.

     So get your friends together, or ask your sciences teachers at school to organise a team to design and build payloads containing everything required to conduct experiments on the edge of space. You could build sensor circuits, gather atmospheric data or take  photographs and videos as your payload begins to leave the Earth’s atmosphere and is subjected to  the cold and vacuum of space.

Turning on the “Big-Bang Machine”

Posted: 15 September 2008

    You will undoubtedly have seen on the TV and on the internet that scientists have made a machine called the Large Hadron Collider (or LHC for short), which has been nicknamed the “Big-Bang Machine” by some because it is going to recreate conditions similar to those made after the Universe began in a big bang event. The LHC is located 100 metres underground, and crosses the border between France and Switzerland. It is run by CERN, the Eurpean Organisation for Nuclear Research.

     Large Hadron Collider means Large because of its size - 27 kilometres in circumference, a bit like the Circle Line of the London Underground - Hadron because it accelerates protons or ions (the stuff that makes up atoms) which are hadrons, and Collider because these particles are travelling in opposite directions around the LHC and collide!

     When the beams collide there will be millions of sub-atomic smash-ups, and the particles will split up into different components. Several experiments located around the LHC will be on the look-out for these products, which will tell scientists about what the Universe was made of at the beginning of time. The experiments may even show if there are extra dimensions in the Universe - something that we’re probably more used to hearing about in sci-fi movies! The LHC may even reveal new particles that we didn’t know existed before, or reveal the identity of particles that scientists have only made theories about before, and have not yet proved.

     The LHC was turned on for the first time last week, and beams of particles - hadrons - were sent around the 27 kilometre long circuit to check that everything was working properly before the scientists begin their experiments.

     A lot of people are worried about the LHC because they think the scientists will be able to make black holes which will consume the whole Earth. NOT TRUE! While the experiment might make very very very tiny black hole-like features (much smaller than even the width of a human hair), they will be destroyed almost as soon as they are created, because there won’t be enough energy to make the black hole bigger or to keep it going for any length of time. And really, would scientists be allowed to use such a machine if something bad was likely to happen?!

The LHC is 100 metres underground across the French-Swiss border, and runs around a track with circumference 27 kilometres.

Millions of particles will collide inside the LHC and detectors will look out for the products of these sub-atomic smash-ups.

Particles will be accelerated around the LHC in tunnels like the blue one shown here, at a rate of 11,200 times per second!

    Of course, the LHC may not actually find anything new at all, in which case we will have to entirely rethink some of the fundamental laws of the Universe. Whatever happens, we are sure to learn a lot more about the world we live in.

     For more information about CERN and the LHC check out: http://www.lhc.ac.uk/index.html

     And finally, some scientists at CERN have made a rap to teach people about the LHC in a fun way. You can see it on YouTube here.

Steins boasts a massive crater shown at the top of these images, and a crater chain running top-bottom across its middle.

Got a pair of 3D glasses handy? Then check out this cool 3D image of asteroids Steins.

Close-up of asteroid  Steins

Posted: 08 September 2008

   Over the weekend, the Rosetta spacecraft swooped past an asteroid called Steins at a distance of just 800 kilometres from its surface. Steins is only the ninth asteroid to be studied close-up by a passing spacecraft.

    The big impact crater seen at the 'top' of the asteroid measures at least 1.5 kilometres, and compared to the asteroid's diameter of just 4.6 kilometres across, it's surprising that Steins stayed in one piece! The mission scientists also noticed a chain of about seven craters running across Stein's surface - can you count them all? The chain could have been created as the asteroid rotated through a stream of meteoroids or from fragments of another asteroid that that been broken up nearby. In total, 23 craters have been counted on the asteroid.

    Although the fly-by was a huge success, the main goal of the mission is to visit comet 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko in July 2010. And not just visit it but land on it! While an orbiting spacecraft will take pictures to map the comet and monitor any changes that occur, the lander will make measurements of the surface itself, telling scientists exactly what it is made of.

Opportunity leaves Victoria Crater

Posted: 04 September 2008

     With all the attention on the Phoenix Mars Lander, you'd be forgiven for forgetting about the other explorers on Mars - the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Now, after a year of daring exploration inside Victoria Crater, the Opportunity rover has successfully climbed back out to level ground to continue investigating the surrounding Martian plains.

    The rover used its own entry tracks from nearly a year ago as a path to make the almost seven metre climb up out over the rim of the crater. Scientists decided to bring Opportunity out of the crater after noticing a spike in the electric current used by one of the rover's wheels, just like was seen in the Spirit rover shortly before one of its wheels stopped working. If Opportunity's wheel stopped working while in the crater, it wouldn't have the power to ever get out, so it was a good decision to leave knowing that both rovers can drive around fairly level ground with just five out of six functioning wheels.

    When inside the crater, Opportunity spent a lot of time looking at the base of a cliff called Cape Verde. The cliff showed a lot of layering of different rocks, which taught scientists that they were blown there by winds, and then had their compositions altered by the action of water.

     Opportunity will now look at boulders strewn around the plains near Victoria Crater, that were thrown out of massive, far away craters even larger than Victoria Crater.

     Both Spirit and Opportunity are record breaking rovers: they were only supposed to last for 90 days, but instead have survived for nearly four years!

Opportunity spent a lot of time in Victoria Crater studying this cliff like feature called Cape Verde, which is made up of layered rocks and sediments in part of the crater rim. Image: NASA.

The view back into the crater after Opportunity successfully exited the crater last week. You can see two sets of tracks: one from where the rover entered the crater a year ago, and a fresh set on top from the exit mission! Image: NASA.

Images: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Check out more amazing pictures of Enceladus, and read the Cassini scientists’ mission blogs at http://ciclops.org

New views of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus

Posted: 13 August 2008

    On Monday, the Cassini spacecraft flew by Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus and took the best close-up pictures yet of the moon’s surface.

     Enceladus is an exciting place to visit, because it has features called ‘tiger stripes’ along which water vapour, gases and organic materials - like the stuff that makes up comets - have been seen to jet out at high speeds. The hot spots from which these geysers emanate are extremely warm compared to their surroundings, and although -90 degrees Celsius may sound chilly, but that’s actually rather warm considering the moon’s extreme distance from the Sun.

     Enceladus may even have a liquid water ocean beneath its surface, which will make the tiny moon a good target for the search for possible life elsewhere in the Solar System.

    The images from the latest flyby were taken while the spacecraft was travelling at 18 kilometres per second, or 40,000 miles per hour. That’s like trying to take a sharp, non-blurry picture of a road sign, from a distance of one mile away, using a 2,000 millimetre telephoto lens (like the ones sports journalists use) held out of the window of a car travelling at 50 miles per hour! Impressive!

     The images shown here were all taken on Monday from heights of 2,500 to 5,000 kilometres above the moon’s surface, and show lots of fractures running across the surface. Some of those fractures may cut deep into the moon, and will help scientists learn how the icy jets that shoot up above the moon’s surface are powered and where they come from.

Why isn’t Pluto a planet?

Posted: 13 August 2008

     Astronomers are arguing again. Do you remember when Pluto was reclassified from a proper planet to a dwarf planet? Astronomers debated that decision for months, and some are so unhappy about Pluto no longer being a planet that they’re still discussing it! So exactly what are they unhappy about, and why is Pluto not a planet?
      If you scroll down the Starlight homepage a little bit, you’ll come across a story about a new dwarf planet called Makemake (which, if you remember, is pronounced ‘Mah-keh-mah-keh’). Well, Makemake is one of hundreds of thousands of icy bodies that orbit the Sun from very far away, past the distant planet of Neptune. This is called the Kuiper (pronounced ky-per) Belt, after one of the first astronomers who predicted its existence. Pluto and fellow dwarf planet Eris can also be found in the Kuiper Belt. To distinguish them from Ceres, which is the other dwarf planet found in the asteroid belt, astronomers have given Pluto, Eris and Makemake the rather funny name ‘Plutoids’, which sounds more like an old-style computer game than an astronomical object!
      All the icy rocks in the Kuiper Belt are leftovers from when the Solar System was born from a gigantic cloud of gas and dust that condensed over 4.6 billion years ago. The dwarf planets are the biggest objects that we know of in the Kuiper Belt; there are probably more of a similar size waiting to be discovered, and countless others much smaller. They circle the Sun in wild orbits, and are freezing cold, covered in methane ice.
      The other planets in the Solar System are different. The eight planets of the Solar System are all much bigger than the dwarf planets – the smallest planet, Mercury, is 4,879 kilometres across, whilst the biggest dwarf planet, Eris, is only 2,398 kilometres across. Jupiter, the biggest planet, is a whopping 142,984 kilometres across. How can you compare a gas giant like Jupiter to a wimp like Pluto?

     The other argument against the dwarf planets is that they haven’t ‘cleared their orbits’. What this means is that they are not massive enough to prevent other, smaller objects from hogging their orbit, whereas the most massive planets can kick out asteroids and smaller bodies that are in their way over the course of millions of years.

The great Pluto debate has inspired lots of cartoonists. You can even buy t-shirts which show your support for reinstating Pluto as a 'grown-up' planet.

What do you think? Should Pluto be a dwarf planet, a Plutoid, or a 'proper' planet? Let us know what you think about the great Pluto debate by writing to yoursay@starlight-news.co.uk and we'll post your opinions online.

      Some astronomers say that because they are round, dwarf planets should be described as proper planets too. But the dwarf planets are the leftovers of the formation of the real planets, and so it makes sense to distinguish them by calling them dwarf planets. You could say that there are three types of planet in the Solar System that are all different from one another – rocky planets, like Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars; gas giants like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and dwarf planets like Pluto, Eris, Ceres and Makemake. There could be dozens more dwarf planets out there that we haven’t found yet. If we called them all planets, we could end up with 30 or 40 planets, which would just be silly!
      At the end of the day though, it doesn’t really matter what we call Pluto or the other dwarf planets. They are still very interesting and important to learn about – a NASA spaceprobe called New Horizons is already on its way to Pluto – because they can teach us some more about how our Solar System formed. Their frozen ice is pristine material from the very first days of the Solar System. Rather than being downgraded, think of Pluto as now the king of a new type of object – the Plutoids.

Phoenix tastes water on Mars

Posted: 12 August 2008

     After weeks of struggling to deliver a sample of icy soil to Phoenix’s onboard laboratory, the lander finally had success last week, and tasted water vapour as the icy sample was heated up in one of the ovens.

    Although evidence for there being water ice on Mars has been seen before from orbit, and from the ground earlier in the Phoenix mission, this is the first time a lander has made a direct measurement of the icy material.

    The onboard lab also threw up a few surprises by detecting a type of salt called perchlorate, which is made up of an atom of chlorine and four oxygen atoms. Perchlorate is important on the Earth for fuelling micro-organisms and is found naturally in some deserts.

    But the mission scientists aren’t too sure if finding this salt is good or bad news for life on Mars, because it has only been found in one soil sample the size of a teaspoon, in one tiny location of Mars, and may not be present elsewhere (alternately, it could be present everywhere, but we would have to send many more missions to Mars to find out!)

    At the moment, the scientists are saying that the soil itself is reminiscent of soil on the Earth, but the chemistry of the soil is very different between the two planets.

    Meanwhile, Phoenix will test more samples of the soil from its landing site in the hope that some clues to the potential of life ever having been present on Mars will be revealed. Some good news is that the mission has been given an extra five weeks of funding, to continue its work on the red planet right through to the end of September.

Phoenix took this image on 7 August. It shows a soil sample being delivered to the onboard ovens for analysis. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ University of Arizona/Texas A&M University

Makemake lies way beyond the orbit of Neptune, meaning that it is a Plutoid, along with Pluto and Eris. Image: IAU, M. Kornmesser (ESA/Hubble)

    So what kind of a dwarf planet is Makemake? Is it hot or cold? What does it look like? Does it have any moons? Well, even though it is so far away from us and is so faint that it was only discovered recently, we do know quite a bit about it! Because it is so far away from the Sun, it is very, very cold. We’re not talking bobble hats and scarves cold either. The temperature on the surface of Makemake is –243 degrees Celsius. Nowhere on Earth gets anywhere near that cold. So it is too cold for life. Based on this, if you’ve guessed that Makemake is a very icy dwarf planet, you’d be right, but it’s not just water–ice: Makemake is so cold that it has methane ice, and this gives Makemake a slightly reddish colour. As far as we can tell, it doesn’t have any moons, unlike the other two Plutoids, Eris and Pluto.

     It is so far away that there are no plans to send a spacecraft there at the moment. NASA has sent a spacecraft called New Horizons to Pluto, but even though it is the fastest spacecraft ever sent into space, it still won’t reach Pluto until the year 2015.

     And if you still think Makemake is a silly name, just be glad it didn’t keep the nickname it was given when it was first discovered in 2005: Easterbunny!!

Makemake joins the Plutoid gang

Posted: 30 July 2008

    There’s a new dwarf planet in the Solar System, that astronomers have called Makemake. What a silly name, you might say! It’s actually pronounced Mah-keh-mah-keh, and is named after the god that created humanity according to the Rapanui people that used to live on Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean. The dwarf planet Makemake is no larger than 1,900 kilometres across, and its greatest distance from the Sun is 7.9 billion kilometres! This places it in the Kuiper Belt; a region of icy comets and dwarf planets far beyond Neptune. Pluto, which was downgraded to dwarf planet status in 2006, patrols the inner edge of the Kuiper Belt at a maximum distance of 7.3 billion kilometres. Dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt are known as Plutoids.

Makemake joins Pluto and its moons Charon, Hydra and Nix (left) and Eris and its moon Dysnomia (right) in the Plutoid category of dwarf planets. Image: IAU.

Which continents on the Earth can you identify? Use the cartoon globe in the bottom corner to help. Keep an eye out for the Moon as it swoops into view!

Video credit: Donald J. Lindler, Sigma Space Corporation/GSFC; EPOCh/DIXI Science Teams

The Earth and Moon in motion

Posted: 18 July 2008

    An amazing video showing the Moon moving in front of the Earth, has been released by NASA. The footage was shot by the Deep Impact spacecraft from a distance of almost 50 million kilometres (31 million miles). The video, which has been sped up, shows one full rotation of the Earth, and the division (called the terminator) between night and day. Which continents can you spot on the Earth?

    This video is particularly amazing because it is not a view of the Earth that we often get. Astronauts on the space station and in the space shuttle don’t go any farther than low-Earth orbit, while spacecraft sent to other planets rarely turn their cameras back towards Earth. The video shows how the Moon orbits the Earth, always pointing the same face towards us. As it moves around the Earth, different regions of the Moon are lit up by the Sun, as this is why we see the Moon changing shape, or phase, throughout a month.

    Deep Impact was launched in 2005 and you may remember it crashing a projectile into a comet to cause an impact that threw up some of the materials buried deep inside the comet. Nowadays, Deep Impact uses its camera to search for the dip in light when an exoplanet passes in front of a distant star, a bit like the Moon passing in front of the Earth.

Phoenix keeps

on digging

Posted: 15 July 2008

    The Phoenix Mars Lander, which landed in the north polar region of Mars around 50 days ago, has been having a tough time of it lately. It has been trying to dig up pieces of icy soil to put into its onboard laboratory, but the ice is proving to be far too hard to pick up in just one scoop.

    Phoenix has been scraping away at the trench known as Snow White while engineers back on Earth have been testing ways that Phoenix can get the icy soil into its scooping tool and then into the onboard laboratory for testing. The scientists were expecting the ice to very strong because of the cold temperatures, so they are instructing Phoenix to scrape bits of it off a strong layer of ice that lies a few centimetres underneath the soil. Phoenix has scooped the ice-chips up into piles, but the scientists say that it’s now like trying to pick up dust with a dustpan, but without a broom!

    Samples of non-icy soil have already been tested but it is the deeper, icy soil that everyone wants to find out about because it could help us to understand the history of water on Mars, and whether life could ever have been supported in this region of the planet.

Digging continues in the Snow White trench.

Images: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University

The Robotic Arm takes a scoop of soil, and encounters a rock nicknamed Alice.

     Earlier in the mission Phoenix struggled with clumpy soil that wouldn’t crumble up very well, so it was instructed to vibrate itself in order to shake the soil through the filters and into the onboard ovens. The ovens heat up the soil sample to tens and hundreds of degrees Celsius to sniff out its various ingredients, like water. Unfortunately, this shaking method might have caused an electrical fault with the ovens, which may mean that when the next icy sample finally arrives, it could be the last time Phoenix’s ovens can be used.

     But Phoenix has been a huge success so far, and the scientists working on the mission are really pleased with how things are going. Just last week, the little lander used for the first time a fork-like probe that measures how easily heat and electricity flows through the Martian soil, which can tell scientists if there is frozen or unfrozen water in the soil. Phoenix also used a special kind of microscope that works out the shape of soil particles by running its sensor up and down the particle’s surface. It can tell us about soil particles that are less than a hundred times smaller than the width of a human hair!

    It is hoped that Phoenix will be successful in delivering the much-awaited icy soil sample to the ovens in the next few days. You can follow Phoenix’s progress each day by checking
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu or http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix and of course any major results will be posted on this

website too!

All aboard the Sun Trek Enterprise!

Posted: 9 July 2008

    You may be forgiven for occasionally thinking that we don’t have a Sun thanks to the typical British summer weather we have been experiencing of late, but the Sun is always there, burning up its fuel at a whopping 15 million degrees Celsius, and doing its best to attack the Earth 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with its ferocious solar wind.

    With Sun Trek adventures, an interactive website found at www.suntrek.org which is organised by the University of Cambridge, University of Lancashire, the Science and Technology Facilities Council and Interactive Media Design Consultants, you can take a journey with a team of solar experts to our nearest star and learn how it plays such an important role in our day to day lives, including how every one of us eats the Sun’s energy every day!

    The journey begins in the centre of the Sun and takes the intrepid explorer (that's you!) through the hot solar atmosphere and into the Sun's magnetic field, before onto the Earth and beyond to see how our life-giving star plays with the rest of the Solar System bodies.

     There are lots of classroom projects too, as well as a gallery of awesome pictures and movies of everything from sunspots to solar flares. There are also links to all the Sun-exploring satellites, where you can keep up to date with the latestet hot news in solar science.

     So what are you waiting for? Travel with Sun Trek Adventures this summer for the hottest holiday ever! www.suntrek.org

Watch movies of solar 'tantrums' as the Sun throws out massive bursts of energy in the form of prominences and flares...

...as well as movies of how sunspots grow and change over the course of a day.

Say hello to the plutoids

Posted: 2 July 2008

    Dwarf planets like little Pluto and Eris now have their own special name: plutoids! Back in 2006, astronomers at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) voted to stop calling Pluto a planet and instead call it a dwarf planet. Lots of people were upset that their favourite planet was no longer a planet, but the IAU did this for a reason.

     You see, in 2005 an astronomer called Michael Brown, who works at the California Institute of Technology, discovered an object called Eris that was bigger than Pluto but even farther from the Sun. This region of space is called the Kuiper Belt (pronounced Ky-per) and astronomers had found lots of small icy objects in the Kuiper Belt, a bit like asteroids made of ice, but Eris is the only one so far that is bigger than Pluto (Pluto is 2,288 kilometres across, and Eris is 2,398 kilometres across). Astronomers think that there could be lots of objects bigger than Pluto in the Kuiper Belt, but they haven’t found them yet. If all these objects are there, what were astronomers going to do, call them all planets? If they did, we could end up with 20 or 30 ‘planets’, and that would get a bit silly.
      Also, Pluto is nothing like Jupiter, and yet they were both called planets. Jupiter is much larger, 142,984 kilometres across and is made totally of gas. Pluto on the other hand is just solid ice, probably with a little bit of rock in its centre. How can we call them both planets when they are so completely different?

Ceres is still called a dwarf planet because it lives in the Asteroid Belt and is round like a planet, unlike the more unusual potato shapes of other known asteroids! Image: NASA Photojournal.

NOT TO SCALE! But this gives you an idea of how

different the planets and plutoids are in size. On the left is tiny Pluto, then Earth, Neptune and finally Jupiter on the right.

The new plutoid category of Solar System bodies includes Pluto and its moons Charon, Hydra and Nix (left) and Eris and its moon Dysnomia (right). Image: IAU.

Compare the planets
      If you want an analogy, try lining up a tiny ball bearing, a marble, a tennis ball and then a football. Pretend that the ball bearing is Pluto, the marble Earth, the tennis ball Neptune and the football Jupiter. All right, it’s not exactly to scale, but it will do. You can see just how much bigger Jupiter is to all the planets, especially Pluto! You would never confuse a ball bearing with a football, and this is why astronomers were uncomfortable with calling Pluto a planet. You could also say that Jupiter is very different to the others too, and there is a case for this: we call Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars the terrestrial rock planets, Jupiter and Saturn are the gas giants and Uranus and Neptune are the ice giants.

A very special plutoid!
      Some people say Pluto was demoted, but it wasn’t. It was reclassified, and is now the first member of a very special type of Solar System object. The material that plutoids like Pluto and Eris are made from is untouched from when the Solar System first formed, and space probes like NASA’s New Horizons mission, which will get to Pluto in 2015, will be able to study this material and learn more about how the Solar System was formed. So Pluto is very special.
      And if you are wondering, the asteroid Ceres is also a dwarf planet but isn’t a plutoid. Confused? This is because Ceres is a rocky asteroid between Mars and Jupiter. Plutoids are only found beyond Neptune, like Pluto and Eris.

Ice on Mars!

Posted: 20 June 2008

     Dice-size crumbs of bright material have disappeared from inside a trench where they were photographed by the Mars lander Phoenix four days ago. Scientists say that the material must be frozen water and that digging in the soil exposed the ice, and it soon vapourised.

     The chunks were left at the bottom of a trench nicknamed “Dodo-Goldilocks” on the 20th day of the mission, but four Martian days later, the lumps were gone! Only something like ice would be able to vapourise in the harsh Martian environment, and not salt, which scientists first thought the white pieces of material could be.

     Phoenix has also begun digging in a new trench and has uncovered another hard layer at the same depth as the ice in the other trench. It looks like a massive sheet of ice could exist just a few centimetres below the surface in the polar region of Mars.

Look closely at the bottom left hand corner of these images. In the left image you can see 'lumps' of material. In the right picture they are gone! The 'after' picture is shown in more detail across the page.

...now you don't! After four days the white lumps had disappeared, telling us that they were likely lumps of ice that vapourised into the Martian atmosphere. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University.

Closest ever view of Mars sand

Posted: 6 June 2008

    It’s been a busy week for Phoenix: it scooped up a bucket full of sand for closer inspection earlier in the week, and has since taken the most detailed picture of single grains of Martian dust and sand in the history of planetary science.

    Scientists wanted to test that the scooping device on the Lander’s Robotic Arm was working properly so they dug a test scoop and took some pictures of what they found. In the scooped up sand, and in the hole that was left behind, the scientists noticed a bright, white material glinting at them, which they think is probably ice or salt.

    Phoenix also took pictures of Martian dust that is as small as one-tenth the thickness of a human hair. The dust particles had fallen onto a sticky surface on the spacecraft, which meant they were held in place while they were examined. Scientists need to check the composition of the particles in case they came from the spacecraft during the rough landing phase or if they really are bits of Mars.

    Meanwhile, Phoenix is processing commands to collect a soil sample to put in its internal laboratory for analysis. The experiment will take several days to complete, so don’t forget to check back here next week to see what the results are!

The first scoop of Mars. Look carefully in the top right part of the picture for the white grains of material, which could be ice or salt. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Max Planck Institute.

A mosaic of microscopic images. The circular pad sticky substance is just 3 millimetres across, and the grains are 10 times thinner than a piece of your hair! Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona.

This image shows part of the Phoenix lander and the Martian surface. On the lander you can see the American flag and a mini-dvd, which contains a message to future Martian explorers, science fiction stories and art inspired by the Red Planet. It also contains the names of over a quarter million earthlings! Image: NASA/JPL–Caltech/ University of Arizona.

Rocks and trenches are named after fairy tales and nursery rhymes, such as Humpty Dumpty, Sleepy Hollow, Alice, King's Men and King's Horses. Image: NASA/JPL–Caltech/University of Arizona.

Phoenix and the fairy-tale Martian landscape

Posted: 30 May 2008

     NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander has unlatched its robotic arm ready for digging the icy soil, taken a full 360 degree panoramic image of its landing site, tested various instruments and transmitted its second weather report, all in a day’s work.

     After a small problem with the radio communications between Phoenix and one of the orbiters flying around Mars, commands were finally received by Phoenix to unlatch its robotic arm. The arm has been folded up inside the lander for over a year, so the mission scientists were very relieved to see it was still working fine. The robotic arm will give itself a health check by testing its joints at a range of warmer and cooler temperatures before performing its first major assignment to use its camera to look under the spacecraft to assess the terrain and underside of the lander.

     The robotic arm will soon trench into the icy layers of the northern polar surface and drop these samples into instruments onboard the lander, which will analyse what this part of Mars is made of, what the water there is like, and whether it is, or has ever been, a possible habitat for life.

     The images that Phoenix has taken so far will help the project team decide where to ask Phoenix to dig first and which spots to leave for later. Scientists have already started naming different rocks, bumps and trenches that they can see in the images after fairy tales and nursery rhyme characters!

     Phoenix has also been making measurements of the weather, and reported back that it was sunny with moderate dust, with a high of minus 30 degrees Celsius and a low of minus 80. Brrrr!

Learn to spot a spiral galaxy (top) from a merging galaxy (bottom) at the Galaxy Zoo. Images: Galaxy Zoo

Visit the Galaxy Zoo!

Posted: 21 May 2008

    Try your hand at classifying galaxies along with thousands of other members of the public that have so far classified over 40,000,000 individual galaxies and contributed to real science!

    The Galaxy Zoo opened in July last year and made available millions of galaxy images for the interested members of public to help classify, a job that was just too big for a handful of scientists!

     On the Galaxy Zoo website (www.galaxyzoo.org) you will find an interactive tutorial that will teach you how to tell the difference between an elliptical and spiral galaxy, which way a spiral galaxy is spinning, and if a galaxy is merging with another one.

    Like most zoos, the oddest creations provide the greatest interest, and the Galaxy Zoo is no exception. Many unusual galaxies, mostly merging galaxies, have been identified. Now, the The Galaxy Zoo team need urgent help from memebrs of the public to make sure that all the merging galaxies have been classified correctly. The results will help answer some of the long standing questions surrounding the importance and occurrance of merging galaxies.

    Entry to the Galaxy Zoo is free. To help contribute to real science research go to www.galaxyzoo.org. But be warned, it's highly addictive!

The Universe on your computer

Posted: 21 May 2008

    Exploding stars, colliding galaxies and a grand tour of the Solar System are just a mouse click away thanks to a new, free program from Microsoft, the WorldWide Telescope (WTT), that combines high resolution images from the best ground and space based observatories to bring the wonders of the Universe to your desktop computer.

     Images from over 50 million galaxies and a billion stars are used in the WTT, and you can even choose which telescope you look through. You can also look at the locations of planets in the night sky in the past, present or future, so you'll be able to find where Mars was when you were born, and where it will be on your 100th birthday!

     Microsoft have made this software not only for astronomers to improve their understanding of the Universe, but to enable people like you and me to explore the Universe from our computers at home.

     The WWT can be downloaded from www.worldwidetelescope.org.

Exploring the Coronet Cluster (top) and the Galactic Centre (bottom) with the WWT.

Images courtesy of Brisbane Times/Fabrice Coffrini.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Fusionman!

Posted: 16 May 2008

     Ever fancied taking to the skies like Iron Man? Well, one pilot and inventor from Switzerland called Yves Rossy – also known as ‘Fusionman’ – has done just that by building his own rocket propelled jet pack with wings, which he flew for five minutes over the Swiss Alps, before landing with a parachute.
      The wings that he wears on his back have a wingspan of two and a half metres wide and he can reach speeds of up to 200 kilometres per hour. Unfortunately he can only stay in the air for ten minutes at the most before his small engines run out of fuel.
      Various inventors and even NASA have experimented with rocket-propelled jet packs over the years, and of course James Bond famously used one in Thunderball. Rocket packs like this may be used to help astronauts explore worlds like Mars when humans eventually travel there. But what we all want to know is, when can we get a jet pack to go to school in?!

Hubble's 18th birthday treat

Posted: 24 April 2008

   To celebrate 18 fantastic years of space research, 59 images of colliding galaxies have been released from the Hubble Space Telescope.

    The images show everything from the dramatic collisions that trigger star formation, to explosive stellar deaths, and even mergers that create completely new galaxies. No two interactions are alike.

    The galaxies collide because when they get too close to one another, their strong gravitational attraction causes them to fall into one another, merging to make some seriously weird and wonderful patterns.

    Our own Milky Way galaxy has even been invited to the galaxy merging party. It contains the left overs of many smaller galaxies that it has devoured in the past, and it is currently absorbing another elliptical galaxy called the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. Eventually, the Milky Way will get eaten up by the Andromeda galaxy, but don't worry, this won't happen for another two billion years!

You can look at all 59 images on the Hubble website, which you can link to here.

Images on this page from: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team

A large red elliptical galaxy and an irregular blue galaxy begin to collide. The merge has distorted both galaxies.

A pair of galaxies that have been interacting for about one hundred million years.

A pair of very gaseous spiral galaxies in the early stages of interation.

The two galaxies are connected by a bridge of material, and has yanked two curved tails of gas from the outer parts of their bodies.

Cassini's grand tour of Saturn

Posted: 16 April 2008

    The groundbreaking Cassini mission that is exploring the planet Saturn has been given an extra two years to make even more spectacular discoveries.
     Cassini was launched in 1997 and arrived at Saturn in 2004. Its mission was meant to keep going just until this summer, but it has been so successful that NASA has decided to continue its mission of exploration until July 2010 at least.
     Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun, and is the most beautiful planet to look at. It is a gas giant, which means that it is completely made of gas with no ground to stand on. It is ten times as wide as Earth, and weighs the same as 95 Earths, but its density is actually less than the density of water. This means, if there were a bathtub big enough, Saturn would actually float!

    Probably the first thing you notice about Saturn is its fabulous rings, which are made up of tens of thousands of tiny ringlets. The rings are made of dirty ice and boulders of rock, and are thought to have been created when a moon or a large comet exploded near Saturn.

Icy Enceladous.

Iapetus and its black and white sides.

All images: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute. For lots more pictures from Cassini, take a look here: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/

images index.cfm

Introducing the fantastic ringed planet, Saturn.

The orange atmosphere of Titan.

   Saturn also has a whopping number of moons – 52 in total have been discovered so far. Most are small, a few tens of kilometres across, but some are really big, like Titan. In January 2005, Cassini dropped a European probe called Huygens into the atmosphere of Titan (Titan is the only moon in the Solar System that has its own atmosphere), which then landed on the surface. Titan is a weird world – it is so cold (around –179 degrees Celsius) that its rain is made of liquid methane, and it also has rivers and seas of black oily methane too.

    Saturn has some other interesting moons too. Enceladus (pronounced En-sel-ah-dus) has huge geysers of water that burst out into space from its south pole, and it may have liquid water beneath its icy surface. Mimas has a gigantic crater called Herschel, that is the result of a huge impact with an asteroid. And Iapetus (pronounced I-ap-e-tus) has a weird ridge, or wall of mountains, running all the way around its equator, and one side of Iapetus is covered in very dark material, and the other side in brilliant white frost.

    Cassini has made some amazing discoveries over the last four years, and for news of what it discovers over the next two years, keep reading Starlight!

The huge crater on Mimas makes it look like the Death Star from Star Wars.

Phobos up close

Posted: 15 April 2008

     Using the HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, scientists have created amazing new colour views of Phobos, the larger and innermost moon of Mars.

     By combining information from the camera’s different coloured channels, scientists could look at the tiny moon in a new way. The light blue colours are thought to represent young material that hasn’t been exposed to space as long as the rest of the surface. A lot of this type of material can be seen around Phobos’ largest surface feature, the Stickney crater, which is 9 kilometres wide and may even have come close to shattering the moon.

     The new HiRISE images also show landslides along the walls of Stickney crater, as well as striking grooves and crater chains across the whole surface.

    Phobos is of great interest to scientists because it may contain water ice and carbon-rich materials. The new images will help scientists to understand the origin and evolution of this moon.

Images: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona.

To see more amazing photos of Phobos go to http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu

This image of Phobos was taken at a distance of 6,800 kilometres from the moon’s surface.

This zoomed-in image shows the Stickney crater; look closely to see the landslides along its walls.

Martian avalanches caught in action

Posted: 4 March 2008

    Cameras orbiting Mars have captured four avalanches in action, in just one image. The images shown here reveal close-ups of two avalanches. Material such as fine-grained ice and dust has broken away from a towering cliff and tumbled to the gentler slopes below. Clouds of dust rising into the air have been captured by the cameras, which are part of NASA’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE).

    The trigger mechanism for the avalanches is not known, but it is likely that the disappearance of the carbon dioxide frost from the tops of the cliffs, combined with the expansion and contraction of ice in response to temperature changes may be the cause. Other possibilities include a nearby Mars-quake or meteorite impact, or perhaps vibrations caused by a different debris fall in the area.

    Most of the images taken by Mars orbiting cameras record few changes to the surface, revealing landscapes millions of years old. With the exception of a few seasonal changes and the occasional dust devil - a tornado like funnel of dust that can whip along the surface of Mars - it is extremely unlikely that such a dynamic event as an avalanche is captured by still photography. Events like these are useful in trying to unlock the secrets of active processes that occur on other planets.

To see more amazing HiRISE images visit: http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/index.php

Images: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

NASA's ultimate off road Moon buggy

Posted: 28 February 2008

      When astronauts return to the Moon in the next decade they’re going to need a vehicle to help them get around the lunar surface. NASA has begun designing the ultimate off-road buggy – a six-wheel drive truck that looks a bit like the Mars Exploration Rovers, but designed to carry astronauts and their equipment.           

      The truck will be able to travel forwards and backwards, and even crawl down the sides of steep hills and into craters by turning its wheels sideways. It will be able to manoeuvre around rocks and pot holes easily too. On the original Apollo rover, the astronauts couldn't drive in reverse because they couldn't see where they were going. They weren't able to turn around or look over their shoulders like you would in a car, because their space suits were too restrictive. But with the lunar truck, the astronaut can turn completely around on the vehicle and just drive the other way!

      The lunar truck design is in its early stages of development, and some, all or none of its design will actually be part of the final vehicle. But over the next few years, engineers are going to have a lot of fun road-testing their designs.

Image: NASA