From The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Via “Live Science” : “Rare red asteroids around Neptune could reveal the secrets of the early solar system”

From The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Via

“Live Science”

4.1.23
Joanna Thompson

Scientists have observed that some of Neptune’s Trojan asteroids are deep red, possibly revealing what asteroids may have been like in the early days of the solar system.

Telescope images of Neptune’s rare red asteroids taken with taken with the Palomar 200-inch, Gemini and Keck telescopes (Image credit: Dr Bryce Bolin)

Caltech Palomar Observatory 200 inch Hale Telescope, Altitude 1,713 m (5,620 ft), located in San Diego County, California.

NSF NOIRLab’s Gemini North Frederick C Gillett telescope at Mauna Kea Observatory Hawai’i (Altitude 4,213 m (13,822 ft).

NSF NOIRLab NOAO Gemini South telescope Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory(CL) campus near La Serena, Chile, at an altitude of 7200 feet on the summit of Cerro Pachon.

W.M. Keck Observatory two ten meter telescopes operated by California Institute of Technology and The University of California, at Mauna Kea Observatory, Hawai’i, altitude 4,207 m (13,802 ft). Credit: Caltech.

Neptune is famously a vivid blue, but the asteroids orbiting near it are decidedly not. An international team of astronomers recently took a peek at Neptune’s Trojan asteroids and found that they all seem to be some shade of red — far redder than most asteroids in the solar system. They published their results Feb. 14 in the journal MNRAS [below].

The Neptunian Trojans are a cloud of asteroids whose orbit around the sun parallels Neptune’s. They hang out in the gravitationally stable points between Neptune and the sun, or between Neptune and the dwarf planet Pluto. First discovered in 2001, fewer than 50 of these rocky bodies have been described to date.

The reason for this is not that Neptunian Trojans are rare; it’s probably because it’s difficult to spot space rocks that are so small and far away. These asteroids tend to be 31 to 62 miles (50 to 100 kilometers) across and orbit at a distance of 2.8 billion miles (4.5 billion km) from the sun. Prior to this research, astronomers had studied only a baker’s dozen of these asteroids, and had to use some of Earth’s largest and most powerful telescopes to do it.

The Neptunian Trojans are a cloud of asteroids whose orbit around the sun parallels Neptune’s. They hang out in the gravitationally stable points between Neptune and the sun, or between Neptune and the dwarf planet Pluto. First discovered in 2001, fewer than 50 of these rocky bodies have been described to date.

The reason for this is not that Neptunian Trojans are rare; it’s probably because it’s difficult to spot space rocks that are so small and far away. These asteroids tend to be 31 to 62 miles (50 to 100 kilometers) across and orbit at a distance of 2.8 billion miles (4.5 billion km) from the sun. Prior to this research, astronomers had studied only a baker’s dozen of these asteroids, and had to use some of Earth’s largest and most powerful telescopes to do it.

“In our new work, we have more than doubled the sample of Neptunian Trojans studied with large telescopes,” Bryce Bolin , an astronomer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and lead author of the study, said in a statement.

Telescope images of 12 of Neptune’s Trojan asteroids reveal much redder hues than are typically seen in the solar system. (Image credit: Dr Bryce Bolin)

Bolin’s team synthesized data collected by four telescopes — the Palomar Observatory telescope in California, the Gemini North and South telescopes in Hawaii and Chile and the Keck telescope in Hawaii — over two years. Researchers tracked 18 Neptunian Trojans and analyzed their color. They found that most were significantly redder than most asteroids, including four that were extremely red.

That crimson color indicates that the Neptunian Trojans are rich in volatile compounds such as ammonia and methanol. Ices made of these chemicals are very sensitive to heat and will rapidly turn to gas when exposed to enough solar radiation. Because of this, astronomers expect that asteroids closer to the sun to have far less of a red tinge; their ammonia and methanol have already boiled away.

Sure enough, researchers have observed a sort of ombré progression of red asteroids, starting with slate gray rocks in the inner solar system and working out to dark red beyond Pluto’s orbit.

It’s likely that some of Neptune’s reddest asteroids formed even farther from the sun in the solar system’s early days, before migrating inward and getting caught in Neptune’s orbit, the researchers added. Studying them could open a window into how asteroids in the early solar system formed and how their composition has changed over the past 4.6 billion years.

MNRAS
See the science paper for instructive material with images.

See the full article here.

Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.

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NASA/Goddard Campus

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD is home to the nation’s largest organization of combined scientists, engineers and technologists that build spacecraft, instruments and new technology to study the Earth, the sun, our solar system, and the universe.

Named for American rocketry pioneer Dr. Robert H. Goddard, the center was established in 1959 as NASA’s first space flight complex. Goddard and its several facilities are critical in carrying out NASA’s missions of space exploration and scientific discovery.

GSFC also operates two spaceflight tracking and data acquisition networks (the NASA Deep Space Network and the Near Earth Network); develops and maintains advanced space and Earth science data information systems, and develops satellite systems for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

GSFC manages operations for many NASA and international missions including the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope; the Explorers Program; the Discovery Program; the Earth Observing System; INTEGRAL; MAVEN; OSIRIS-REx; the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory ; the Solar Dynamics Observatory; Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System ; Fermi; and Swift. Past missions managed by GSFC include the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE), Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, SMM, COBE, IUE, and ROSAT. Typically, unmanned Earth observation missions and observatories in Earth orbit are managed by GSFC, while unmanned planetary missions are managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

Goddard is one of four centers built by NASA since its founding on July 29, 1958. It is NASA’s first, and oldest, space center. Its original charter was to perform five major functions on behalf of NASA: technology development and fabrication; planning; scientific research; technical operations; and project management. The center is organized into several directorates, each charged with one of these key functions.

Until May 1, 1959, NASA’s presence in Greenbelt, MD was known as the Beltsville Space Center. It was then renamed the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), after Robert H. Goddard. Its first 157 employees transferred from the United States Navy’s Project Vanguard missile program, but continued their work at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., while the center was under construction.

Goddard Space Flight Center contributed to Project Mercury, America’s first manned space flight program. The Center assumed a lead role for the project in its early days and managed the first 250 employees involved in the effort, who were stationed at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. However, the size and scope of Project Mercury soon prompted NASA to build a new Manned Spacecraft Center, now the Johnson Space Center, in Houston, Texas. Project Mercury’s personnel and activities were transferred there in 1961.

The Goddard network tracked many early manned and unmanned spacecraft.

Goddard Space Flight Center remained involved in the manned space flight program, providing computer support and radar tracking of flights through a worldwide network of ground stations called the Spacecraft Tracking and Data Acquisition Network (STDN). However, the Center focused primarily on designing unmanned satellites and spacecraft for scientific research missions. Goddard pioneered several fields of spacecraft development, including modular spacecraft design, which reduced costs and made it possible to repair satellites in orbit. Goddard’s Solar Max satellite, launched in 1980, was repaired by astronauts on the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1984. The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, remains in service and continues to grow in capability thanks to its modular design and multiple servicing missions by the Space Shuttle.

Today, the center remains involved in each of NASA’s key programs. Goddard has developed more instruments for planetary exploration than any other organization, among them scientific instruments sent to every planet in the Solar System. The center’s contribution to the Earth Science Enterprise includes several spacecraft in the Earth Observing System fleet as well as EOSDIS, a science data collection, processing, and distribution system. For the manned space flight program, Goddard develops tools for use by astronauts during extra-vehicular activity, and operates the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a spacecraft designed to study the Moon in preparation for future manned exploration.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation’s civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA’s predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

Since that time, most U.S. space exploration efforts have been led by NASA, including the Apollo moon-landing missions, the Skylab space station, and later the Space Shuttle. Currently, NASA is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and Commercial Crew vehicles. The agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program (LSP) which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches. Most recently, NASA announced a new Space Launch System that it said would take the agency’s astronauts farther into space than ever before and lay the cornerstone for future human space exploration efforts by the U.S.

NASA science is focused on better understanding Earth through the Earth Observing System, advancing heliophysics through the efforts of the Science Mission Directorate’s Heliophysics Research Program, exploring bodies throughout the Solar System with advanced robotic missions such as New Horizons, and researching astrophysics topics, such as the Big Bang, through the Great Observatories [Hubble, Chandra, Spitzer, and associated programs.] NASA shares data with various national and international organizations such as from the [JAXA]Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite.

From The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory At The University of Arizona: “6 months to go until historic asteroid sample delivery”

From The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory

At

The University of Arizona

3.24.23

Media contact
Daniel Stolte
Science Writer, University Communications
stolte@arizona.edu
520-626-4402

Researcher contact
Dante Lauretta
Lunar and Planetary Laboratory
lauretta@lpl.arizona.edu
520-626-1138

March 24 marks 6 months until the University of Arizona-led OSIRIS-REx mission is scheduled to return material from the dawn of the solar system to Earth for study.

When its sample capsule parachutes down into the Utah desert on Sept. 24, OSIRIS-REx will become the United States’ first-ever mission to return an asteroid sample to Earth. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

The University of Arizona’s OSIRIS-REx team is eagerly awaiting the arrival of pristine material from asteroid Bennu, marking the first time NASA is bringing a sample from an extraterrestrial body to Earth since the Apollo moon landings. Once in Tucson, material leftover from the formation of the solar system will be studied at the Kuiper Materials Imaging and Characterization Facility at the university’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, a state-of-the-art facility designed with one goal: extract as much information from samples as possible.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft [below] is currently cruising back to Earth with a sample it collected from Bennu’s rocky surface in 2020 . When its sample capsule parachutes down into the Utah desert on Sept. 24, OSIRIS-REx will become the United States’ first-ever mission to return an asteroid sample to Earth.

After seven years in space, including a nail-biting touchdown on Bennu to gather dust and rocks, this intrepid mission is about to face one of its biggest challenges yet: Deliver the asteroid sample to Earth while protecting it from heat, vibrations and earthly contaminants.

“Once the sample capsule touches down, our team will be racing against the clock to recover it and get it to the safety of a temporary clean room,” said Mike Moreau, deputy project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Members of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx curation team work with a glove box at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The curation team will be among the first to see and handle the sample OSIRIS-REx is returning from asteroid Bennu. They are also responsible for storing and distributing the sample to science team members around the world. Most of the sample will be stored for future generations. Credit: Bill Stafford/NASA Johnson Space Flight Center.

Over the next six months, the OSIRIS-REx team will practice and refine the procedures required to recover the sample in Utah and transport it to a new lab built for the material at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. There, scientists will unpack the sample, distribute up to a quarter of it to the OSIRIS-REx science team around the world for analysis, and curate the rest for other scientists to study, now and in future generations.

Flight dynamics engineers from NASA Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are reviewing the trajectory that will bring the spacecraft close to Earth. At Lockheed Martin in Denver, team members are keeping tabs on the spacecraft and preparing a group to recover the sample capsule. This summer, crews in Colorado and Utah will practice all of the steps to recover the capsule safely, while protecting it from contamination. At Johnson Space Center, the curation team is rehearsing a procedure to unpack and process the sample inside glove boxes. Meanwhile, members of the sample science team are preparing the investigations they will perform with the sample material once received.

“The OSIRIS-REx team has already performed amazing feats characterizing and sampling asteroid Bennu,” said OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta, a UArizona professor of planetary sciences. “These accomplishments are the direct result of the extensive training and rehearsals that we performed every step of the way. We are bringing that level of discipline and dedication to this final phase of the flight operations.”

Asteroids are the ancient materials left over from the original era of planet formation and may contain molecular precursors to life. Scientists have learned a great deal from studying asteroid fragments that have naturally reached the ground as meteorites. But to understand whether asteroids played a role in delivering these compounds to Earth’s surface over 4 billion years ago, scientists need a pristine sample from space, free from terrestrial contaminants.

In addition, the most fragile rocks observed on Bennu probably would not have survived passage through Earth’s atmosphere as meteorites.

“There are two things pervasive on Earth: water and biology,” said Jason Dworkin, OSIRIS-REx project scientist at NASA Goddard. “Both can severely alter meteorites when they land on the ground and muddle the story told by the sample’s chemistry and mineralogy. A pristine sample could provide insights into the development of solar system.”

On Sept. 24, as the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft flies by Earth, it will release its sample return capsule, thereby ending its primary mission. The capsule, which is estimated to hold about a cup of Bennu’s material – 8.8 ounces, plus or minus 3.6 ounces, to be precise – will land within a 37-mile by 9-mile ellipse within Department of Defense property that is part of the Utah Test and Training Range and Dugway Proving Grounds.

OSIRIS-REx team members from NASA Goddard, KinetX, Lockheed Martin and NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, are using computer models to test navigation plans in various weather, solar activity, and space debris scenarios to ensure that when the capsule enters Earth’s atmosphere at 10:41 a.m. (ET), it will touch down inside the targeted area 13 minutes later.

Recovery crews are responsible for securing the sample return capsule’s landing site and helicoptering it to a portable clean room located at the range. Additionally, crews will collect soil and air samples all around the landing capsule. These samples will help identify if any minute contaminants contacted the asteroid sample.

Once the capsule is inside the building with the portable clean room, members of the team will remove the heat shield, back shell and other components to prepare the sample canister for transport to Houston.

The return to Earth of samples from asteroid Bennu will be the culmination of a more than 12-year effort by NASA and its mission partners but marks the beginning of a new phase of discovery as scientists from around the world will turn their attention to the analysis of this unique and precious material dating from the early formation of the solar system.

NASA Prepares for Historic Asteroid Sample Delivery on Sept. 24, 2023.

See the full article here .

Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.

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The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory is a research center for planetary science located in Tucson, Arizona. It is also a graduate school, constituting the Department of Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona. The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory is one of the world’s largest programs dedicated exclusively to planetary science in a university setting. The Lunar and Planetary Lab collection is held at the University of Arizona Special Collections Library.

The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory was founded in 1960 by astronomer Gerard Kuiper. Kuiper had long been a pioneer in observing the Solar System, especially the Moon, at a time when this was unfashionable among astronomers. Among his contributions are the discovery of Miranda and Nereid, the detection of carbon dioxide on Mars and of methane on Titan, and the prediction of the Kuiper Belt.

Kuiper Belt. Minor Planet Center.

Kuiper came to Tucson looking for greater independence than he had enjoyed at The University of Chicago, the chance to build a community dedicated to solar system studies, and also to be closer to southern Arizona’s many potential sites for world-class observatories, such as Kitt Peak National Observatory (founded in 1958)[below]. LPL was established under the auspices of the University of Arizona, with Kuiper serving as director until his death.

The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory’s endeavors are truly interdisciplinary. The accumulated knowledge and techniques of astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, geophysics, geochemistry, atmospheric science, and engineering are all brought to bear upon the single goal of studying planetary systems. Many students come to The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory having studied only one or two of these subjects in detail, so a broad-based curriculum is essential.

In 1973, the university established a graduate Department of Planetary Sciences, operating continuously with The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. This provided an administrative framework for The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory to admit graduate students and take a greater role in teaching. The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory’s chief officer is simultaneously “head” of the department and “director” of the laboratory.

As of 2019, The University of Arizona enrolled 45,918 students in 19 separate colleges/schools, including The University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson and Phoenix and the James E. Rogers College of Law, and is affiliated with two academic medical centers (Banner – University Medical Center Tucson and Banner – University Medical Center Phoenix). The University of Arizona is one of three universities governed by the Arizona Board of Regents. The university is part of the Association of American Universities and is the only member from Arizona, and also part of the Universities Research Association . The university is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very High Research Activity”.

Known as the Arizona Wildcats (often shortened to “Cats”), The University of Arizona’s intercollegiate athletic teams are members of the Pac-12 Conference of the NCAA. The University of Arizona athletes have won national titles in several sports, most notably men’s basketball, baseball, and softball. The official colors of the university and its athletic teams are cardinal red and navy blue.

After the passage of the Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862, the push for a university in Arizona grew. The Arizona Territory’s “Thieving Thirteenth” Legislature approved The University of Arizona in 1885 and selected the city of Tucson to receive the appropriation to build the university. Tucson hoped to receive the appropriation for the territory’s mental hospital, which carried a $100,000 allocation instead of the $25,000 allotted to the territory’s only university Arizona State University was also chartered in 1885, but it was created as Arizona’s normal school, and not a university). Flooding on the Salt River delayed Tucson’s legislators, and by the time they reached Prescott, back-room deals allocating the most desirable territorial institutions had been made. Tucson was largely disappointed with receiving what was viewed as an inferior prize.

With no parties willing to provide land for the new institution, the citizens of Tucson prepared to return the money to the Territorial Legislature until two gamblers and a saloon keeper decided to donate the land to build the school. Construction of Old Main, the first building on campus, began on October 27, 1887, and classes met for the first time in 1891 with 32 students in Old Main, which is still in use today. Because there were no high schools in Arizona Territory, the university maintained separate preparatory classes for the first 23 years of operation.

Research

The University of Arizona is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity”. UArizona is the fourth most awarded public university by National Aeronautics and Space Administration for research. The University of Arizona was awarded over $325 million for its Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL) to lead NASA’s 2007–08 mission to Mars to explore the Martian Arctic, and $800 million for its OSIRIS-REx mission, the first in U.S. history to sample an asteroid.

National Aeronautics Space Agency OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft.

The LPL’s work in the Cassini spacecraft orbit around Saturn is larger than any other university globally.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration/European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea][Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganisation](EU)/ASI Italian Space Agency [Agenzia Spaziale Italiana](IT) Cassini Spacecraft.

The University of Arizona laboratory designed and operated the atmospheric radiation investigations and imaging on the probe. The University of Arizona operates the HiRISE camera, a part of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

U Arizona NASA Mars Reconnaisance HiRISE Camera.

NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

While using the HiRISE camera in 2011, University of Arizona alumnus Lujendra Ojha and his team discovered proof of liquid water on the surface of Mars—a discovery confirmed by NASA in 2015. The University of Arizona receives more NASA grants annually than the next nine top NASA/JPL-Caltech-funded universities combined. As of March 2016, The University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory is actively involved in ten spacecraft missions: Cassini VIMS; Grail; the HiRISE camera orbiting Mars; the Juno mission orbiting Jupiter; Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO); Maven, which will explore Mars’ upper atmosphere and interactions with the sun; Solar Probe Plus, a historic mission into the Sun’s atmosphere for the first time; Rosetta’s VIRTIS; WISE; and OSIRIS-REx, the first U.S. sample-return mission to a near-earth asteroid, which launched on September 8, 2016.

NASA – GRAIL Flying in Formation (Artist’s Concept). Credit: NASA.
National Aeronautics Space Agency Juno at Jupiter.

NASA/Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

NASA/Mars MAVEN

NASA Parker Solar Probe Plus named to honor Pioneering Physicist Eugene Parker. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration Wise/NEOWISE Telescope.

The University of Arizona students have been selected as Truman, Rhodes, Goldwater, and Fulbright Scholars. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, UArizona is among the top 25 producers of Fulbright awards in the U.S.

The University of Arizona is a member of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy , a consortium of institutions pursuing research in astronomy. The association operates observatories and telescopes, notably Kitt Peak National Observatory just outside Tucson.

National Science Foundation NOIRLab National Optical Astronomy Observatory Kitt Peak National Observatory on Kitt Peak of the Quinlan Mountains in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert on the Tohono O’odham Nation, 88 kilometers (55 mi) west-southwest of Tucson, Arizona, Altitude 2,096 m (6,877 ft). annotated.

Led by Roger Angel, researchers in the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab at The University of Arizona are working in concert to build the world’s most advanced telescope. Known as the Giant Magellan Telescope (CL), it will produce images 10 times sharper than those from the Earth-orbiting Hubble Telescope.

Giant Magellan Telescope(CL) 21 meters, to be at the Carnegie Institution for Science’s NOIRLab NOAO Las Campanas Observatory(CL), some 115 km (71 mi) north-northeast of La Serena, Chile, over 2,500 m (8,200 ft) high.

GMT will ultimately cost $1 billion. Researchers from at least nine institutions are working to secure the funding for the project. The telescope will include seven 18-ton mirrors capable of providing clear images of volcanoes and riverbeds on Mars and mountains on the moon at a rate 40 times faster than the world’s current large telescopes. The mirrors of the Giant Magellan Telescope will be built at The University of Arizona and transported to a permanent mountaintop site in the Chilean Andes where the telescope will be constructed.

Reaching Mars in March 2006, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter contained the HiRISE camera, with Principal Investigator Alfred McEwen as the lead on the project. This National Aeronautics and Space Agency mission to Mars carrying the UArizona-designed camera is capturing the highest-resolution images of the planet ever seen. The journey of the orbiter was 300 million miles. In August 2007, The University of Arizona, under the charge of Scientist Peter Smith, led the Phoenix Mars Mission, the first mission completely controlled by a university. Reaching the planet’s surface in May 2008, the mission’s purpose was to improve knowledge of the Martian Arctic. The Arizona Radio Observatory , a part of The University of Arizona Department of Astronomy Steward Observatory , operates the Submillimeter Telescope on Mount Graham.

University of Arizona Radio Observatory at NOAO Kitt Peak National Observatory, AZ USA, U Arizona Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory at altitude 2,096 m (6,877 ft).

U Arizona Steward Observatory at NSF’s NOIRLab NOAO Kitt Peak National Observatory in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert 88 kilometers 55 mi west-southwest of Tucson, Arizona in the Quinlan Mountains of the Tohono O’odham Nation, altitude 2,096 m (6,877 ft).

The National Science Foundation funded the iPlant Collaborative in 2008 with a $50 million grant. In 2013, iPlant Collaborative received a $50 million renewal grant. Rebranded in late 2015 as “CyVerse”, the collaborative cloud-based data management platform is moving beyond life sciences to provide cloud-computing access across all scientific disciplines.

In June 2011, the university announced it would assume full ownership of the Biosphere 2 scientific research facility in Oracle, Arizona, north of Tucson, effective July 1. Biosphere 2 was constructed by private developers (funded mainly by Texas businessman and philanthropist Ed Bass) with its first closed system experiment commencing in 1991. The university had been the official management partner of the facility for research purposes since 2007.

U Arizona mirror lab-Where else in the world can you find an astronomical observatory mirror lab under a football stadium?

University of Arizona’s Biosphere 2, located in the Sonoran desert. An entire ecosystem under a glass dome? Visit our campus, just once, and you’ll quickly understand why The University of Arizona is a university unlike any other.

University of Arizona Landscape Evolution Observatory at Biosphere 2.

From “Science Magazine” : “Satellite data suggest that Earth is at higher risk of big asteroid strike”

From “Science Magazine”

3.20.23
Paul Voosen

If Zhamanshin crater in Kazakhstan is 30 kilometers wide (red ring) instead of 13 kilometers (black ring), as a new study suggests, the impact that made it would have been far more fierce. Credits: J. Garvin, C. Tucker, C. Anderson, D. Slayback, and D. McClain/NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; Maxar WorldView; EarthDEM; NASA Planetary Defense Coordination Office.

At a basic level, humanity’s survival odds come down to one thing: the chances of a giant space rock slamming into the planet and sending us the way of the dinosaurs. One way to calibrate that hazard is to look at the size of Earth’s recent large impact craters. And a provocative new study suggests they are bigger than previously thought—meaning Earth is more at risk of getting hit hard, says James Garvin, chief scientist of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, who presented the work last week at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. “It would be in the range of serious crap happening.”

Using a new catalog of high-resolution satellite imagery, Garvin and his colleagues identified large rings around three impact craters and one probable one that are 1 million years old or younger. To Garvin, the rings imply the craters are tens of kilometers wider, and record far more violent events, than researchers had thought.

If Garvin is right—no sure bet—each impact resulted in an explosion some 10 times more violent than the largest nuclear bomb in history, enough to blow part of the planet’s atmosphere into space. Although not as destructive as the impact that killed off the dinosaurs, the strikes would have perturbed the global climate and caused local extinctions.

It’s an extraordinary claim, as Garvin himself admits. “We haven’t proven anything,” he says. Without fieldwork to back up the conclusions, impact researchers are wary of the circles Garvin and his colleagues have drawn on maps—especially because they defy other estimates of impact rates. “I’m skeptical,” says Bill Bottke, a planetary dynamicist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “I want to see a lot more before I believe it.”

Because water and wind quickly erase most impact craters on Earth, researchers estimate impact rates by tallying crater sizes and ages on the Moon. They also study the size of asteroids in orbit near Earth—potential future impactors. Based on those two methods, researchers estimate that an asteroid or comet 1 kilometer wide or larger hits the planet every 600,000 to 700,000 years.

The new study, however, suggests that in the past million years alone, four kilometer-size objects pummeled the continents—and, given that two-thirds of the planet is covered by water, that could mean up to a dozen struck Earth in total, Bottke says. Anna Łosiak, a crater researcher at the Polish Academy of Sciences, doubts the ringlike features identified by Garvin’s team are truly crater rims. If they somehow are, she says, “that would be very scary because it would mean we really don’t understand what’s going on at all—and that there are a lot of space rocks that may come and make a mess.”

The work stems from a database of high-resolution satellite imagery from the company Planet. Garvin and his collaborators used thousands of stereo overlapping images to create 3D maps of the four craters. Adding data from two height-measuring lasers that NASA operates in orbit, including one capable of penetrating tree cover, gave them maps with 4-meter resolution.

They removed features from the maps that were obviously unrelated to the impact. Then they applied an algorithm Garvin had first developed for Mars that searches for circular patterns in the topography. For simple, small craters, it invariably identified the obvious crater rim. But in thousands of runs on the four larger craters, the algorithm frequently identified a rimlike structure much farther out than the accepted rim. For example, Pantasma, an 800,000-year-old crater in Nicaragua, grew from 14.8 kilometers to 35.2 kilometers in diameter.

Experienced crater scientists don’t see the new rims. “Those features are so subtle that I don’t think they say ‘big structural rim,’” says Gordon Osinski, a planetary scientist at Western University. They could instead be rings of debris ejected by the impacts, adds Brandon Johnson, a planetary scientist at Purdue University.

Garvin, however, doesn’t think a mere ridge of debris would still be visible after 1 million years of erosion. He thinks the rings imply large craters on Earth have more variable structures than elsewhere in the Solar System because of high erosion rates. “On Earth, things get messy, particularly when you throw a lot of energy at it,” he says.

For the results to gain credence, Johnson says the team will need to gather more evidence. First, the climate upheaval triggered by impacts as big as Garvin claims should have left its mark in ice cores or ocean or lake sediments. Second, researchers need to visit the sites of the rings to look for the deformed rocks and gravitational variations that would indicate a true crater rim.

Given the stakes, this is one hypothesis that can’t afford to go untested, Johnson says. “We’ve got to go there, check out the geology, and get more detail.”

See the full article here .

Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.

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Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

From The European Southern Observatory [La Observatorio Europeo Austral] [Observatoire européen austral] [Europäische Südsternwarte](EU)(CL) : “First results from ESO telescopes on the aftermath of DART’s asteroid impact”

From The European Southern Observatory [La Observatorio Europeo Austral] [Observatoire européen austral] [Europäische Südsternwarte](EU)(CL)

3.21.23

Cyrielle Opitom
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)131 668 8350
Email: copi@roe.ac.uk

Zuri Gray
Armagh Observatory and Planetarium
Armagh, United Kingdom
Tel: +353831185135
Email: zuri.gray@armagh.ac.uk

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Evolution of the cloud of debris around Dimorphos and Didymos after the DART impact.

Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT)[below], two teams of astronomers have observed the aftermath of the collision between NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft and the asteroid Dimorphos.

National Aeronautics Space Agency DART spacecraft.

The controlled impact was a test of planetary defense, but also gave astronomers a unique opportunity to learn more about the asteroid’s composition from the expelled material.

This artist’s illustration shows the ejection of a cloud of debris after NASA’s DART spacecraft collided with the asteroid Dimorphos. The image was created with the help of the close-up photographs of Dimorphos that the DRACO camera on the DART spacecraft took right before the impact. The DART spacecraft collided with Dimorphos at a speed of over 6 kilometres per second (about 22 000 kilometres per hour). After the impact several telescopes observed the evolution of the cloud of debris, including ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Credit: M. Kornmesser/ESO.

On 26 September 2022 the DART spacecraft collided with the asteroid Dimorphos in a controlled test of our asteroid deflection capabilities. The impact took place 11 million kilometres away from Earth, close enough to be observed in detail with many telescopes. All four 8.2-metre telescopes of ESO’s VLT in Chile observed the aftermath of the impact, and the first results of these VLT observations have now been published in two papers.

”Asteroids are some of the most basic relics of what all the planets and moons in our Solar System were created from,” says Brian Murphy, a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh in the UK and co-author of one of the studies. Studying the cloud of material ejected after DART’s impact can therefore tell us about how our Solar System formed. “Impacts between asteroids happen naturally, but you never know it in advance,” continues Cyrielle Opitom, an astronomer also at the University of Edinburgh and lead author of one of the articles. “DART is a really great opportunity to study a controlled impact, almost as in a laboratory.”

Opitom and her team followed the evolution of the cloud of debris for a month with the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument at ESO’s VLT.

The European Southern Observatory [La Observatorio Europeo Austral] [Observatoire européen austral][Europäische Südsternwarte](EU)(CL) MUSE on Yepun (UT4) on the Very Large Telescope, Cerro Paranal (CL).

They found that the ejected cloud was bluer than the asteroid itself was before the impact, indicating that the cloud could be made of very fine particles. In the hours and days that followed the impact other structures developed: clumps, spirals and a long tail pushed away by the Sun’s radiation. The spirals and tail were redder than the initial cloud, and so could be made of larger particles.

MUSE allowed Opitom’s team to break up the light from the cloud into a rainbow-like pattern and look for the chemical fingerprints of different gases. In particular, they searched for oxygen and water coming from ice exposed by the impact. But they found nothing. ”Asteroids are not expected to contain significant amounts of ice, so detecting any trace of water would have been a real surprise,” explains Opitom. They also looked for traces of the propellant of the DART spacecraft, but found none. ”We knew it was a long shot,” she says, “as the amount of gas that would be left in the tanks from the propulsion system would not be huge. Furthermore, some of it would have travelled too far to detect it with MUSE by the time we started observing.”

Another team, led by Stefano Bagnulo, an astronomer at the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium in the UK, studied how the DART impact altered the surface of the asteroid.

“When we observe the objects in our Solar System, we are looking at the sunlight that is scattered by their surface or by their atmosphere, which becomes partially polarised,” explains Bagnulo. This means that light waves oscillate along a preferred direction rather than randomly. “Tracking how the polarisation changes with the orientation of the asteroid relative to us and the Sun reveals the structure and composition of its surface.”

Bagnulo and his colleagues used the FOcal Reducer/low dispersion Spectrograph 2 (FORS2) instrument at the VLT to monitor the asteroid, and found that the level of polarization suddenly dropped after the impact.

The European Southern Observatory [La Observatorio Europeo Austral][Observatoire européen austral][Europäische Südsternwarte](EU)(CL) FORS2 mounted on the VLT Telescope Unit 1 (Antu).

At the same time, the overall brightness of the system increased. One possible explanation is that the impact exposed more pristine material from the interior of the asteroid. ”Maybe the material excavated by the impact was intrinsically brighter and less polarising than the material on the surface, because it was never exposed to solar wind and solar radiation,” says Bagnulo.

Another possibility is that the impact destroyed particles on the surface, thus ejecting much smaller ones into the cloud of debris. ”We know that under certain circumstances, smaller fragments are more efficient at reflecting light and less efficient at polarising it,” explains Zuri Gray, a PhD student also at the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium.

The studies by the teams led by Bagnulo and Opitom show the potential of the VLT when its different instruments work together. In fact, in addition to MUSE and FORS2, the aftermath of the impact was observed with two other VLT instruments, and analysis of these data is ongoing. “This research took advantage of a unique opportunity when NASA impacted an asteroid,” concludes Opitom, “so it cannot be repeated by any future facility. This makes the data obtained with the VLT around the time of impact extremely precious when it comes to better understanding the nature of asteroids.”

More information

The research highlighted in the first part of this release was presented in the paper “Morphology and spectral properties of the DART impact ejecta with VLT/MUSE” to appear in Astronomy & Astrophysics [below]. The second part of this release refers to the paper “Optical spectropolarimetry of binary asteroid Didymos-Dimorphos before and after the DART impact” to appear in The Astrophysical Journal Letters [below] (doi:10.3847/2041-8213/acb261).

The team who conducted the first study is composed of C. Opitom (Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, UK [Edinburgh]), B. Murphy (Edinburgh), C. Snodgrass (Edinburgh), S. Bagnulo (Armagh Observatory & Planetarium, UK [Armagh]), S. F. Green (School of Physical Sciences, The Open University, UK), M. M. Knight (United States Naval Academy, USA), J. de Léon (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Spain), J.-Y. Li (Planetary Science Institute, USA), and D. Gardener (Edinburgh).

The team who conducted the second study is composed of S. Bagnulo (Armagh), Z. Gray (Armagh), M. Granvik (Department of Physics, University of Helsinki, Finland [Helsinki]; Asteroid Engineering Laboratory, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden), A. Cellino (INAF – Osservatorio Astrofisico di Torino, Italy), L. Kolokolova (Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, USA), K. Muinonen (Helsinki), O. Muñoz (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, CSIC, Spain), C. Opitom (Edinburgh), A. Penttila (Helsinki), and Colin Snodgrass (Edinburgh).

Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab built and operated the DART spacecraft and manages the DART mission for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office as a project of the agency’s Planetary Missions Program Office. LICIACube is a project of the Italian Space Agency (ASI), carried out by Argotec. For more information about the DART mission, visit https://www.nasa.gov/dart or https://dart.jhuapl.edu

Astronomy & Astrophysics
The Astrophysical Journal Letters

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The European Southern Observatory [La Observatorio Europeo Austral] [Observatoire européen austral][Europäische Südsternwarte] (EU)(CL) is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organization in Europe and the world’s most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. today ESO is supported by 16 Member States (Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), along with the host state of Chile and with Australia as a Strategic Partner. ESO carries out an ambitious program focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organizing cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: Cerro La Silla, Cerro Paranaland Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world’s largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is a major partner in ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. And on Cerro Armazones, close to Paranal, ESO is building the 39-metre European Extremely Large Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) enables scientists worldwide to discover the secrets of the Universe for the benefit of all. We design, build and operate world-class observatories on the ground — which astronomers use to tackle exciting questions and spread the fascination of astronomy — and promote international collaboration in astronomy. Established as an intergovernmental organization in 1962, ESO’s headquarters and its visitor centre and planetarium, the ESO Supernova, are located close to Munich in Germany, while the Chilean Atacama Desert, a marvellous place with unique conditions to observe the sky, hosts our telescopes. At Paranal ESO will host and operate the Čerenkov Telescope Array South, the world’s largest and most sensitive gamma-ray observatory.


Cerro La Silla HELIOS (HARPS Experiment for Light Integrated Over the Sun).

3.6m telescope & HARPS at Cerro LaSilla, 600 km north of Santiago de Chile at an altitude of 2400 metres.

MPG Institute for Astronomy [MPG-Institut für Astronomie](DE) European Southern Observatory(EU)(CL) 2.2 meter telescope at Cerro La Silla, 600 km north of Santiago de Chile at an altitude of 2400 metres.

The European Southern Observatory [La Observatorio Europeo Austral] [Observatoire européen austral][Europäische Südsternwarte](EU)(CL) Danish 1.54 meter telescope at La Silla, 600 km north of Santiago de Chile at an altitude of 2400 metres.

European Southern Observatory (EU)(CL)Cerro La Silla Observatory 600 km north of Santiago de Chile at an altitude of 2400 metres.

Paranal Observatory pictured with Cerro Paranal in the background. The mountain is home to one of the most advanced ground-based telescopes in the world, the VLT. The VLT telescope consists of four unit telescopes with mirrors measuring 8.2 meters in diameter and work together with four smaller auxiliary telescopes to make interferometric observations. Each of the 8.2m diameter Unit Telescopes can also be used individually. With one such telescope, images of celestial objects as faint as magnitude 30 can be obtained in a one-hour exposure. This corresponds to seeing objects that are four billion (four thousand million) times fainter than what can be seen with the unaided eye.

European Southern Observatory(EU)(CL) , Very Large Telescope at Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert •ANTU (UT1; The Sun ) •KUEYEN (UT2; The Moon ) •MELIPAL (UT3; The Southern Cross ), and •YEPUN (UT4; Venus – as evening star). Elevation 2,635 m (8,645 ft) from above Credit J.L. Dauvergne & G. Hüdepohl atacama photo.

ESO Paranal Residencia

ESO Paranal Residencia inside near the swimming pool

ESO Paranal Residencia dining room

European Southern Observatory(EU) (CL) VLTI Interferometer image, Cerro Paranal, with an elevation of 2,635 metres (8,645 ft) above sea level, •ANTU (UT1; The Sun ), •KUEYEN (UT2; The Moon ), •MELIPAL (UT3; The Southern Cross ), and •YEPUN (UT4; Venus – as evening star).

ESO VLT Survey telescope.

ESO Very Large Telescope 4 lasers on Yepun (CL).

Glistening against the awesome backdrop of the night sky above ESO’s Paranal Observatory, four laser beams project out into the darkness from Unit Telescope 4 UT4 of the VLT, a major asset of the Adaptive Optics system.

ESO New Technology Telescope at Cerro La Silla, at an altitude of 2400 metres.

Part of ESO’s Paranal Observatory the VLT Survey Telescope (VISTA) observes the brilliantly clear skies above the Atacama Desert of Chile. It is the largest survey telescope in the world in visible light, with an elevation of 2,635 metres (8,645 ft) above sea level.

European Southern Observatory (EU)(CL)National Radio Astronomy ObservatoryNational Astronomical Observatory of Japan(JP) ALMA Array in Chile in the Atacama at Chajnantor plateau, at 5,000 metres.

European Southern Observatory(EU) (CL) ELT 39 meter telescope to be on top of Cerro Armazones in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. located at the summit of the mountain at an altitude of 3,060 metres (10,040 ft).

European Southern Observatory(EU)(CL)/MPG Institute for Radio Astronomy [MPG Institut für Radioastronomie](DE) ESO’s Atacama Pathfinder Experiment(CL) high on the Chajnantor plateau in Chile’s Atacama region, at an altitude of over 4,800 m (15,700 ft).

The Leiden Observatory [Sterrewacht Leiden](NL) MASCARA instrument cabinet at Cerro La Silla, located in the southern Atacama Desert 600 kilometres (370 mi) north of Santiago de Chile at an altitude of 2,400 metres (7,900 ft).

ESO Next Generation Transit Survey telescopes, an array of twelve robotic 20-centimetre telescopes at Cerro Paranal, 2,635 metres (8,645 ft) above sea level.

ESO Speculoos telescopes four 1 meter robotic telescopes at ESO Paranal Observatory 2635 metres 8645 ft above sea level.

TAROT telescope at Cerro LaSilla, 2,635 metres (8,645 ft) above sea level.

European Southern Observatory (EU)(CL) ExTrA telescopes at Cerro LaSilla at an altitude of 2400 metres.

A novel gamma ray telescope under construction on Mount Hopkins, Arizona. A large project known as the Čerenkov Telescope Array composed of hundreds of similar telescopes to be situated in the Canary Islands and Chile at, ESO Cerro Paranal site The telescope on Mount Hopkins will be fitted with a prototype high-speed camera, assembled at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and capable of taking pictures at a billion frames per second. Credit: Vladimir Vassiliev.

European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea] [Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganization](EU)(CL), The new Test-Bed Telescope 2 is housed inside the shiny white dome shown in this picture, at ESO’s Cerro LaSilla Facility in Chile. The telescope has now started operations and will assist its northern-hemisphere twin in protecting us from potentially hazardous, near-Earth objects. The domes of ESO’s 0.5 m and the Danish 0.5 m telescopes are visible in the background of this image.Part of the world-wide effort to scan and identify near-Earth objects, the European Space Agency’s Test-Bed Telescope 2 (TBT2), a technology demonstrator hosted at ESO’s La Silla Observatory, has now started operating. Working alongside its northern-hemisphere partner telescope, TBT2 will keep a close eye on the sky for asteroids that could pose a risk to Earth, testing hardware and software for a future telescope network.

European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea][Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganization](EU)(CL) ‘s The open dome of The black telescope structure of the European Space Agency Test-Bed Telescope 2 peers out of its open dome in front of the rolling desert landscape. The telescope is located at ESO’s Cerro La Silla Observatory, which sits at a 2400 metre altitude in the Chilean Atacama Desert.

From The University of Heidelberg [Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg] (DE): “Unknown Class of Water-rich Asteroids Identified”

From The University of Heidelberg [Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg] (DE)

2.20.23

Small planets originate from the edge of our Solar System.

New astronomical measurements in the infrared range have led to the identification of a heretofore unknown class of asteroids. An international research team including geoscientists from Heidelberg University has succeeded in characterising these small planets using infrared spectroscopy. They are located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and are – similar to the dwarf planet Ceres – rich in water.

The inner Solar System, from the Sun to Jupiter. Also includes the asteroid belt (the white donut-shaped cloud), the Hildas (the orange “triangle” just inside the orbit of Jupiter), the Jupiter trojans (green), and the near-Earth asteroids. The group that leads Jupiter are called the “Greeks” and the trailing group are called the “Trojans” The image is looking down on the ecliptic plane as would have been seen on 1 September 2006 .

According to computer models, complex dynamic processes shifted these asteroids from the outer regions of our Solar System into today’s asteroid belt shortly after their creation.

With an equatorial diameter of approximately 900 kilometres, the dwarf planet Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Many other small planets orbit in this region as well. “These are the remains of the building materials from which the planets of our Solar System were created four and a half billion years ago. In these small bodies and their fragments, the meteorites, we find numerous relics that point directly to the process of planet formation,” explains Prof. Dr Mario Trieloff from the Institute of Earth Sciences of Heidelberg University. The current study shows that the small astronomical bodies originate from all regions of the early Solar System. By means of small bodies from the outer Solar System, water could have reached the still growing Earth in the form of asteroids, because the building blocks of the planets in the inner Solar System tended to be arid, according to Prof. Trieloff, who heads up the Geo- and Cosmochemistry research group.

The new infrared spectra were measured by Dr Driss Takir at the NASA Infrared Telescope facility at the Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii.

NASA Infrared Telescope facility at Mauna Kea Observatory, Hawaii, 4207 m (13802 ft) above sea level.

“The astronomical measurements permit the identification of Ceres-like asteroids with a diameter as small as 100 kilometres, presently located in a confined region between Mars and Jupiter near Ceres’ orbit,” explains Dr Takir, astrophysicist at the NASA Johnson Space Center and lead author of the study. At the same time, the infrared spectra support conclusions as to the bodies’ chemical and mineralogical composition. Just like Ceres, there are minerals on the surface of the discovered asteroids that originated from an interaction with liquid water.

The small astronomical bodies are quite porous. High porosity is yet another characteristic shared with the dwarf planet Ceres and an indication that the rock material is still quite original. “Shortly after the formation of the asteroids, temperatures were not high enough to convert them into a compact rock structure; they maintained the porous and primitive character typical of the outer ice planets located far from the Sun,” explains Dr Wladimir Neumann, a member of Prof. Trieloff’s team. He was responsible for the computer modelling of the thermal development of the small bodies.

The properties of these Ceres-like objects and their presence in a relatively narrow zone of the outer asteroid belt suggest that these bodies were first formed in a cold region at the edge of our Solar System. Gravitational disruptions in the orbits of large planets like Jupiter and Saturn – or “giant planet instability” – changed the trajectory of these asteroids such that the objects were “implanted” in today’s asteroid belt. This was demonstrated through numerical calculations performed by the researchers on trajectory developments in the early Solar System.

The results were published in the journal Nature Astronomy [below]. Scientists from France and the USA contributed to the research, which was funded by the German Research Foundation and the Klaus Tschira Foundation.

Nature Astronomy

Implantation of planetesimals into the asteroid belt during the planets’ growth and dynamical evolution. Credit: Nature Astronomy (2023)

Low-albedo asteroids preserve a record of the primordial Solar System planetesimals and the conditions in which the solar nebula was active. However, the origin and evolution of these asteroids are not well constrained. Here we measured visible and near-infrared (about 0.5–4.0 μm) spectra of low-albedo asteroids in the mid-outer main belt. We show that numerous large (diameter >100 km) and dark (geometric albedo <0.09) asteroids exterior to the dwarf planet Ceres’ orbit share the same spectral features, and presumably compositions, as Ceres. We also developed a thermal evolution model that demonstrates that these Ceres-like asteroids have highly porous interiors, accreted relatively late at 1.5–3.5 Myr after the formation of calcium–aluminum-rich inclusions, and experienced maximum interior temperatures of <900 K. Ceres-like asteroids are localized in a confined heliocentric region between about 3.0 au and 3.4 au, but were probably implanted from more distant regions of the Solar System during the giant planet’s dynamical instability.

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Heidelberg University, officially The Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg [Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg] (DE) is a public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Founded in 1386 on instruction of Pope Urban VI, Heidelberg is Germany’s oldest university and one of the world’s oldest surviving universities. It was the third university established in the Holy Roman Empire.

Heidelberg has been a coeducational institution since 1899. The university consists of twelve faculties and offers degree programmes at undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral levels in some 100 disciplines.

Heidelberg comprises three major campuses: the humanities are predominantly located in Heidelberg’s Old Town, the natural sciences and medicine in the Neuenheimer Feld quarter, and the social sciences within the inner-city suburb Bergheim. The language of instruction is usually German, while a considerable number of graduate degrees are offered in English as well as some in French.

As of 2017, 29 Nobel Prize winners have been affiliated with the university. Modern scientific psychiatry, psychopharmacology, psychiatric genetics, environmental physics, and modern sociology were introduced as scientific disciplines by Heidelberg faculty. Approximately 1,000 doctorates are completed every year, with more than one third of the doctoral students coming from abroad. International students from some 130 countries account for more than 20 percent of the entire student body.

Heidelberg is a German Excellence University, part of the U15, as well as a founding member of the League of European Research Universities and The Coimbra Group Universities (EU). The university’s noted alumni include eleven domestic and foreign heads of state or heads of government. In international comparison Heidelberg University occupies top positions in rankings and enjoys a high academic reputation.

Faculties

After a 2003 structural reformation, the university consists of 12 faculties, which in turn comprise several disciplines, departments, and institutes. As a consequence of the Bologna process, most faculties now offer Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Ph.D. degrees to comply with the new European degree standard. Notable exceptions are the undergraduate programs in law, medicine, dentistry and pharmacy, from which students still graduate with the State Examination, a central examination at Master’s level held by the State of Baden-Württemberg.

The Faculty of Behavioral Sciences and Empirical Cultural Sciences
The Faculty of Biosciences
The Faculty of Chemistry and Earth Sciences
The Faculty of Law
The Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
The Faculty of Medicine
The Faculty of Medicine in Mannheim
The Faculty of Modern Languages
The Faculty of Philosophy and History
The Faculty of Physics and Astronomy
The Faculty of Theology
The Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences

Associated institutions

Network for Research on Ageing
Central Institute of Mental Health Mannheim
Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research,
Heidelberg State Observatory,
University Hospital Heidelberg,
University Hospital Mannheim

Partnerships

The university has partnerships nationally and internationally. In particular, it maintains longstanding collaborations in research and education with the following independent research institutes located in and around Heidelberg:

Center for Jewish Studies Heidelberg
European Molecular Biology Laboratory
German Cancer Research Center (Helmholtz Association)
Heavy Ion Research Center Darmstadt (Helmholtz Association),
Heidelberg University of Education
Heidelberg Academy of Sciences
Karlsruhe Research Center (Helmholtz Association)
Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (Max Planck Society)
Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (Max Planck Society)
Max Planck Institute for Medical Research (Max Planck Society)
Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (Max Planck Society)

From The European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea] [Agence spatiale européenne] [Europäische Weltraumorganization](EU): “NEOMIR – finding risky asteroids outshone by Sun”

European Space Agency – United Space in Europe (EU)

From The European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea] [Agence spatiale européenne] [Europäische Weltraumorganization](EU)

2.18.23

10.18.22
The NEOMIR orbiting observatory will act as an early warning system to detect and monitor any asteroid coming towards Earth from the Sun’s direction. NEOMIR will be placed between the Sun and Earth, at the first Lagrange point (L1).

LaGrange Points map. NASA.

Using a high-performance infrared detector, it will detect near-Earth objects with a diameter of over 20 metres at least three weeks in advance of potential Earth impact.

© Pierre Carril/ ESA.

Predicting Chelyabinsk

No one saw the Chelyabinsk meteor of 15 February 2013 coming. Just after sunrise on a calm and sunny winter’s day, a 20-metre asteroid struck the atmosphere over the Ural Mountains in Russia, at a speed of more than 18 km/s.

The relatively small rock approached Earth from very near the direction of the Sun, exploding in the atmosphere and creating a shockwave that damaged thousands of buildings, breaking windows and injuring roughly 1500 people from flying shards of glass. It was the largest asteroid to strike Earth in over a century.

Statistically, asteroids this size strike Earth about once every 50-100 years. Larger asteroids are far less common but – just ask the dinosaurs – do a great deal more damage. These are, fortunately, much easier to detect.

Infographic: asteroid danger explained. Credit: ESA.

In fact, we have discovered almost all asteroids larger than 1 km in size. Small and medium-sized asteroids are more common, and can still do great damage, but warning times of a few days can be enough for local authorities to notify the public to keep away from windows or even to evacuate a local area.

With NEOMIR, we’ll be prepared

Whether it’s preparing for a mission to deflect a large asteroid years in advance or providing the data for local authorities to keep communities informed of airbursts weeks ahead, ESA’s NEOMIR will fill a gap in our current asteroid detection capabilities.

Asteroids are visible because they reflect the Sun’s light, which we can detect from Earth. However, the closer they get to the Sun, the harder they are to see. Asteroids crossing the face of the Sun are particularly difficult to detect, but from Earth we are also blind to asteroids near the Sun as they are outshone by its glare.

ESA’s upcoming NEOMIR mission will be launched into orbit around the first Lagrange point (L1) between the Sun and Earth, remaining in the same position relative to the two bodies. This will give the telescope a constant view of asteroids that may come towards the Earth from the direction of the Sun.

Being situated outside of Earth’s distorting atmosphere and with a telescope observing in infrared light, NEOMIR will monitor a close ring around the Sun that is impossible to observe from the ground. The mission will detect asteroids passing between Earth and the Sun – any that pose a threat and that we cannot currently see will have to pass through this ring.

By making observations in the infrared part of the light spectrum, NEOMIR will detect the heat emitted by asteroids themselves, which isn’t drowned out by sunlight. This thermal emission is absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere, but from space NEMOIR will be able to see closer to the Sun than we can currently from Earth.

Asteroids 20 metres and larger that are heading toward Earth should be detected by NEOMIR at least three weeks in advance. In the worst-case scenario, in which the asteroid is spotted passing near the spacecraft, we would get a minimum of three days’ warning – the fastest the asteroid could move from L1 to Earth.

Current status

Details of the Space Safety Programme’s NEOMIR mission are currently being fleshed out and it is planned to be launched around 2030 with an Ariane 6-2 rocket.

An initial study to assess the feasibility of the NEOMIR mission was conducted by ESA’s Concurrent Design Facility in the Netherlands, in 2021. The study focused on defining a mission that would complement NASA’s NEO Surveyor mission.

NASA NEO Surveyor Infrared Space Telescope depiction

The US-funded mission should fulfill the US Congress mandate to discover 90% of near-Earth objects larger than 140-metres in diameter, while NEOMIR is designed to focus on imminent impactors of any size.

NEOMIR is currently early mission study phase. It will require a half-metre telescope with a large, corrected focal plane, as well as two infrared channels covering light in the 5-10 micrometre waveband.

The required detector technologies and associated electronics for this novel mission are currently under development. Industrial research and development projects are planned as supporting activities in parallel.

The requirements will be to deliver a similar performance to the ‘NEO Surveyor detectors’, i.e., Teledyne’s HxRG, which are in use in the James Webb Space Telescope (NIRSpec) and ESA’s Euclid (NISP) and Ariel missions, although at shorter wavelengths.

European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea] [Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganization](EU)/Euclid spacecraft depiction.

ESA Ariel depiction. UK-led ESA mission ARIEL -Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey

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The European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea] [Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganization](EU), established in 1975, is an intergovernmental organization dedicated to the exploration of space, currently with 19 member states. Headquartered in Paris, ESA has a staff of more than 2,000. ESA’s space flight program includes human spaceflight, mainly through the participation in the International Space Station program, the launch and operations of unmanned exploration missions to other planets and the Moon, Earth observation, science, telecommunication as well as maintaining a major spaceport, the Guiana Space Centre at Kourou, French Guiana, and designing launch vehicles. ESA science missions are based at ESTEC (NL) in Noordwijk, Netherlands, Earth Observation missions at ESRIN in Frascati, Italy, ESA Mission Control (ESOC) is in Darmstadt, Germany, the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) that trains astronauts for future missions is situated in Cologne, Germany, and the
European Space Astronomy Centre is located in Villanueva de la Cañada, Spain.

The European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea] [Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganization](EU) Estec, situated in Noordwijk, South Holland, in the western Netherlands.

ESA’s space flight programme includes human spaceflight (mainly through participation in the International Space Station program); the launch and operation of uncrewed exploration missions to other planets and the Moon; Earth observation, science and telecommunication; designing launch vehicles; and maintaining a major spaceport, the The Guiana Space Centre [Centre Spatial Guyanais; CSG also called Europe’s Spaceport) at Kourou, French Guiana. The main European launch vehicle Ariane 5 is operated through Arianespace with ESA sharing in the costs of launching and further developing this launch vehicle. The agency is also working with The National Aeronautics and Space Agency to manufacture the Orion Spacecraft service module that will fly on the Space Launch System.

NASA/ESA Orion Spacecraft depiction.

The agency’s facilities are distributed among the following centres:

ESA European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) (NL) in Noordwijk, Netherlands;
ESA Centre for Earth Observation [ESRIN] (IT) in Frascati, Italy;
ESA Mission Control ESA European Space Operations Center [ESOC](DE) is in Darmstadt, Germany;
ESA -European Astronaut Centre [EAC] trains astronauts for future missions is situated in Cologne, Germany;
European Centre for Space Applications and Telecommunications (ECSAT) (UK), a research institute created in 2009, is located in Harwell, England;
ESA – European Space Astronomy Centre [ESAC] (ES) is located in Villanueva de la Cañada, Madrid, Spain.
European Space Agency Science Programme is a long-term programme of space science and space exploration missions.

Foundation

After World War II, many European scientists left Western Europe in order to work with the United States. Although the 1950s boom made it possible for Western European countries to invest in research and specifically in space-related activities, Western European scientists realized solely national projects would not be able to compete with the two main superpowers. In 1958, only months after the Sputnik shock, Edoardo Amaldi (Italy) and Pierre Auger (France), two prominent members of the Western European scientific community, met to discuss the foundation of a common Western European space agency. The meeting was attended by scientific representatives from eight countries, including Harrie Massey (United Kingdom).

The Western European nations decided to have two agencies: one concerned with developing a launch system, ELDO (European Launch Development Organization) , and the other the precursor of the European Space Agency, ESRO (European Space Research Organization) . The latter was established on 20 March 1964 by an agreement signed on 14 June 1962. From 1968 to 1972, ESRO launched seven research satellites.

ESA in its current form was founded with the ESA Convention in 1975, when ESRO was merged with ELDO. ESA had ten founding member states: Belgium, Denmark, France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. These signed the ESA Convention in 1975 and deposited the instruments of ratification by 1980, when the convention came into force. During this interval the agency functioned in a de facto fashion. ESA launched its first major scientific mission in 1975, Cos-B, a space probe monitoring gamma-ray emissions in the universe, which was first worked on by ESRO.

Later activities

European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea] [Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganization](EU) Swarm constellation

European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea] [Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganization](EU) Swarm constellation

ESA’s Laser Ranging Station in Tenerife (ES)

ESA collaborated with National Aeronautics Space Agency on the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE), the world’s first high-orbit telescope, which was launched in 1978 and operated successfully for 18 years.

NASA/ESA International Ultraviolet Explorer, launched on 26 January 1978 and shut down in 1996.

ESA Infrared Space Observatory.

European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea][Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganization](EU)/National Aeronautics and Space AdministrationSolar Orbiter.

European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea] [Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganization](EU)/National Aeronautics and Space Administration Solar Orbiter annotated.

A number of successful Earth-orbit projects followed, and in 1986 ESA began Giotto, its first deep-space mission, to study the comets Halley and Grigg–Skjellerup. Hipparcos, a star-mapping mission, was launched in 1989 and in the 1990s SOHO, Ulysses and the Hubble Space Telescope were all jointly carried out with NASA. Later scientific missions in cooperation with NASA include the Cassini–Huygens space probe, to which ESA contributed by building the Titan landing module Huygens.

ESA/Huygens Probe from Cassini landed on Titan.

As the successor of ELDO, ESA has also constructed rockets for scientific and commercial payloads. Ariane 1, launched in 1979, carried mostly commercial payloads into orbit from 1984 onward. The next two versions of the Ariane rocket were intermediate stages in the development of a more advanced launch system, the Ariane 4, which operated between 1988 and 2003 and established ESA as the world leader in commercial space launches in the 1990s. Although the succeeding Ariane 5 experienced a failure on its first flight, it has since firmly established itself within the heavily competitive commercial space launch market with 82 successful launches until 2018. The successor launch vehicle of Ariane 5, the Ariane 6, is under development and is envisioned to enter service in the 2020s.

The beginning of the new millennium saw ESA become, along with agencies like National Aeronautics Space Agency, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JP), Indian Space Research Organization (IN), the Canadian Space Agency(CA) and Roscosmos (RU), one of the major participants in scientific space research. Although ESA had relied on co-operation with NASA in previous decades, especially the 1990s, changed circumstances (such as tough legal restrictions on information sharing by the United States military) led to decisions to rely more on itself and on co-operation with Russia. A 2011 press issue thus stated:

“Russia is ESA’s first partner in its efforts to ensure long-term access to space. There is a framework agreement between ESA and the government of the Russian Federation on cooperation and partnership in the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes, and cooperation is already underway in two different areas of launcher activity that will bring benefits to both partners.”

Notable ESA programs include SMART-1, a probe testing cutting-edge space propulsion technology, the Mars Express and Venus Express missions, as well as the development of the Ariane 5 rocket and its role in the ISS partnership. ESA maintains its scientific and research projects mainly for astronomy-space missions such as Corot, launched on 27 December 2006, a milestone in the search for exoplanets.

On 21 January 2019, ArianeGroup and Arianespace announced a one-year contract with ESA to study and prepare for a mission to mine the Moon for lunar regolith.

Mission

The treaty establishing the European Space Agency reads:

The purpose of the Agency shall be to provide for and to promote, for exclusively peaceful purposes, cooperation among European States in space research and technology and their space applications, with a view to their being used for scientific purposes and for operational space applications systems…

ESA is responsible for setting a unified space and related industrial policy, recommending space objectives to the member states, and integrating national programs like satellite development, into the European program as much as possible.

Jean-Jacques Dordain – ESA’s Director General (2003–2015) – outlined the European Space Agency’s mission in a 2003 interview:

“Today space activities have pursued the benefit of citizens, and citizens are asking for a better quality of life on Earth. They want greater security and economic wealth, but they also want to pursue their dreams, to increase their knowledge, and they want younger people to be attracted to the pursuit of science and technology. I think that space can do all of this: it can produce a higher quality of life, better security, more economic wealth, and also fulfill our citizens’ dreams and thirst for knowledge, and attract the young generation. This is the reason space exploration is an integral part of overall space activities. It has always been so, and it will be even more important in the future.”

Activities

According to the ESA website, the activities are:

Observing the Earth
Human Spaceflight
Launchers
Navigation
Space Science
Space Engineering & Technology
Operations
Telecommunications & Integrated Applications
Preparing for the Future
Space for Climate

Programs

Copernicus Programme
Cosmic Vision
ExoMars
FAST20XX
Galileo
Horizon 2000
Living Planet Programme
Mandatory

Every member country must contribute to these programs:

Technology Development Element Program
Science Core Technology Program
General Study Program
European Component Initiative

Optional

Depending on their individual choices the countries can contribute to the following programs, listed according to:

Launchers
Earth Observation
Human Spaceflight and Exploration
Telecommunications
Navigation
Space Situational Awareness
Technology

ESA_LAB@

ESA has formed partnerships with universities. ESA_LAB@ refers to research laboratories at universities. Currently there are ESA_LAB@

Technische Universität Darmstadt (DE)
École des hautes études commerciales de Paris (HEC Paris) (FR)
Université de recherche Paris Sciences et Lettres (FR)
The University of Central Lancashire (UK)

Membership and contribution to ESA

By 2015, ESA was an intergovernmental organization of 22 member states. Member states participate to varying degrees in the mandatory (25% of total expenditures in 2008) and optional space programs (75% of total expenditures in 2008). The 2008 budget amounted to €3.0 billion whilst the 2009 budget amounted to €3.6 billion. The total budget amounted to about €3.7 billion in 2010, €3.99 billion in 2011, €4.02 billion in 2012, €4.28 billion in 2013, €4.10 billion in 2014 and €4.33 billion in 2015. English is the main language within ESA. Additionally, official documents are also provided in German and documents regarding the Spacelab are also provided in Italian. If found appropriate, the agency may conduct its correspondence in any language of a member state.

Non-full member states
Slovenia
Since 2016, Slovenia has been an associated member of the ESA.

Latvia
Latvia became the second current associated member on 30 June 2020, when the Association Agreement was signed by ESA Director Jan Wörner and the Minister of Education and Science of Latvia, Ilga Šuplinska in Riga. The Saeima ratified it on July 27. Previously associated members were Austria, Norway and Finland, all of which later joined ESA as full members.

Canada
Since 1 January 1979, Canada has had the special status of a Cooperating State within ESA. By virtue of this accord, The Canadian Space Agency [Agence spatiale canadienne, ASC] (CA) takes part in ESA’s deliberative bodies and decision-making and also in ESA’s programs and activities. Canadian firms can bid for and receive contracts to work on programs. The accord has a provision ensuring a fair industrial return to Canada. The most recent Cooperation Agreement was signed on 15 December 2010 with a term extending to 2020. For 2014, Canada’s annual assessed contribution to the ESA general budget was €6,059,449 (CAD$8,559,050). For 2017, Canada has increased its annual contribution to €21,600,000 (CAD$30,000,000).

Enlargement

After the decision of the ESA Council of 21/22 March 2001, the procedure for accession of the European states was detailed as described the document titled The Plan for European Co-operating States (PECS). Nations that want to become a full member of ESA do so in 3 stages. First a Cooperation Agreement is signed between the country and ESA. In this stage, the country has very limited financial responsibilities. If a country wants to co-operate more fully with ESA, it signs a European Cooperating State (ECS) Agreement. The ECS Agreement makes companies based in the country eligible for participation in ESA procurements. The country can also participate in all ESA programs, except for the Basic Technology Research Programme. While the financial contribution of the country concerned increases, it is still much lower than that of a full member state. The agreement is normally followed by a Plan For European Cooperating State (or PECS Charter). This is a 5-year programme of basic research and development activities aimed at improving the nation’s space industry capacity. At the end of the 5-year period, the country can either begin negotiations to become a full member state or an associated state or sign a new PECS Charter.

During the Ministerial Meeting in December 2014, ESA ministers approved a resolution calling for discussions to begin with Israel, Australia and South Africa on future association agreements. The ministers noted that “concrete cooperation is at an advanced stage” with these nations and that “prospects for mutual benefits are existing”.

A separate space exploration strategy resolution calls for further co-operation with the United States, Russia and China on “LEO” exploration, including a continuation of ISS cooperation and the development of a robust plan for the coordinated use of space transportation vehicles and systems for exploration purposes, participation in robotic missions for the exploration of the Moon, the robotic exploration of Mars, leading to a broad Mars Sample Return mission in which Europe should be involved as a full partner, and human missions beyond LEO in the longer term.”

Relationship with the European Union

The political perspective of the European Union (EU) was to make ESA an agency of the EU by 2014, although this date was not met. The EU member states provide most of ESA’s funding, and they are all either full ESA members or observers.

History

At the time ESA was formed, its main goals did not encompass human space flight; rather it considered itself to be primarily a scientific research organization for uncrewed space exploration in contrast to its American and Soviet counterparts. It is therefore not surprising that the first non-Soviet European in space was not an ESA astronaut on a European space craft; it was Czechoslovak Vladimír Remek who in 1978 became the first non-Soviet or American in space (the first man in space being Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union) – on a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft, followed by the Pole Mirosław Hermaszewski and East German Sigmund Jähn in the same year. This Soviet co-operation programme, known as Intercosmos, primarily involved the participation of Eastern bloc countries. In 1982, however, Jean-Loup Chrétien became the first non-Communist Bloc astronaut on a flight to the Soviet Salyut 7 space station.

Because Chrétien did not officially fly into space as an ESA astronaut, but rather as a member of the French CNES astronaut corps, the German Ulf Merbold is considered the first ESA astronaut to fly into space. He participated in the STS-9 Space Shuttle mission that included the first use of the European-built Spacelab in 1983. STS-9 marked the beginning of an extensive ESA/NASA joint partnership that included dozens of space flights of ESA astronauts in the following years. Some of these missions with Spacelab were fully funded and organizationally and scientifically controlled by ESA (such as two missions by Germany and one by Japan) with European astronauts as full crew members rather than guests on board. Beside paying for Spacelab flights and seats on the shuttles, ESA continued its human space flight co-operation with the Soviet Union and later Russia, including numerous visits to Mir.

During the latter half of the 1980s, European human space flights changed from being the exception to routine and therefore, in 1990, the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany was established. It selects and trains prospective astronauts and is responsible for the co-ordination with international partners, especially with regard to the International Space Station. As of 2006, the ESA astronaut corps officially included twelve members, including nationals from most large European countries except the United Kingdom.

In the summer of 2008, ESA started to recruit new astronauts so that final selection would be due in spring 2009. Almost 10,000 people registered as astronaut candidates before registration ended in June 2008. 8,413 fulfilled the initial application criteria. Of the applicants, 918 were chosen to take part in the first stage of psychological testing, which narrowed down the field to 192. After two-stage psychological tests and medical evaluation in early 2009, as well as formal interviews, six new members of the European Astronaut Corps were selected – five men and one woman.

Cooperation with other countries and organizations

ESA has signed co-operation agreements with the following states that currently neither plan to integrate as tightly with ESA institutions as Canada, nor envision future membership of ESA: Argentina, Brazil, China, India (for the Chandrayan mission), Russia and Turkey.

Additionally, ESA has joint projects with the European Union, NASA of the United States and is participating in the International Space Station together with the United States (NASA), Russia and Japan (JAXA).

European Union
ESA and EU member states
ESA-only members
EU-only members

ESA is not an agency or body of the European Union (EU), and has non-EU countries (Norway, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom) as members. There are however ties between the two, with various agreements in place and being worked on, to define the legal status of ESA with regard to the EU.

There are common goals between ESA and the EU. ESA has an EU liaison office in Brussels. On certain projects, the EU and ESA co-operate, such as the upcoming Galileo satellite navigation system. Space policy has since December 2009 been an area for voting in the European Council. Under the European Space Policy of 2007, the EU, ESA and its Member States committed themselves to increasing co-ordination of their activities and programs and to organizing their respective roles relating to space.

The Lisbon Treaty of 2009 reinforces the case for space in Europe and strengthens the role of ESA as an R&D space agency. Article 189 of the Treaty gives the EU a mandate to elaborate a European space policy and take related measures, and provides that the EU should establish appropriate relations with ESA.

Former Italian astronaut Umberto Guidoni, during his tenure as a Member of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2009, stressed the importance of the European Union as a driving force for space exploration, “…since other players are coming up such as India and China it is becoming ever more important that Europeans can have an independent access to space. We have to invest more into space research and technology in order to have an industry capable of competing with other international players.”

The first EU-ESA International Conference on Human Space Exploration took place in Prague on 22 and 23 October 2009. A road map which would lead to a common vision and strategic planning in the area of space exploration was discussed. Ministers from all 29 EU and ESA members as well as members of parliament were in attendance.

National space organizations of member states:

The Centre National d’Études Spatiales(FR) (CNES) (National Centre for Space Study) is the French government space agency (administratively, a “public establishment of industrial and commercial character”). Its headquarters are in central Paris. CNES is the main participant on the Ariane project. Indeed, CNES designed and tested all Ariane family rockets (mainly from its centre in Évry near Paris)
The UK Space Agency is a partnership of the UK government departments which are active in space. Through the UK Space Agency, the partners provide delegates to represent the UK on the various ESA governing bodies. Each partner funds its own programme.
The Italian Space Agency A.S.I. – Agenzia Spaziale Italiana was founded in 1988 to promote, co-ordinate and conduct space activities in Italy. Operating under the Ministry of the Universities and of Scientific and Technological Research, the agency cooperates with numerous entities active in space technology and with the president of the Council of Ministers. Internationally, the ASI provides Italy’s delegation to the Council of the European Space Agency and to its subordinate bodies.
The German Aerospace Center (DLR)[Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e. V.] is the national research centre for aviation and space flight of the Federal Republic of Germany and of other member states in the Helmholtz Association. Its extensive research and development projects are included in national and international cooperative programs. In addition to its research projects, the centre is the assigned space agency of Germany bestowing headquarters of German space flight activities and its associates.
The Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial (INTA)(ES) (National Institute for Aerospace Technique) is a Public Research Organization specialized in aerospace research and technology development in Spain. Among other functions, it serves as a platform for space research and acts as a significant testing facility for the aeronautic and space sector in the country.

National Aeronautics Space Agency

ESA has a long history of collaboration with NASA. Since ESA’s astronaut corps was formed, the Space Shuttle has been the primary launch vehicle used by ESA’s astronauts to get into space through partnership programs with NASA. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Spacelab programme was an ESA-NASA joint research programme that had ESA develop and manufacture orbital labs for the Space Shuttle for several flights on which ESA participate with astronauts in experiments.

In robotic science mission and exploration missions, NASA has been ESA’s main partner. Cassini–Huygens was a joint NASA-ESA mission, along with the Infrared Space Observatory, INTEGRAL, SOHO, and others.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration/European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea] [Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganization](EU)/ASI Italian Space Agency [Agenzia Spaziale Italiana](IT) Cassini Spacecraft.

European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea] [Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganization](EU) Integral spacecraft

European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea] [Agence spatiale européenne] [Europäische Weltraumorganization] (EU)/National Aeronautics and Space AdministrationSOHO satellite. Launched in 1995.

Also, the Hubble Space Telescope is a joint project of NASA and ESA.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration/European Space Agency[La Agencia Espacial Europea] [Agence spatiale européenne] [Europäische Weltraumorganization](EU) Hubble Space Telescope

ESA-NASA joint projects include the James Webb Space Telescope and the proposed Laser Interferometer Space Antenna.

National Aeronautics Space Agency/European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea] [Agence spatiale européenne] [Europäische Weltraumorganization]Canadian Space Agency [Agence Spatiale Canadienne](CA) James Webb Space Telescope annotated. Scheduled for launch in December 2021.

Gravity is talking. Lisa will listen. Dialogos of Eide.

The European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea] [Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganization](EU)/National Aeronautics and Space Administration eLISA space based, the future of gravitational wave research.

NASA has committed to provide support to ESA’s proposed MarcoPolo-R mission to return an asteroid sample to Earth for further analysis. NASA and ESA will also likely join together for a Mars Sample Return Mission. In October 2020 the ESA entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with NASA to work together on the Artemis program, which will provide an orbiting lunar gateway and also accomplish the first manned lunar landing in 50 years, whose team will include the first woman on the Moon.

NASA ARTEMIS spacecraft depiction.

The European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea] [Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganization](EU) European Large Logistics Lander.

Cooperation with other space agencies

Since China has started to invest more money into space activities, the Chinese Space Agency[中国国家航天局] (CN) has sought international partnerships. ESA is, beside, The Russian Federal Space Agency Государственная корпорация по космической деятельности «Роскосмос»](RU) one of its most important partners. Two space agencies cooperated in the development of the Double Star Mission. In 2017, ESA sent two astronauts to China for two weeks sea survival training with Chinese astronauts in Yantai, Shandong.

ESA entered into a major joint venture with Russia in the form of the CSTS, the preparation of French Guiana spaceport for launches of Soyuz-2 rockets and other projects. With India, ESA agreed to send instruments into space aboard the ISRO’s Chandrayaan-1 in 2008. ESA is also co-operating with Japan, the most notable current project in collaboration with JAXA is the BepiColombo mission to Mercury.

European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea] [Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganization](EU)/Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency [国立研究開発法人宇宙航空研究開発機構](JP) Bepicolumbo in flight illustration. Artist’s impression of BepiColombo – ESA’s first mission to Mercury. ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) will be operated from ESOC Germany.

ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) will be operated from ESOC Germany.

Speaking to reporters at an air show near Moscow in August 2011, ESA head Jean-Jacques Dordain said ESA and Russia’s Roskosmos space agency would “carry out the first flight to Mars together.”

Pléiades Neo. Airbus

From “EarthSky” And The National Aeronautics and Space Administration : “Lucy spacecraft to visit an asteroid this year”

From “EarthSky”

And

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration

1.31.23
Kelly Kizer Whitt

NASA depiction of Lucy Mission to Jupiter’s Trojans.

Left NASA Lucy; Right PSYCHE. NASA.

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft is in the midst of three Earth flybys that ultimately will fling it to the main asteroid belt and Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids. In October 2022, a year after the spacecraft’s launch, Lucy made its first flyby of Earth. On January 24, 2023, Lucy’s team added a new target to its mission: the tiny asteroid (152830) 1999 VD57. With a small maneuver, Lucy will be able to get a close look at this asteroid by late 2023, two years ahead of its originally planned rendezvous with a main-belt asteroid.

On November 1, 2023, Lucy will swing past the still-unnamed (152830) 1999 VD57. To get there, engineers will begin a series of small maneuvers in May 2023. As a bonus, the detour allows scientists to conduct an engineering test of the spacecraft’s asteroid-tracking navigation system.

Finding the new target

Lucy’s original plan was to visit the main-belt asteroid (52246) Donaldjohanson in 2025, followed by a tour of nine Trojan asteroids starting in 2033. But the team found a small, conveniently located asteroid that Lucy could visit between its first and second gravity assists from Earth. Raphael Marschall of the Nice Observatory in France identified asteroid 1999 VD57, which is just 0.4 miles (700 m) in size. Marschall said:

“There are millions of asteroids in the main asteroid belt. I selected 500,000 asteroids with well-defined orbits to see if Lucy might be traveling close enough to get a good look at any of them, even from a distance. This asteroid really stood out. Lucy’s trajectory as originally designed will take it within 40,000 miles of the asteroid, at least three times closer than the next closest asteroid.”

With a slight change of plans and direction, the team now can bring Lucy even closer to the asteroid. From the original distance of 40,000 miles, Lucy will now buzz by at 280 miles (450 km) distant.

A tracking-system test for the Lucy spacecraft

The new target will be a good test for the spacecraft’s inventive tracking system. Engineers created the new system to solve a long-standing problem for flyby missions. Previously, it’s been difficult to determine just how far a spacecraft is from an asteroid. In addition, that makes it hard to know exactly where to point the cameras. Hal Levison, Lucy principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute, said:

“In the past, most flyby missions have accounted for this uncertainty by taking a lot of images of the region where the asteroid might be, meaning low efficiency and lots of images of blank space. Lucy will be the first flyby mission to employ this innovative and complex system to automatically track the asteroid during the encounter. This novel system will allow the team to take many more images of the target.”

The advantages of 1999 VD57

The little asteroid 1999 VD57 will be a great proving ground for the new procedure. The angle at which Lucy will approach the asteroid relative to the sun will be similar to the Trojan asteroid encounters. Therefore, the scientists will get to practice under similar conditions years before the main event.

When the Lucy spacecraft reaches the inner edge of the main asteroid belt in fall 2023, it will fly by the small, still-unnamed asteroid (152830) 1999 VD57. This artist’s concept shows an overhead view of Lucy’s path through the inner solar system around November 1, 2023. Image via NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

See the full article here .

Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings
Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation’s civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA’s predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

Since that time, most U.S. space exploration efforts have been led by NASA, including the Apollo moon-landing missions, the Skylab space station, and later the Space Shuttle. Currently, NASA is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and Commercial Crew vehicles. The agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program (LSP) which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches. Most recently, NASA announced a new Space Launch System that it said would take the agency’s astronauts farther into space than ever before and lay the cornerstone for future human space exploration efforts by the U.S.

NASA science is focused on better understanding Earth through the Earth Observing System, advancing heliophysics through the efforts of the Science Mission Directorate’s Heliophysics Research Program, exploring bodies throughout the Solar System with advanced robotic missions such as New Horizons, and researching astrophysics topics, such as the Big Bang, through the Great Observatories [Hubble, Chandra,
Spitzer and associated programs, and now the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. NASA shares data with various national and international organizations such as from the [JAXA]Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite.

Deborah Byrd created the EarthSky radio series in 1991 and founded EarthSky.org in 1994. Today, she serves as Editor-in-Chief of this website. She has won a galaxy of awards from the broadcasting and science communities, including having an asteroid named 3505 Byrd in her honor. A science communicator and educator since 1976, Byrd believes in science as a force for good in the world and a vital tool for the 21st century. “Being an EarthSky editor is like hosting a big global party for cool nature-lovers,” she says.

From The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory At The University of Arizona: “Solar system ‘detectives’ search for clues in ‘crumbs’ left over from early solar system”

From The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory

At

The University of Arizona

1.25.23

Media contact
Daniel Stolte
Science Writer, University Communications
stolte@arizona.edu
520-626-4402

Researcher contact
Tom Zega
Lunar and Planetary Laboratory
tzega@email.arizona.edu
520-626-1356

NASA awarded nearly $3 million to the University of Arizona Kuiper Materials Imaging and Characterization Facility to support OSIRIS-REx sample science and much more.

Students use the transmission electron microscope, or TEM, to study a meteorite sample at the Kuiper Materials Science Facility. The TEM, encased in the large enclosure on the left, operates at the smallest scales, allowing scientists to see individual atoms. Credit: Maria Schuchardt/LPL.

A magnifying glass just won’t cut it for the high-tech “detectives” at the University of Arizona Kuiper Materials Imaging and Characterization Facility. The scientists, who can be found in the basement of the university’s Kuiper Space Sciences Building, are working to decode the stories archived in rocks and dust left over from the earliest days of the solar system.

Part of the UArizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, or LPL, the facility has been a resource for public and private science programs, both on and off campus, since 2016. Now, thanks to a four-year, nearly $3 million grant from NASA to support facility operations, scientists will be able to dig deeper into scientific questions than ever before.

“The history of the solar system is encoded in asteroids – the planetary crumbs left over from its birth over 4.5 billion years ago,” said facility director Thomas Zega, a professor in the UArizona Department of Planetary Sciences. “The university and NASA are both investing a lot of money and resources in bringing back a sample from Bennu, a carbonaceous asteroid, and this is the first asteroid sample return mission in NASA’s history, so it’s important that we’re properly equipped as a science team to analyze the sample when it comes back.”

Facility co-investigators include assistant professors of planetary sciences Jessica Barnes and Pierre Haenecour, as well as Regents Professor of Planetary Sciences Dante Lauretta, principal investigator of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, which will return a sample from asteroid Bennu to Earth later this year.

In addition to asteroid samples, scientists use the facility to analyze meteorites and debris from asteroids and other planetary bodies that fall to Earth. The facility has cutting-edge instrumentation and is open to users on campus as well as from other universities or the private sector. The new grant will allow researchers who already receive funding through NASA to use the fee-based facility at a reduced rate.

Other NASA programs that use the facility include the Interdisciplinary Consortia for Astrobiology Research, Laboratory Analysis of Returned Samples and Emerging Worlds. The facility will also serve research efforts on planetary materials returned by other space agencies’ sample return missions, such as Japan’s Hayabusa 2, which is OSIRIS-REx’s [below] “sister mission.”

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) [国立研究開発法人宇宙航空研究開発機構](JP) Hayabusa 2 spacecraft.

“There’s even more sample science to look forward to in the future,” Zega said.

For example, NASA’s Artemis missions will return lunar samples.

NASA ARTEMIS spacecraft depiction.

NASA ARTEMIS spacecraft depiction.

And UArizona researchers are pursuing funding for the Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return, or CAESAR mission, which would return a sample from a comet.

NASA Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return [CAESAR] depiction.

“The U.S. has been a world leader in sample science, and we want to maintain that, especially here at the University of Arizona,” said University of Arizona President Robert C. Robbins. “Extracting the maximum amount of scientific information from modest samples is no easy feat and requires high-tech instrumentation like we have on our campus. I am honored by NASA’s continued faith in our expertise, and I look forward to what we will learn.”

Scale is everything

The university-led OSIRIS-REx mission [below] was designed to return 60 grams – a little over 2 ounces – of surface material from asteroid Bennu. The mission team estimates that it’s collected quite a bit more than that, and the mission’s science team members, who are spread all over the world, will be allotted 25% of the total mass collected. A fraction of the sample will be released to investigators who are not part of the OSIRIS-Rex science team, and the remainder will be curated for future generations of researchers.

“We want to be sure we can look at the samples at multiple scales, from something you can see in the palm of your hand, all the way down to the atomic level,” Zega said. “To do this, we need extremely sophisticated instrumentation.”

The Kuiper Materials Imaging and Characterization Facility includes a focused-ion-beam scanning electron microscope, transmission electron microscope, an electron microprobe laboratory and scanning electron microscopes. A NanoSIMS instrument for measuring chemical elements in a sample is scheduled to arrive in June.

“There are different types of analysis we have to do on samples, and most chemists who study planetary materials specialize in one or several measurement techniques,” Zega said. “We all have different specialties, and together our expertise complements one another and rounds out the analytical portfolio that we wanted to build at the university.”

The tools: From microscopes to atomic probes

The first in a line of sample probing tools is the light microscope, familiar to many and used for centuries. It helps scientists visualize samples several hundred nanometers to micrometers in size, about the scale of bacteria and cells.

“Visible light microscopes are not able to ‘sniff out’ the chemical makeup of a sample, but they provide us with images, which might reveal textures and some information on its microstructure,” Zega said.

“It also might reveal areas in your sample that you may want to target further,” he said. “It might give you a sense of spatial relationship, which might tell you a little bit of the story to start piecing together some history of the sample. But it’s not until more sophisticated methods that you start getting more of the picture.”

The scanning electron microscope, or SEM, and electron microprobe are used for analyzing samples at a slightly smaller scale. An electron microprobe, also known as an electron probe microanalyzer, is similar to a scanning electron microscope, but offers the added capability of revealing clues about the sample’s chemical composition.

The image on the left shows a fragment of the Allende meteorite, the largest of its kind that has been found on Earth. Using the sophisticated instrument suite at the Kuiper imaging facility, researchers in Zega’s team were able to probe the crystal structure of an Allende sample down to individual atoms (image on the right). H. Raab/Wikimedia Commons, Tom Zega.

The NanoSIMS instrument measures the chemical elements in a sample, which is important for understanding the origins of the material. Unlike the SEM or microprobe, the NanoSIMS can reveal the isotopic composition of a sample. Isotopes are different varieties of chemical elements.

“The isotopic composition of a planetary material can tell us something about its origins and history that the elemental information alone may not,” Zega said. “The NanoSIMS also lets us measure trace elements, which are present in extremely small amounts, at the scale of tens of a nanometer.”

The transmission electron microscope operates at the smallest scales, allowing scientists in Zega’s lab to see individual atoms.

In 2021, Zega’s team used the tool, combined with quantum mechanics, chemical thermodynamics and astrophysical modeling, to reconstruct the origin journey of a dust grain [The Planetary Science Journal (below)] through the nascent solar system.

“Because humans were not around 4.6 billion years ago to witness all of this chemistry happening, we have to examine the leftovers and reverse engineer their origins,” Zega said. “That is what these sophisticated analytical tools enable us to do.”

Decades in the making

“Our meteoric record is incomplete,” Zega said. “Those of us who study meteorites are at the mercy of what falls from the sky; we don’t know exactly where they come from, so we try and piece it together.”

In the early 2010s, Mike Drake, who served as OSIRIS-REx principal investigator until his passing in 2011, and Lauretta, the mission’s current principal investigator, realized that the university needed to build up capabilities in sample science if it was going to take on the mission, according to Zega.

“These guys were visionaries; they knew that we needed a sample return mission, and that was a major catalyst for building out the facility,” Zega said. “Since then, we have made an effort to hire the right faculty to lead the lab. This is the culmination of 20 years of that effort.”

The Planetary Science Journal 2021
See the science paper for instructive material with images.

See the full article here .

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The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory is a research center for planetary science located in Tucson, Arizona. It is also a graduate school, constituting the Department of Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona. The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory is one of the world’s largest programs dedicated exclusively to planetary science in a university setting. The Lunar and Planetary Lab collection is held at the University of Arizona Special Collections Library.

The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory was founded in 1960 by astronomer Gerard Kuiper. Kuiper had long been a pioneer in observing the Solar System, especially the Moon, at a time when this was unfashionable among astronomers. Among his contributions are the discovery of Miranda and Nereid, the detection of carbon dioxide on Mars and of methane on Titan, and the prediction of the Kuiper Belt.

Kuiper Belt. Minor Planet Center.

Kuiper came to Tucson looking for greater independence than he had enjoyed at The University of Chicago, the chance to build a community dedicated to solar system studies, and also to be closer to southern Arizona’s many potential sites for world-class observatories, such as Kitt Peak National Observatory (founded in 1958)[below]. LPL was established under the auspices of the University of Arizona, with Kuiper serving as director until his death.

The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory’s endeavors are truly interdisciplinary. The accumulated knowledge and techniques of astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, geophysics, geochemistry, atmospheric science, and engineering are all brought to bear upon the single goal of studying planetary systems. Many students come to The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory having studied only one or two of these subjects in detail, so a broad-based curriculum is essential.

In 1973, the university established a graduate Department of Planetary Sciences, operating continuously with The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. This provided an administrative framework for The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory to admit graduate students and take a greater role in teaching. The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory’s chief officer is simultaneously “head” of the department and “director” of the laboratory.

As of 2019, The University of Arizona enrolled 45,918 students in 19 separate colleges/schools, including The University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson and Phoenix and the James E. Rogers College of Law, and is affiliated with two academic medical centers (Banner – University Medical Center Tucson and Banner – University Medical Center Phoenix). The University of Arizona is one of three universities governed by the Arizona Board of Regents. The university is part of the Association of American Universities and is the only member from Arizona, and also part of the Universities Research Association . The university is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very High Research Activity”.

Known as the Arizona Wildcats (often shortened to “Cats”), The University of Arizona’s intercollegiate athletic teams are members of the Pac-12 Conference of the NCAA. The University of Arizona athletes have won national titles in several sports, most notably men’s basketball, baseball, and softball. The official colors of the university and its athletic teams are cardinal red and navy blue.

After the passage of the Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862, the push for a university in Arizona grew. The Arizona Territory’s “Thieving Thirteenth” Legislature approved The University of Arizona in 1885 and selected the city of Tucson to receive the appropriation to build the university. Tucson hoped to receive the appropriation for the territory’s mental hospital, which carried a $100,000 allocation instead of the $25,000 allotted to the territory’s only university Arizona State University was also chartered in 1885, but it was created as Arizona’s normal school, and not a university). Flooding on the Salt River delayed Tucson’s legislators, and by the time they reached Prescott, back-room deals allocating the most desirable territorial institutions had been made. Tucson was largely disappointed with receiving what was viewed as an inferior prize.

With no parties willing to provide land for the new institution, the citizens of Tucson prepared to return the money to the Territorial Legislature until two gamblers and a saloon keeper decided to donate the land to build the school. Construction of Old Main, the first building on campus, began on October 27, 1887, and classes met for the first time in 1891 with 32 students in Old Main, which is still in use today. Because there were no high schools in Arizona Territory, the university maintained separate preparatory classes for the first 23 years of operation.

Research

The University of Arizona is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity”. UArizona is the fourth most awarded public university by National Aeronautics and Space Administration for research. The University of Arizona was awarded over $325 million for its Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL) to lead NASA’s 2007–08 mission to Mars to explore the Martian Arctic, and $800 million for its OSIRIS-REx mission, the first in U.S. history to sample an asteroid.

National Aeronautics Space Agency OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft.

The LPL’s work in the Cassini spacecraft orbit around Saturn is larger than any other university globally.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration/European Space Agency [La Agencia Espacial Europea][Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganisation](EU)/ASI Italian Space Agency [Agenzia Spaziale Italiana](IT) Cassini Spacecraft.

The University of Arizona laboratory designed and operated the atmospheric radiation investigations and imaging on the probe. The University of Arizona operates the HiRISE camera, a part of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

U Arizona NASA Mars Reconnaisance HiRISE Camera.

NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

While using the HiRISE camera in 2011, University of Arizona alumnus Lujendra Ojha and his team discovered proof of liquid water on the surface of Mars—a discovery confirmed by NASA in 2015. The University of Arizona receives more NASA grants annually than the next nine top NASA/JPL-Caltech-funded universities combined. As of March 2016, The University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory is actively involved in ten spacecraft missions: Cassini VIMS; Grail; the HiRISE camera orbiting Mars; the Juno mission orbiting Jupiter; Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO); Maven, which will explore Mars’ upper atmosphere and interactions with the sun; Solar Probe Plus, a historic mission into the Sun’s atmosphere for the first time; Rosetta’s VIRTIS; WISE; and OSIRIS-REx, the first U.S. sample-return mission to a near-earth asteroid, which launched on September 8, 2016.

NASA – GRAIL Flying in Formation (Artist’s Concept). Credit: NASA.
National Aeronautics Space Agency Juno at Jupiter.

NASA/Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

NASA/Mars MAVEN

NASA Parker Solar Probe Plus named to honor Pioneering Physicist Eugene Parker. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration Wise/NEOWISE Telescope.

The University of Arizona students have been selected as Truman, Rhodes, Goldwater, and Fulbright Scholars. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, UArizona is among the top 25 producers of Fulbright awards in the U.S.

The University of Arizona is a member of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy , a consortium of institutions pursuing research in astronomy. The association operates observatories and telescopes, notably Kitt Peak National Observatory just outside Tucson.

National Science Foundation NOIRLab National Optical Astronomy Observatory Kitt Peak National Observatory on Kitt Peak of the Quinlan Mountains in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert on the Tohono O’odham Nation, 88 kilometers (55 mi) west-southwest of Tucson, Arizona, Altitude 2,096 m (6,877 ft). annotated.

Led by Roger Angel, researchers in the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab at The University of Arizona are working in concert to build the world’s most advanced telescope. Known as the Giant Magellan Telescope (CL), it will produce images 10 times sharper than those from the Earth-orbiting Hubble Telescope.

Giant Magellan Telescope(CL) 21 meters, to be at the Carnegie Institution for Science’s NOIRLab NOAO Las Campanas Observatory(CL), some 115 km (71 mi) north-northeast of La Serena, Chile, over 2,500 m (8,200 ft) high.

The telescope is set to be completed in 2021. GMT will ultimately cost $1 billion. Researchers from at least nine institutions are working to secure the funding for the project. The telescope will include seven 18-ton mirrors capable of providing clear images of volcanoes and riverbeds on Mars and mountains on the moon at a rate 40 times faster than the world’s current large telescopes. The mirrors of the Giant Magellan Telescope will be built at The University of Arizona and transported to a permanent mountaintop site in the Chilean Andes where the telescope will be constructed.

Reaching Mars in March 2006, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter contained the HiRISE camera, with Principal Investigator Alfred McEwen as the lead on the project. This National Aeronautics and Space Agency mission to Mars carrying the UArizona-designed camera is capturing the highest-resolution images of the planet ever seen. The journey of the orbiter was 300 million miles. In August 2007, The University of Arizona, under the charge of Scientist Peter Smith, led the Phoenix Mars Mission, the first mission completely controlled by a university. Reaching the planet’s surface in May 2008, the mission’s purpose was to improve knowledge of the Martian Arctic. The Arizona Radio Observatory , a part of The University of Arizona Department of Astronomy Steward Observatory , operates the Submillimeter Telescope on Mount Graham.

University of Arizona Radio Observatory at NOAO Kitt Peak National Observatory, AZ USA, U Arizona Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory at altitude 2,096 m (6,877 ft).

U Arizona Steward Observatory at NSF’s NOIRLab NOAO Kitt Peak National Observatory in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert 88 kilometers 55 mi west-southwest of Tucson, Arizona in the Quinlan Mountains of the Tohono O’odham Nation, altitude 2,096 m (6,877 ft).

Kitt Peak National Observatory in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert 88 kilometers 55 mi west-southwest of Tucson, Arizona in the Quinlan Mountains of the Tohono O’odham Nation, altitude 2,096 m (6,877 ft)

The National Science Foundation funded the iPlant Collaborative in 2008 with a $50 million grant. In 2013, iPlant Collaborative received a $50 million renewal grant. Rebranded in late 2015 as “CyVerse”, the collaborative cloud-based data management platform is moving beyond life sciences to provide cloud-computing access across all scientific disciplines.

In June 2011, the university announced it would assume full ownership of the Biosphere 2 scientific research facility in Oracle, Arizona, north of Tucson, effective July 1. Biosphere 2 was constructed by private developers (funded mainly by Texas businessman and philanthropist Ed Bass) with its first closed system experiment commencing in 1991. The university had been the official management partner of the facility for research purposes since 2007.

U Arizona mirror lab-Where else in the world can you find an astronomical observatory mirror lab under a football stadium?

University of Arizona’s Biosphere 2, located in the Sonoran desert. An entire ecosystem under a glass dome? Visit our campus, just once, and you’ll quickly understand why The University of Arizona is a university unlike any other.

University of Arizona Landscape Evolution Observatory at Biosphere 2.

From Imperial College London (UK) : “Meteorites reveal likely origin of Earth’s volatile chemicals”

From Imperial College London (UK)

1.27.23
Caroline Brogan

Zn isotope anomalies for each meteorite group and the BSE, in ε i Zn notation. Data are plotted for different groups of meteorites and the BSE, see the legend. Carbonaceous chondrites (CI, CM, CV, CO chondrites) and non-carbonaceous group meteorites [ECs, including two EHs (high iron), OCs, including H (high iron), L (low iron), and LL (low iron, low metal) chondrites, and IAB complex irons] have complimentary patterns with CCs enriched in 68 Zn and 70 Zn and depleted in 64 Zn. relative to the BSE which has εi Zn = 0. NCs have the opposite pattern, with depletions in 68 Zn and 70 Zn and enrichments in 64 Zn. There is no data for ε 66 Zn and ε 67 Zn because these isotopes are used for internal normalization. The meteorite and BSE data are listed in Table S2; error bars indicate ±2se. Credit: Imperial College London.

Meteorites have told Imperial researchers the likely far-flung origin of Earth’s volatile chemicals, some of which form the building blocks of life.

They found that around half the Earth’s inventory of the volatile element zinc came from asteroids originating in the outer Solar System – the part beyond the asteroid belt that includes the planets Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. This material is also expected to have supplied other important volatiles such as water.

“Volatiles” are elements or compounds that change from solid or liquid state into vapour at relatively low temperatures. They include the six most common elements found in living organisms, as well as water. As such, the addition of this material will have been important for the emergence of life on Earth.

Prior to this finding researchers thought that most of Earth’s volatiles came from asteroids that formed closer to the Earth. The findings reveal important clues about how Earth came to harbour the special conditions needed to sustain life.

Senior author Professor Mark Rehkämper, of Imperial College London’s Department of Earth Science and Engineering, said: “Our data show that about half of Earth’s zinc inventory was delivered by material from the outer Solar System, beyond the orbit of Jupiter. Based on current models of early Solar System development, this was completely unexpected.”

Previous research suggested that the Earth formed almost exclusively from inner Solar System material, which researchers inferred was the predominant source of Earth’s volatile chemicals. In contrast, the new findings suggest the outer Solar System played a bigger role than previously thought.

Professor Rehkämper added: “This contribution of outer Solar System material played a vital role in establishing the Earth’s inventory of volatile chemicals. It looks as though without the contribution of outer Solar System material, the Earth would have a much lower amount of volatiles than we know it today – making it drier and potentially unable to nourish and sustain life.”

The findings are published in Science [below].

To carry out the study, the researchers examined 18 meteorites of varying origins – eleven from the inner Solar System, known as non-carbonaceous meteorites, and seven from the outer Solar System, known as carbonaceous meteorites.

For each meteorite they measured the relative abundances of the five different forms – or isotopes – of zinc. They then compared each isotopic fingerprint with Earth samples to estimate how much each of these materials contributed to the Earth’s zinc inventory. The results suggest that while the Earth only incorporated about ten per cent of its mass from carbonaceous bodies, this material supplied about half of Earth’s zinc.

The researchers say that material with a high concentration of zinc and other volatile constituents is also likely to be relatively abundant in water, giving clues about the origin of Earth’s water.

First author on the paper Rayssa Martins, PhD candidate at the Department of Earth Science and Engineering, said: “We’ve long known that some carbonaceous material was added to the Earth, but our findings suggest that this material played a key role in establishing our budget of volatile elements, some of which are essential for life to flourish.”

Next the researchers will analyze rocks from Mars, which harboured water 4.1 to 3 billion years ago before drying up, and the Moon. Professor Rehkämper said: “The widely held theory is that the Moon formed when a huge asteroid smashed into an embryonic Earth about 4.5 billion years ago. Analyzing zinc isotopes in moon rocks will help us to test this hypothesis and determine whether the colliding asteroid played an important part in delivering volatiles, including water, to the Earth.”

This work was funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC – part of UKRI) and Rayssa Martins is funded by an Imperial College London Presidents’ PhD Scholarship.

Science

See the full article here.

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Imperial College London (UK) is a science-based university with an international reputation for excellence in teaching and research. Consistently rated amongst the world’s best universities, Imperial is committed to developing the next generation of researchers, scientists and academics through collaboration across disciplines. Located in the heart of London, Imperial is a multidisciplinary space for education, research, translation and commercialization, harnessing science and innovation to tackle global challenges.

Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London. Imperial grew out of Prince Albert’s vision of an area for culture, including the Royal Albert Hall; Imperial Institute; numerous museums and the Royal Colleges that would go on to form the college. In 1907, Imperial College was established by Royal Charter, merging the Royal College of Science; Royal School of Mines; and City and Guilds College. In 1988, the Imperial College School of Medicine was formed by combining with St Mary’s Hospital Medical School. In 2004, Queen Elizabeth II opened the Imperial College Business School.

The college focuses exclusively on science; technology; medicine; and business. The college’s main campus is located in South Kensington, and it has an innovation campus in White City; a research field station at Silwood Park; and teaching hospitals throughout London. The college was a member of the University of London(UK) from 1908, becoming independent on its centenary in 2007. Imperial has an international community, with more than 59% of students from outside the UK and 140 countries represented on campus. Student, staff, and researcher affiliations include 14 Nobel laureates; 3 Fields Medalists; 2 Breakthrough Prize winners; 1 Turing Award winner; 74 Fellows of the Royal Society; 87 Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering; and 85 Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

History

19th century

The earliest college that led to the formation of Imperial was the Royal College of Chemistry founded in 1845 with the support of Prince Albert and parliament. This was merged in 1853 into what became known as the Royal School of Mines. The medical school has roots in many different schools across London, the oldest of which being Charing Cross Hospital Medical School which can be traced back to 1823 followed by teaching starting at Westminster Hospital in 1834 and St Mary’s Hospital in 1851.

In 1851 the Great Exhibition was organized as an exhibition of culture and industry by Henry Cole and by Prince Albert- husband of the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom Queen Victoria. An enormously popular and financial success proceeds from the Great Exhibition were designated to develop an area for cultural and scientific advancement in South Kensington. Within the next 6 years the Victoria and Albert Museum and Science Museum had opened joined by new facilities in 1871 for the Royal College of Chemistry and in 1881 for the Royal School of Mines; the opening of the Natural History Museum in 1881; and in 1888 the Imperial Institute.

In 1881 the Normal School of Science was established in South Kensington under the leadership of Thomas Huxley taking over responsibility for the teaching of the natural sciences and agriculture from the Royal School of Mines. The school was renamed the Royal College of Science by royal consent in 1890. The Central Institution of the City and Guilds of London Institute was opened as a technical education school on Exhibition Road by the Prince of Wales in early 1885.

20th century

At the start of the 20th century, there was a concern that Britain was falling behind Germany in scientific and technical education. A departmental committee was set up at the Board of Education in 1904, to look into the future of the Royal College of Science. A report released in 1906 called for the establishment of an institution unifying the Royal College of Science and the Royal School of Mines, as well as – if an agreement could be reached with the City and Guilds of London Institute – their Central Technical College.

On 8 July 1907 King Edward VII granted a Royal Charter establishing the Imperial College of Science and Technology. This incorporated the Royal School of Mines and the Royal College of Science. It also made provisions for the City and Guilds College to join once conditions regarding its governance were met as well as for Imperial to become a college of The University of London. The college joined the University of London on 22 July 1908 with the City and Guilds College joining in 1910. The main campus of Imperial College was constructed beside the buildings of the Imperial Institute- the new building for the Royal College of Science having opened across from it in 1906 and the foundation stone for the Royal School of Mines building being laid by King Edward VII in July 1909.

As students at Imperial had to study separately for London degrees in January 1919 students and alumni voted for a petition to make Imperial a university with its own degree awarding powers independent of the University of London. In response the University of London changed its regulations in 1925 so that the courses taught only at Imperial would be examined by the university enabling students to gain a BSc.

In October 1945 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited Imperial to commemorate the centenary of the Royal College of Chemistry which was the oldest of the institutions that united to form Imperial College. “Commemoration Day” named after this visit is held every October as the university’s main graduation ceremony. The college also acquired a biology field station at Silwood Park near Ascot, Berkshire in 1947.

Following the Second World War, there was again concern that Britain was falling behind in science – this time to the United States. The Percy Report of 1945 and Barlow Committee in 1946 called for a “British MIT”-equivalent backed by influential scientists as politicians of the time including Lord Cherwell; Sir Lawrence Bragg; and Sir Edward Appleton. The University Grants Committee strongly opposed however. So, a compromise was reached in 1953 where Imperial would remain within the university but double in size over the next ten years. The expansion led to a number of new buildings being erected. These included the Hill building in 1957 and the Physics building in 1960 and the completion of the East Quadrangle built in four stages between 1959 and 1965. The building work also meant the demolition of the City and Guilds College building in 1962–63 and the Imperial Institute’s building by 1967. Opposition from the Royal Fine Arts Commission and others meant that Queen’s Tower was retained with work carried out between 1966 and 1968 to make it free standing. New laboratories for biochemistry established with the support of a £350,000 grant from the Wolfson Foundation were opened by the Queen in 1965.

In 1988 Imperial merged with St Mary’s Hospital Medical School under the Imperial College Act 1988. Amendments to the royal charter changed the formal name of the institution to The Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine and made St Mary’s a constituent college. This was followed by mergers with the National Heart and Lung Institute in 1995 and the Charing Cross and Westminster Medical School; Royal Postgraduate Medical School; and the Institute of Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1997 with the Imperial College Act 1997 formally establishing the Imperial College School of Medicine.

21st century

In 2003, Imperial was granted degree-awarding powers in its own right by the Privy Council. In 2004, the Imperial College Business School and a new main entrance on Exhibition Road were opened by Queen Elizabeth II. The UK Energy Research Centre was also established in 2004 and opened its headquarters at Imperial. On 9 December 2005, Imperial announced that it would commence negotiations to secede from the University of London. Imperial became fully independent of the University of London in July 2007.

In April 2011 Imperial and King’s College London joined the UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation as partners with a commitment of £40 million each to the project. The centre was later renamed The Francis Crick Institute (UK) and opened on 9 November 2016. It is the largest single biomedical laboratory in Europe. The college began moving into the new White City campus in 2016 with the launching of the Innovation Hub. This was followed by the opening of the Molecular Sciences Research Hub for the Department of Chemistry officially opened by Mayor of London- Sadiq Khan in 2019. The White City campus also includes another biomedical centre funded by a £40 million donation by alumnus Sir Michael Uren.

Research

Imperial submitted a total of 1,257 staff across 14 units of assessment to the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) assessment. This found that 91% of Imperial’s research is “world-leading” (46% achieved the highest possible 4* score) or “internationally excellent” (44% achieved 3*) giving an overall GPA of 3.36. In rankings produced by Times Higher Education based upon the REF results Imperial was ranked 2nd overall. Imperial is also widely known to have been a critical contributor of the discovery of penicillin; the invention of fiber optics; and the development of holography. The college promotes research commercialization partly through its dedicated technology transfer company- Imperial Innovations- which has given rise to a large number of spin-out companies based on academic research. Imperial College has a long-term partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that dates back from World War II. The United States is the college’s top collaborating foreign country with more than 15,000 articles co-authored by Imperial and U.S.-based authors over the last 10 years.

In January 2018 the mathematics department of Imperial and the CNRS-The National Center for Scientific Research[Centre national de la recherche scientifique](FR) launched UMI Abraham de Moivre at Imperial- a joint research laboratory of mathematics focused on unsolved problems and bridging British and French scientific communities. The Fields medallists Cédric Villani and Martin Hairer hosted the launch presentation. The CNRS-Imperial partnership started a joint PhD program in mathematics and further expanded in June 2020 to include other departments. In October 2018, Imperial College launched the Imperial Cancer Research UK Center- a research collaboration that aims to find innovative ways to improve the precision of cancer treatments inaugurated by former Vice President of the United States Joe Biden as part of his Biden Cancer Initiative.

Imperial was one of the ten leading contributors to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration InSight Mars lander which landed on planet Mars in November 2018, with the college logo appearing on the craft. InSight’s Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure, developed at Imperial, measured the first likely marsquake reading in April 2019. In 2019 it was revealed that the Blackett Laboratory would be constructing an instrument for the European Space (EU) Solar Orbiter in a mission to study the Sun, which launched in February 2020. The laboratory is also designing part of the DUNE/LBNF Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment.

In early 2020 immunology research at the Faculty of Medicine focused on SARS-CoV-2 under the leadership of Professor Robin Shattock as part of the college’s COVID-19 Response Team including the search of a cheap vaccine which started human trials on 15 June 2020. Professor Neil Ferguson’s 16 March report entitled Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID- 19 mortality and healthcare demand was described in a 17 March The New York Times article as the coronavirus “report that jarred the U.S. and the U.K. to action”. Since 18 May 2020 Imperial College’s Dr. Samir Bhatt has been advising the state of New York for its reopening plan. Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo said that “the Imperial College model- as we’ve been following this for weeks- was the best most accurate model.” The hospitals from the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust which have been caring for COVID-19 infected patients partnered with Microsoft to use their HoloLens when treating those patients reducing the amount of time spent by staff in high-risk areas by up to 83% as well as saving up to 700 items of PPE per ward, per week.

From “Quanta Magazine” : “Inside Ancient Asteroids Gamma Rays Made Building Blocks of Life”

From “Quanta Magazine”

1.4.23
John Rennie-Deputy Editor
Allison Parshall-Writing Intern

Credit: Kristina Armitage/Quanta Magazine.

In 2021, the Hayabusa2 space mission successfully delivered a morsel of the asteroid 162173 Ryugu to Earth — five grams of the oldest, most pristine matter left over from the solar system’s formation 4.5 billion years ago.

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) [国立研究開発法人宇宙航空研究開発機構](JP) Hayabusa 2 spacecraft.

Last spring, scientists revealed that the chemical composition of the asteroid includes 10 amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. The discovery added to the evidence that the primordial soup from which life on Earth arose may have been seasoned with amino acids from pieces of asteroids.

But where did these amino acids come from? The amino acids flowing through our ecosystems are products of cellular metabolism, mostly in plants. What nonbiological mechanism could have put them in meteorites and asteroids?

Scientists have thought of several ways, and recent work [ACS Central Science (below)] by researchers in Japan points to a significant new one: a mechanism that uses gamma rays to forge amino acids. Their discovery makes it seem even more likely that meteorites could have contributed to the origin of life on Earth.

Despite their cachet as an essential part of life’s chemistry, amino acids are simple molecules that can be cooked up artlessly from carbon, oxygen and nitrogen compounds if there’s sufficient energy. Seventy years ago, famous experiments by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey proved that an electrical discharge in a gaseous mixture of methane, ammonia and hydrogen (which at the time was incorrectly thought to mimic Earth’s early atmosphere) was all it took to make a mixture of organic compounds that included amino acids. Later laboratory work suggested that amino acids could also potentially form in sediments near hydrothermal vents on the seafloor, and a discovery in 2018 [Nature (below)] confirmed that this does sometimes occur.

The possibility that the original amino acids might have come from space began to catch on after 1969, when two large meteorites — the Murchison meteorite in southeastern Australia and the Allende meteorite in Mexico — were recovered promptly after their impacts.

Murchison meteorite at the The National Museum of Natural History (Washington)

A 520g individual of the Allende meteorite shower. Allende is a carbonaceous chondrite (CV3) that fell on 1969 February 8 in Mexico.

Both were carbonaceous chondrites, a rare class of meteorites resembling Ryugu that scientists think accreted from smaller icy bodies after the solar system first formed. Both also contained small but significant amounts of amino acids, although scientists couldn’t rule out the possibility that the amino acids were contaminants or byproducts of their impact.

Still, space scientists knew that the icy dust bodies that formed carbonaceous chondrites were likely to contain water, ammonia and small carbon molecules like aldehydes and methanol, so the elemental constituents of amino acids would have been present. They needed only a source of energy to facilitate the reaction. Experimental work suggested that ultraviolet radiation from supernovas could have been strong enough to do it. Collisions between the dust bodies could also have heated them enough to produce a similar effect.

“We know a lot of ways to make amino acids abiologically,” said Scott Sandford, a laboratory astrophysicist at NASA’s Ames Research Center. “And there’s no reason to expect that they didn’t all happen.”

Now a team of researchers at Yokohama National University in Japan led by the chemists Yoko Kebukawa and Kensei Kobayashi have shown that gamma rays could also have produced the amino acids in chondrites. In their new work, they showed that gamma rays from radioactive elements in the chondrites — most probably aluminum-26 — could convert the carbon, nitrogen and oxygen compounds into amino acids.

Of course, gamma rays can destroy organic compounds as easily as it can make them. But in the Japanese team’s experiments, “the enhancement of amino acid production by the radioisotopes was more effective than decomposition,” Kebukawa said, so the gamma rays produced more amino acids than they destroyed. From the rates of production observed in their experiments, the researchers calculated very roughly that gamma rays could have raised the concentration of amino acids in a carbonaceous chondrite asteroid to the levels seen in the Murchison meteorite in as little as 1,000 years or as many as 100,000.

Since gamma rays, unlike ultraviolet light, can penetrate deep into the interior of an asteroid or meteorite, this mechanism could have extra relevance to origin-of-life scenarios. “It opens up a whole new environment in which amino acids can be made,” Sandford said. If meteorites are big enough, “the middle part of them could survive atmospheric entry even if the outside ablates away,” he explained. “So you’re not only making [amino acids] but you’re making them on the path to get to a planet.”

The meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites, such as the one at left, accreted from smaller icy bodies that contained mixtures of compounds rich in carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. Their conglomerated structure is visible in a magnified cross section. Credits: Susan E. Degginger/Alamy Stock Photo (left); Laurence Garvie/ Buseck Center for Meteorite Studies, Arizona State University.

One requirement of the new mechanism is that small amounts of liquid water must be present to support the reactions. That might seem like a significant limitation — “I can easily imagine that people think liquid water hardly exists in space environments,” Kebukawa said. But carbonaceous chondrite meteorites are full of minerals such as hydrated silicates and carbonates that only form in the presence of water, she explained, and tiny amounts of water have even been found trapped inside some of the mineral grains in chondrites.

From such mineralogical evidence, said Vassilissa Vinogradoff, an astrochemist at Aix-Marseille University in France, scientists know that young asteroids held significant amounts of liquid water. “The aqueous alteration phase of these bodies, which is when the amino acids in question would have had a chance to form, was a period of about a million years,” she said — more than long enough to produce the quantities of amino acids observed in meteorites.

Sandford notes that in experiments he and other researchers have conducted, irradiation of icy mixtures like those in the primordial interstellar molecular clouds can give rise to thousands of compounds relevant to life, including sugars and nucleobases, “and amino acids are virtually always there in the mix. So the universe seems to be kind of hard-wired to make amino acids.”

Vinogradoff echoed that view and said that the diversity of organic compounds that can be present in meteorites is now known to be vast. “The question has pivoted more to be: Why are these molecules the ones that have proved important for life on Earth?” she said. Why, for example, does terrestrial life use only 20 of the scores of amino acids that can be produced — and why does it almost exclusively use the “left-handed” structures of those molecules when the mirror-image “right-handed” structures naturally form in equal abundance? Those may be the mysteries that dominate chemical studies of life’s earliest origins in the future.

Science papers:
ACS Central Science
See the above science paper for instructive material with images.
Nature

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