Latest news with #IanCarnelli
Yahoo
17-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
European spacecraft got rare close-up of Mars' lesser-known moon
A European spacecraft on a journey to study NASA's asteroid crash site did a quick pop-in of Mars on its way, capturing unprecedented images of Mars' lesser-known moon, Deimos. Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, but scientists know relatively little about them, especially the smaller one, Deimos. Nearly all of the images they have of it were taken from the Martian surface by rovers, and because the moon is tidally locked — meaning one full spin matches the amount of time it takes to complete its orbit of Mars — only one side has been seen on the Red Planet. The Hera mission spacecraft captured views of the moon's far side, swinging within 625 miles of Deimos in space. While the car-sized spacecraft flew around the Mars system, flight controllers on Earth temporarily lost communication with Hera because the signal was blocked. Though the blackout was planned for the maneuver, Ian Carnelli, the European Space Agency's Hera mission manager, said it was deeply emotional. "I was almost in tears. I mean, I know probably this is normal for a flight for spacecraft operators, but every time we lose contact with a spacecraft, I'm super nervous," he said during a webcast following the flyby. "Then I was running to the room where the scientists were [watching for images], and as soon as I opened the door, they were screaming — really screaming." SEE ALSO: Scientists found huge beaches on Mars likely from a long gone ocean Among those scientists was one of the co-founders of Queen. When Brian May isn't playing guitar riffs, he is an astrophysicist. As part of Hera's science team, May brings his expertise in stereoscopic imaging. That means he helps decipher complex scientific data into 3D pictures. During a webcast on Thursday, May described some of the topographical details of the moon already brought to life through the raw data. A depression in the city-sized moon was visible, a feature May described as a "saddle" on the left side and some little craters at the bottom. "You feel like you're there, and you see the whole scene in front of you," he said. "The science that we get from this is colossal, and I think we're all like children." Hera launched in October 2024 and will rendezvous with Dimorphos, an asteroid previously slammed by a NASA spacecraft, in 2026. Back in 2022, NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into a harmless asteroid to practice thwarting a space rock, should a hazardous one ever be on a collision course with Earth. The European Space Agency is providing a follow-up to that test. Deimos, one of Mars' two moons, is eight miles wide and orbits about 14,600 miles away from the Red Planet. Credit: ESA The flyby of Mars and Deimos wasn't a detour but a necessary maneuver to put the spacecraft on the right trajectory toward its ultimate destination. Swinging within 3,100 miles of Mars, Hera used its gravity to adjust its course. Scientists would like to understand where Deimos and its partner Phobos came from — whether they were once asteroids captured in orbit around Mars or are chunks of the planet itself, blown out by a giant impact. The new data may help them figure out the moon's origin. During the flyby, three instruments were used: a black-and-white navigation camera that takes pictures in visible light; a hyperspectral imager that can help discern an object's mineral composition; and a thermal infrared imager supplied by the Japanese space agency, JAXA, which can help characterize the texture and density of the material. Overall, thousands of images were collected, and the Hera team is still processing them. At the top of this story is an infrared photo of Deimos, backdropped by Mars. The Red Planet appears pale blue because the sun is shining on it. Its contribution to this scene would need to be removed for the colors to appear closer to how they would really look to our eyes. A thermal camera on the Hera spacecraft took images that will help scientists characterize the texture and density of the material that makes up Deimos. Credit: ESA / JAXA Near the top of the image is the bright Terra Sabaea region, close to the Martian equator. At the bottom right of the region is the Huygen crater, and to its left is the Schiaparelli crater. At the bottom right of the planet is Hellas Basin, one of the largest known craters in the solar system. In a little less than two years, Hera will reach the target asteroids from NASA's DART mission to begin a crash investigation.
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Tiny Mars moon Deimos gets a rare close-up, thanks to Europe's Hera asteroid probe (photos)
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Europe's Hera mission, on its way to the Didymos–Dimorphos double asteroid system, has performed a close flyby of Mars, receiving a crucial gravitational slingshot, testing some of its instruments, and gaining new images of Mars' little-seen moon Deimos, which could answer questions about the origin of the Red Planet's moons. The flyby took place on Wednesday (March 12), and the European Space Agency presented the images during a webcast today. The images presented show Deimos set against a backdrop of the Red Planet below it as Hera flew within 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) of Mars and just 621 miles (1,000 kilometers) of Deimos. "Last night was a very short night, I think we slept about 3 hours," said Hera Project Manager Ian Carnelli, of the European Space Agency during the ESA webcast. "But as we flew by Mars this gave us more than a thousand images that are absolutely breathtaking." Mars has two moons, named Phobos and Deimos, but because Phobos is closer to Mars, it has been previously imaged by other spacecraft. "For Deimos, we don't have as many images as Phobos, so all opportunities to see Deimos are high value," said Hera's Principal Investigator, Patrick Michel of the University Côte d'Azur in Nice, France. What was also different about this flyby was that the side of Deimos that was imaged. Deimos is tidally locked to Mars, meaning that like Earth's moon, it continually shows the same face to the Red Planet. Most previous images of the small, 7.7-mile-wide (12.4 kilometers) Deimos have shown Mars-facing side. Before now, only the United Arab Emirates' Hope mission, which arrived at Mars in 2021, had seen the side of Deimos that faces out into space. Julia de León, of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, who leads Hera's Hyperscout-H multispectral imager, which observes light from celestial objects through 25 filters extending from visible wavelengths into the near-infrared, says these images can reveal the chemical composition of the moon. "It's the first images of this face [of Deimos] obtained at these wavelengths," said de León. With Hyperscout-H, it means that "we can retrieve information about the potential minerals on the surface of Deimos." Understanding the composition and make-up of Deimos is important, because we don't understand the origins of either of Mars' moons. Both Phobos and Deimos look like asteroids, being lumpy, cratered and small. Therefore, one hypothesis is that they are captured carbon-rich, or C-type, asteroids. However, captured bodies usually end up in eccentric, inclined and often retrograde orbits, whereas Phobos and Deimos orbit Mars in the red planet's equatorial plane and in prograde fashion. So an alternative hypothesis is that they formed out of debris that ended up in orbit around Mars following a huge impact on the Martian surface. Then there's a more recent, third possibility, which is that they could be the remains of a larger asteroid that was torn apart. Identifying the materials from which Phobos and Deimos are made will offer clues as to how they formed. For example, the presence of basalt would imply their materials came from the surface of Mars, where there has been extensive volcanism in the past. Another instrument on Hera that could reveal clues about Deimos' birth is its Thermal Infrared Imager. Developed for the mission by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), its purpose is the mapping of temperatures on the surfaces of celestial bodies such as Mars, Deimos, or Didymos and Dimorphos. "The purpose of these temperature measurements is to find out the compaction state of the material; is it really fluffy, fine-grained stuff, or is it dense, coarse material?" said JAXA's Seiji Sujita, of the University of Tokyo, during the webcast. "When we analyze the data in the coming days and weeks, we will probably be able to tell the difference between the grain sizes, and that's probably going to tell us something about the origin of Deimos." Of course, Mars is not the end goal of Hera. Its primary mission is to visit the binary asteroid Didymos and Dimorphos, the latter of which was struck in 2022 by NASA's DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft, which collided with Dimorphos and altered the smaller asteroid's orbit around Didymos in an experiment to test whether we could nudge aside an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Hera is heading there to study the crater made by the DART impact, and to learn more about the properties of both asteroids. Having launched in October 2024 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Hera is intended to reach Didymos and Dimorphos by the end of 2026. To get there faster and using as little propellant as possible, Hera has flown to Mars for a gravitational slingshot. "Mars was at exactly the right spot for us to get to Didymos and save propellant," said Carnelli. "So we literally used the gravity of Mars to pull us and then throw us deeper into space by harvesting a bit of the planet's energy." But to fly past Mars in such a way that Hera got to see Deimos too required some gentle persuasion of ESA's Flight Dynamics team. "I really appreciate the team because the main objective of this fly-by was to put Hera on the correct trajectory with Didymos in 2026, but we asked if they could make a flyby of Deimos and they accepted, but it was a challenge because they had to change Hera's trajectory to do so." RELATED STORIES: — Hera probe snaps its 1st images of Earth and moon on way to asteroid crash site — SpaceX rocket launches Europe's Hera planetary defense probe to visit asteroid smacked by NASA — Hera asteroid probe 'waves goodbye' at Earth and moon from 2.3 million miles away (image) The next step, besides analyzing the data collected from Mars and Deimos, is preparing for rendezvous with Didymos and Dimorphos. This is the job of Hera's operations team, who will initiate the 'asteroid proximity operation' "That's going to be a real challenge — just imagine flying through an environment that's so dynamic," said Carnelli. Hera will enter into the double asteroid system and orbit Didymos, but it has to deal with not only Didymos's gravity but also neighbouring Dimorphos, which has an average distance from Didymos of just 3,780 feet (1,152 meters), and the constant motion of Dimorphos around Didymos. "I dream of flying between the two asteroids and being very close [to them] and doing things we never imagined before," said Carnelli. "We're really writing a page of space history here."
CBS News
13-03-2025
- Science
- CBS News
Mysterious Mars moon captured in unprecedented images by space probe
A space probe flying past Mars captured images of the red planet's small, mysterious moon. The space probe, named Hera, was launched on Oct. 7, 2024, and is on a mission to gather close-up data about the Dimorphos asteroid, the European Space Agency said in a news release. The asteroid was the first to have its orbit altered by human action, when it was impacted by NASA's DART spacecraft in 2022. The goal of Hera is to learn more about asteroid deflection so the technique can be refined and used again. While on a flyby of Mars, Hera was able to use three of its imaging instruments to capture images of Deimos, the smaller of Mars' two moons, the ESA said. Deimos is about 15,000 miles from Mars. Scientists have previously speculated that it may actually be a piece of asteroid, not a moon. Hera got as close as 1,000 kilometers, or about 620 miles, to Deimos. It used its various instruments to capture the images, characterize the mineral makeup on the moon and chart surface temperatures. These features combined will help scientists learn more about the lunar body, the ESA said. "These instruments have been tried out before, during Hera's departure from Earth, but this is the first time that we have employed them on a small distant moon for which we still lack knowledge – demonstrating their excellent performance in the process," ESA Hera mission scientist Michael Kueppers said in the news release. The ESA's Mars Express, which has been orbiting the red planet for over 20 years, also contributed observations of the moon. Results from the encounter should help guide operational planning for a mission set to explore Martian moons in 2026, the ESA said. That mission, in conjunction with NASA and French and German space agencies, will collect detailed measurements of Mars' two moons and land on Phobos, the larger lunar body, to collect a sample that can be returned to Earth for analysis. Hera also used the flyby of Mars to adjust its trajectory through deep space. That maneuver shortened Hera's travel time to Dimorphos, the ESA said. Hera will also collect information about Didymos, the asteroid that Dimorphos orbits around. Hera is expected to reach the Didymos in December 2026, the ESA said. "This has been the Hera team's first exciting experience of exploration, but not our last," said Hera mission manager Ian Carnelli in the news release. "In 21 months the spacecraft will reach our target asteroids, and start our crash site investigation of the only object in our Solar System to have had its orbit measurably altered by human action."
