Latest news with #PatrickMichel
Observer
29-03-2025
- Science
- Observer
A tiny moon photobombs Mars as europe's Hera mission swoops past
An asteroid-chasing spacecraft just swung past Mars on Wednesday. As it zipped by, it took hundreds of shots of the Red Planet, as well as several snaps of Deimos, one of the two small Martian moons. The operators of the European Space Agency's Hera spacecraft were bewitched by the sci-fi aesthetics of the pictures. 'We were waiting with impatience to get these images,' said Patrick Michel, the principal investigator for Hera, during a Thursday news conference at mission control in Darmstadt, Germany. When the first shots of the moon appeared, many of the Hera team members burst into cheers. 'We've never seen Deimos in that way,' Michel said. Navigators managed to fly Hera about 600 miles above Deimos, a craggy moon just 9 miles long. The pass shows the object in remarkable detail — a small island gliding above the crater-scarred Martian desert. During the news conference, Ian Carnelli, the Hera project manager, was misty-eyed. 'I'm going to get emotional,' he said. 'The excitement was such that we didn't get any sleep.' Hera was using Mars in what is known as a gravity assist, both accelerating the spacecraft and adjusting its flight path. But its mission operators also wanted to take advantage of the Martian flyby and use it to test the mechanical eyes that will allow Hera to study the asteroid it is targeting, Dimorphos. In the coming days, the mission's scientists will reveal more photographs from Hera's encounter with Mars, which may include shots of Phobos, the planet's other moon. As with any planetary flyby, there were some nerves about whether Hera would conduct its manoeuvres properly and end up on the right trajectory. 'The spacecraft behaved very well,' said Sylvain Lodiot, the Hera operations manager. 'We're on track to the asteroid system.' Hera is headed to Dimorphos as a follow-up to a 2022 Nasa mission, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test. DART deliberately crashed a spacecraft into that asteroid, aiming to change its orbit around a larger asteroid, Didymos. That was a test of whether a dangerous space rock bound for Earth could be deflected in a similar manner. The experiment successfully changed the orbit of Dimorphos. But the asteroid's physical nature, and its full response to DART's collision, remains unclear; some evidence suggests that it acted like a fluid when hit, rather than a solid, causing it to eject a lot of debris and reshape itself. — NYT
New York Times
14-03-2025
- Science
- New York Times
Mars Gets a Close-Up and a Photo Bomb as Europe's Hera Mission Swoops Past
An asteroid-chasing spacecraft just swung past Mars on Wednesday. As it zipped by, it took hundreds of shots of the Red Planet, as well as several snaps of Deimos, one of the two small Martian moons. The operators of the European Space Agency's Hera spacecraft were bewitched by the sci-fi aesthetics of the pictures. 'We were waiting with impatience to get these images,' said Patrick Michel, the principal investigator for Hera, during a Thursday news conference at mission control in Darmstadt, Germany. When the first shots of the moon appeared, many of the Hera team members burst into cheers. 'We've never seen Deimos in that way,' Dr. Michel said. Navigators managed to fly Hera about 600 miles above Deimos, a craggy moon just nine miles long. The pass shows the object in remarkable detail — a small island gliding above the crater-scarred Martian desert. During the news conference, Ian Carnelli, the Hera project manager, was misty-eyed. 'I'm going to get emotional,' he said. 'The excitement was such that we didn't get any sleep.' Hera was using Mars in what is known as a gravity assist, both accelerating the spacecraft and adjusting its flight path. But its mission operators also wanted to take advantage of the Martian flyby and use it to test the mechanical eyes that will allow Hera to study the asteroid it is targeting, Dimorphos. In the coming days, the mission's scientists will reveal more photographs from Hera's encounter with Mars, which may include shots of Phobos, the planet's other moon. As with any planetary flyby, there were some nerves about whether Hera would conduct its maneuvers properly and end up on the right trajectory. 'The spacecraft behaved very well,' said Sylvain Lodiot, the Hera operations manager. 'We're on track to the asteroid system.' Hera is headed to Dimorphos as a follow-up to a 2022 NASA mission, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test. DART deliberately crashed a spacecraft into that asteroid, aiming to change its orbit around a larger asteroid, Didymos. That was a test of whether a dangerous space rock bound for Earth could be deflected in a similar manner. The experiment successfully changed the orbit of Dimorphos. But the asteroid's physical nature, and its full response to DART's collision, remains unclear; some evidence suggests that it acted like a fluid when hit, rather than a solid, causing it to eject a lot of debris and reshape itself. When it comes to stopping lethal asteroids from striking Earth, the more scientists know about their rocky enemies, the better prepared they will be should one come careening our way. To aid that effort, the European Hera mission will arrive at Dimorphos in late 2026 for a close-up study of the DART-impacted asteroid. This Wednesday, during Hera's flyby of Mars and Deimos, the spacecraft used three cameras — including a thermal infrared imager supplied by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Mars's two moons have mysterious origins. Both could be pieces of a disintegrating asteroid captured by the planet's gravity, or perhaps the flotsam and jetsam leftover from a giant impact event on Mars. Deimos is tidally locked, meaning one hemisphere permanently faces Mars. This near side is the one most commonly seen by spacecraft orbiting the planet, or by rovers driving across its surface. Hera managed to fly behind Deimos, meaning it caught a rare sight. 'It's one of the very few images we have of the far side of Deimos,' said Stephan Ulamec, a researcher at the German Aerospace Center and member of the Hera team. This opportunistic peek at Mars and Deimos was exciting. But the team is especially thrilled that Hera is now on its way to its asteroid destination. 'We're all looking forward to what Didymos and Dimorphos will look like,' Dr. Michel said.
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."
Yahoo
23-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
The asteroid hits and near-misses you never hear about
A large asteroid known as 2024 YR4 has grabbed headlines this week as scientists first raised its chances of hitting earth, then lowered them. The latest estimate says the object has a 0.28% chance of hitting Earth in 2032, significantly lower than the 3.1% chance earlier in the week. Scientists say it is now more likely to smash into the Moon, with Nasa estimating the probability of that happening at 1%. But in the time since 2024 YR4 was first spotted through a telescope in the desert in Chile two months ago, tens of other objects have passed closer to Earth than the Moon, which in astronomical terms sounds like a near miss. It is likely that others, albeit much smaller, have hit us or burned up in the atmosphere but gone unnoticed. This is the story of the asteroids that you never hear about – the fly-bys, the near-misses and the direct hits. The vast majority are harmless. But some carry the most valuable clues for unlocking mysteries in our universe, information we are desperate to get our hands on. Asteroids, also sometimes called minor planets, are rocky pieces left over from the formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. Rocks routinely orbit close to Earth, pushed by the gravity of other planets. For most of human history, it has been impossible to know how close we have come to being struck by a large asteroid. Serious monitoring of objects near Earth only started in the late 20th century, explains Professor Mark Boslough from the University of New Mexico. "Before that we were blissfully oblivious to them," he says. We now know that quite large objects - 40m across or more - pass between Earth and the Moon several times a year. That's the same size of asteroid that exploded over Siberia in 1908 injuring people and damaging buildings over 200 square miles. The most serious near-miss, and the closest comparison with YR4, was an asteroid called Apophis which was first spotted in 2004 and measured 375 meters across, or around the size of a cruise ship. Professor Patrick Michel from French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) tracked Apophis and recalls it was considered the most hazardous asteroid ever detected. It took until 2013 to get enough observations to understand that it was not going to hit Earth. But he says there was one big difference with YR4. "We didn't know what to do. We discovered something, we determined an impact probability, and then thought, who do we call?" he says. Scientists and governments had no idea how to respond, he says. A large asteroid strike could be catastrophic if it hits an area where humans live. We don't know exactly how big YR4 is yet, but if it is at the top end of estimates, about 90m across, it would likely remain substantially intact rather than break up as it enters the Earth's atmosphere. "The surviving asteroid mass could create a crater. Structures in the immediate vicinity would likely be destroyed and people within the local region (dozens of kilometers) would be at risk of serious injury," explains Professor Kathryn Kunamoto from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Some people could die. But since Apophis, there have been huge advances in what is called planetary defence. Prof Michel is part of the international Space Mission Planning Advisory Group. Its delegates advise governments on how to respond to an asteroid threat and run rehearsal exercise for direct hits. There is one going on right now. If the asteroid was on course for a town or city, Dr Boslough compares the response to preparations made for a major hurricane, including evacuations and measures to protect infrastructure. The Space Mission Planning Advisory Group will meet again in April to decide what to do about YR4. By then most scientists expect the risk to have almost entirely gone, as their calculations of its trajectory become more precise. We do have options beyond "taking a hit", as Dr Kumamoto puts it. Nasa and the European Space Agency have developed technologies to nudge dangerous asteroids off course. Nasa's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) successfully slammed a spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos to change its path. However scientists are sceptical if that would work in the case of YR4 due to uncertainty about what it is made of and the short window of time to successfully deflect it. And what about the asteroids that do hit Earth? An awkward truth for scientists is that a direct strike on land far from humans is the ideal scenario for asteroids. That gives them actual pieces from distant objects within of our solar system, as well as insights into Earth's impact history. Nearly 50,000 asteroids have been found in Antarctica. The most famous, called ALH 84001, is believed to have originated on Mars and contains minerals with vital evidence about the planet's history, suggesting it was warm and had water on its surface billions of years ago. In 2023 scientists detected an asteroid called 33 Polyhymnia which could have an element denser than anything found on Earth. This superheavy element would be something entirely new to our planet. 33 Polyhymnia is at least 170 million kilometers away, but it's an indication of the incredible potential of asteroids for our understanding of science. Now that the chances are higher that YR4 will hit the Moon, some scientists are getting excited about that. An impact could give real-world answers to questions they have only been able to simulate using computers. "To have even one data point of a real example would be incredibly powerful," says Prof Gareth Collins from Imperial College London. "How much material comes out when the asteroid hits? How fast does it go? How far does that travel?" he asks. It would help them test the scenarios they have modelled about asteroid impacts on Earth, helping create better predictions. YR4 has reminded us that we live on a planet vulnerable to collisions with something the solar system is full of – rocks. Scientists warn against complacency, saying it is a matter of when, not if, a large asteroid will threaten human life on Earth, although most expect that to be in the coming centuries rather than decades. In the meantime, our ability to monitor space keeps improving. Later this year the largest digital camera ever built will begin working at the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile, able to capture the night sky in incredible detail. And the closer and longer we look, the more asteroids spinning close to Earth we are likely to spot. UN monitors asteroid with a tiny chance of hitting Earth The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was not alone Asteroid contains building blocks of life, say scientists
Yahoo
22-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
The asteroid hits and near-misses you never hear about
A large asteroid known as 2024 YR4 has grabbed headlines this week as scientists first raised its chances of hitting earth, then lowered them. The latest estimate says the object has a 0.28% chance of hitting Earth in 2032, significantly lower than the 3.1% chance earlier in the week. Scientists say it is now more likely to smash into the Moon, with Nasa estimating the probability of that happening at 1%. But in the time since 2024 YR4 was first spotted through a telescope in the desert in Chile two months ago, tens of other objects have passed closer to Earth than the Moon, which in astronomical terms sounds like a near miss. It is likely that others, albeit much smaller, have hit us or burned up in the atmosphere but gone unnoticed. This is the story of the asteroids that you never hear about – the fly-bys, the near-misses and the direct hits. The vast majority are harmless. But some carry the most valuable clues for unlocking mysteries in our universe, information we are desperate to get our hands on. Asteroids, also sometimes called minor planets, are rocky pieces left over from the formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. Rocks routinely orbit close to Earth, pushed by the gravity of other planets. For most of human history, it has been impossible to know how close we have come to being struck by a large asteroid. Serious monitoring of objects near Earth only started in the late 20th century, explains Professor Mark Boslough from the University of New Mexico. "Before that we were blissfully oblivious to them," he says. We now know that quite large objects - 40m across or more - pass between Earth and the Moon several times a year. That's the same size of asteroid that exploded over Siberia in 1908 injuring people and damaging buildings over 200 square miles. The most serious near-miss, and the closest comparison with YR4, was an asteroid called Apophis which was first spotted in 2004 and measured 375 meters across, or around the size of a cruise ship. Professor Patrick Michel from French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) tracked Apophis and recalls it was considered the most hazardous asteroid ever detected. It took until 2013 to get enough observations to understand that it was not going to hit Earth. But he says there was one big difference with YR4. "We didn't know what to do. We discovered something, we determined an impact probability, and then thought, who do we call?" he says. Scientists and governments had no idea how to respond, he says. A large asteroid strike could be catastrophic if it hits an area where humans live. We don't know exactly how big YR4 is yet, but if it is at the top end of estimates, about 90m across, it would likely remain substantially intact rather than break up as it enters the Earth's atmosphere. "The surviving asteroid mass could create a crater. Structures in the immediate vicinity would likely be destroyed and people within the local region (dozens of kilometers) would be at risk of serious injury," explains Professor Kathryn Kunamoto from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Some people could die. But since Apophis, there have been huge advances in what is called planetary defence. Prof Michel is part of the international Space Mission Planning Advisory Group. Its delegates advise governments on how to respond to an asteroid threat and run rehearsal exercise for direct hits. There is one going on right now. If the asteroid was on course for a town or city, Dr Boslough compares the response to preparations made for a major hurricane, including evacuations and measures to protect infrastructure. The Space Mission Planning Advisory Group will meet again in April to decide what to do about YR4. By then most scientists expect the risk to have almost entirely gone, as their calculations of its trajectory become more precise. We do have options beyond "taking a hit", as Dr Kumamoto puts it. Nasa and the European Space Agency have developed technologies to nudge dangerous asteroids off course. Nasa's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) successfully slammed a spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos to change its path. However scientists are sceptical if that would work in the case of YR4 due to uncertainty about what it is made of and the short window of time to successfully deflect it. And what about the asteroids that do hit Earth? An awkward truth for scientists is that a direct strike on land far from humans is the ideal scenario for asteroids. That gives them actual pieces from distant objects within of our solar system, as well as insights into Earth's impact history. Nearly 50,000 asteroids have been found in Antarctica. The most famous, called ALH 84001, is believed to have originated on Mars and contains minerals with vital evidence about the planet's history, suggesting it was warm and had water on its surface billions of years ago. In 2023 scientists detected an asteroid called 33 Polyhymnia which could have an element denser than anything found on Earth. This superheavy element would be something entirely new to our planet. 33 Polyhymnia is at least 170 million kilometers away, but it's an indication of the incredible potential of asteroids for our understanding of science. Now that the chances are higher that YR4 will hit the Moon, some scientists are getting excited about that. An impact could give real-world answers to questions they have only been able to simulate using computers. "To have even one data point of a real example would be incredibly powerful," says Prof Gareth Collins from Imperial College London. "How much material comes out when the asteroid hits? How fast does it go? How far does that travel?" he asks. It would help them test the scenarios they have modelled about asteroid impacts on Earth, helping create better predictions. YR4 has reminded us that we live on a planet vulnerable to collisions with something the solar system is full of – rocks. Scientists warn against complacency, saying it is a matter of when, not if, a large asteroid will threaten human life on Earth, although most expect that to be in the coming centuries rather than decades. In the meantime, our ability to monitor space keeps improving. Later this year the largest digital camera ever built will begin working at the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile, able to capture the night sky in incredible detail. And the closer and longer we look, the more asteroids spinning close to Earth we are likely to spot. UN monitors asteroid with a tiny chance of hitting Earth The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was not alone Asteroid contains building blocks of life, say scientists
