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Visualizing the Yellowstone Earthquake Swarms

The hot spring, Sapphire Pool at the Biscuit Geyser Basin in Yellowstone National Park (Getty)

Since December 26th, hundreds of small earthquakes have shimmied Yellowstone National Park.

Earthquake swarms are a collection of small earthquakes over a short space of time. These aren’t aftershocks of one primary, larger quake, they are quakes in their own right. Yellowstone National Park, located mainly in the state of Wyoming (stretching into Montana and Idaho), plays host to the Yellowstone Caldera, a volcanic hotspot where molten mantle rock bubbles to the surface. This activity creates hot springs and is the energy source of many geysers.

The last Yellowstone “supereruption” occurred 640,000 years ago, but there have been many smaller eruptions and lava flows since then; the most recent being 70,000 years ago.

Any earthquake in the largest volcanic system in North America will therefore cause excitement and a little concern, and these recent earthquake swarms are an oddity. Yellowstone is no stranger to earthquake swarms, but the recent frequency of events are unusual scientists say.

In an effort to track the swarms, I’ve stumbled across an interesting article where a numerical modelling package has been used to locate and simulate the earthquake swarm breakouts…
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Frosty Phoenix Not Snowed Under… Yet.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE instrument spots the dead Phoenix Lander on December 21st (NASA/HiRISE)

NASA lost contact with the Phoenix Mars Lander at the start of November 2008, as its batteries were drained and sunlight began to dwindle. With no sunlight came no charge for the batteries from Phoenix’s solar panels, and the robot’s fate was sealed: a sun-deprived coma. A dust storm hastened the lander’s fate, but it certainly wasn’t premature. The Phoenix mission was intended to last three months, but in the same vein as the Mars Exploration Rovers, Phoenix’s mission was extended. In the high latitude location of the Martian Arctic, a dark winter was fast approaching, so Phoenix didn’t have the luxury of time and it transmitted its last broken signal before the cold set in, sapping the last volt of electricity from its circuits…

Although there was some excitement about the possibility of reviving the lander next summer, it is highly unlikely Phoenix will be in an operational state, even if it did have an abundant source of light to heat up its solar panels once more. No, Phoenix is dead.

However, that doesn’t mean the orbiting satellites won’t be looking out for it. So long as there is a little bit of light bouncing off the frosted Martian surface, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter can image Phoenix, keeping track of the encroaching ice around its location. The HiRISE team seem to be assembling a series of images throughout the change in seasons at the landing site, so it will be interesting to see the full set…

Source: HiRISE blog

SpaceX Falcon 9 Fully Integrated at Cape Canaveral

As the first post of 2009, I couldn’t think of a more worthy topic: SpaceX. Elon Musk’s private spaceflight company is accelerating its progress ever since the successful launch of the Falcon 1 (Flight 4) in September. Just last week, it was announced that NASA had signed a $1.6 billion contract for 12 SpaceX launches to resupply the International Space Station over the next decade. As if that wasn’t enough, we start the New Year with some more great news, the heavy-lift rocket, Falcon 9, has just been assembled at Cape Canaveral in preparation for it to be hoisted vertically so it can begin preparations for its first launch.

Falcon 9 is now fully integrated at the Cape! Today we mated the 5.2 m payload fairing to the Falcon 9 first stage (see below). This was the final step in the integration process—one day ahead of schedule.

With Falcon 9 integrated, our focus shifts to the big launch mount and erector. All the pieces have been delivered, and the coming days will see a tremendous amount of welding to join them all together.

The long hours put in by the SpaceX team over the last several weeks, particularly the folks on the ground at the Cape, are certainly paying off. Once the launch mount and erector are complete, we’ll transfer Falcon 9 on to the erector and raise it to vertical early in 2009. Happy New Year!

—SpaceX press release (Dec. 30th)

And just in case you wanted to see just how quickly this company ships and assembles their rockets, check out the image below. This is the same Falcon 9 first stage as the one above pre-paint-job, before being shipped from the Hawthorn facility in LA, during my visit in October. How time flies…

Falcon 9 1st stage in the SpaceX rocket-manufacturing facility in Hawthorn, CA (© Ian O'Neill)

What an exciting year 2009 is shaping up to be. We are living in historic times for commercial spaceflight, with SpaceX spearheading a new age for space travel…

MRO Spots Mars Dust Storm in the Making

Wind whipping up a dust storm on Mars (NASA)

One of the overriding features in the Martian atmosphere is the troublesome dust storm. Sometimes, these storms can last months and can span the entire planet. As testified by the solar panels on rovers Spirit and Opportunity, dust storms block sunlight from passing through the atmosphere and can deposit a thick red layer over the robots, amplifying the dust storm’s damaging effects.

In the stunning image above, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) captured the dust being blown up from the Red Planet’s surface. In short, this is the source of a growing dust storm from a canyon system, injecting a huge amount of material into the skies…
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SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Awarded NASA Contracts: $3.5 Billion Total

SpaceX Dragon approaches the ISS (SpaceX)

NASA has just signed two very large cheques for two private spaceflight companies, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Orbital Sciences Corporation. The contracts will allow private launches to re-supply the International Space Station beyond Shuttle decommissioning in 2010, and SpaceX claims they could be doing it by next year.

These contracts represent some of the largest ever given to private enterprise, and demonstrates the trust the US space agency is placing in these space start-ups. The contracts are worth $3.5 billion combined; $1.9 billion for Orbital Sciences and $1.6 billion for SpaceX, equating to 8 flights from Orbital and 12 flights from SpaceX. For now, these contracts are for cargo deliveries only, replacing the Shuttle and providing a viable alternative to the Russian Progress flights. Critically, the US now has a very real prospect to bridge the “5-year gap” from Shuttle retirement (2010) and Constellation launch (2015).

All we need now is for SpaceX’s Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket system to become “human rated” and we could see the first routine commercial launches of US astronauts before the Constellation Program is even rolled out onto the launchpad. Very exciting times…

Source: Universe Today, SpaceX

Fire at Auckland Warehouse Caused by Meteorite Impact? (Update)

Update (16:00 PST Dec. 14th): Eyewitness accounts are becoming more detailed, if you were in the Auckland area at 10pm (December 13th) and you saw something, please let me know (by leaving a comment below). Please give as detailed an account as possible, including your location and the direction at which you saw the meteorite. Hopefully we’ll piece this event together…

Auckland warehouse fire. Meteorite or foul play? (Paul Tonkin)

A fire erupted in an Auckland warehouse shortly after several eyewitness reported seeing a meteorite over the North Island of New Zealand. One witness (named “Mike”) even went as far to say that he watched the fiery object hit the Ponsonby area of the city, followed by an exploding noise.

The time of the several eyewitness reports (not amateur astronomer reports I want to point out) and the start of the blaze appears to correlate (although the local media is a little sketchy about the details at the moment). Apparently the fire caused serious roof damage to the warehouse and there was one minor casualty (a man who happened to be in the building at the time). However, none of the surrounding buildings were touched.

The meteorite was observed at around 10pm last night, and the fire was eventually extinguished at 11:30pm.
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Introducing the Exomoon, and Detecting them via Exoplanet Wobble

Exomoon: The natural satellite of an exoplanet.

Before today, I hadn’t heard anything about the possibility of looking for moons orbiting planets in other star systems. Sorry, exomoons orbiting exoplanets in other star systems. But a British astronomer has calculated that it is possible to not only detect exomoons, but it is possible to deduce their distance from the parent exoplanet and their mass.

All this is done by measuring the exoplanet’s “wobble”; a practice more commonly used in the pursuit of the exoplanets themselves. By detecting the wobble of distant stars, the gravitational pull of the exoplanet becomes obvious. The same can be done with exoplanets, possibly revealing the presence of Earth-like exomoons.

Of the 300+ exoplanets discovered, 30 are within the habitable zones of their stars. If these large gas giant exoplanets (usually several times the mass of Jupiter) have an exoplanet system of their own, these exomoons also fall within the habitable zone…

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

For the full article, check out Astronomers Now Looking For Exomoons Around Exoplanets on the Universe Today…

Yet Another Fireball and Explosion, Over Colorado

Video of the fireball event over Colorado (Chris Peterson)

Early this morning, a huge explosion lit up the Colorado skies. According to one observatory that videoed the event with its ever-watching all-sky camera, the fireball (or bolide) peak brightness (magnitude -18) exceeded the brightness of a full Moon 100 times. An awesome event. The Cloudbait Observatory, near Denver, is calling on eye-witnesses to submit their reports so possible meteorite fragments can be found on the ground. Only last month, a similar effort resulted in Canadian meteorite hunters finding over two dozen fragments from the Saskatchewan fireball.

For all the information about the Colorado event, check out my Universe Today article Exploding Colorado Fireball, 100 Times Brighter than the Moon (Video).

I must admit though (as one of my readers pointed out), it is surprising to hear about this recent flurry of large fireball events. Some of these meteoroids are as big as 10 tonnes (in the case of the Saskatchewan fireball), and scattered meteorites are being found on the ground (fortunately over sparsely populated regions). Are these recent series of fireball spottings down to improved observation techniques and a bit of luck? After all, the October fireball was observed directly over several all-sky cameras dedicated to spotting meteors; the November fireball was seen by a huge number of people in cities across the Saskatchewan/Alberta border and last night’s fireball appeared above another dedicated meteor all-sky camera.

A few of these events are expected every year, so this is certainly nothing to be concerned about, we’re just getting better at observing these transient events…

Blogosphere Canadian Fireball Updates

University of Calgary graduate student Ellen Milley poses with a fragment of a meteorite in a small pond near Lloydminster, Sask. (AP)

Although I am still in Las Vegas enjoying the Thanksgiving aftermath, I wanted to give an update of the Canadian fireball that dramatically exploded over the Saskatchewan skies last week.

Having read though some of the updates across the space blogosphere, I thought it would be good to give the event a brief run-down via the pile of space blogs that have been following this surprise explosion and resulting discovery of meteorite fragments near Lloydminster, Saskatchewan…
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