The solution to this problem has been the radioisotope thermal generator.   An RTG is a simple device, consisting of a strong particle-emitting isotope that produces heat and a thermoelectric generator which converts that heat into electricity.   The heat can also be used to keep vital components of the probe warm.  Unlike nuclear reactors, radioisotope thermal generators are extremely simple, have no minimum critical mass, produce little gamma and almost no neutron emissions, which could blind scientific instruments, and therefore require little or no shielding.  Modern RTG’s can provide hundreds of watts of reliable electrical power for years on end in a small, durable package.

The choice of isotope for space missions has always been, and continues to be plutonium-238. Plutonium-238 is a powerful alpha emitter which produces enormous amounts of heat energy.  Plutonium-238 produces only a small amount of low energy gamma emissions, making it easy to shield.  It’s easily prepared into ceramic oxide pellets that are chemically stable and have good thermal transfer.   With an 88 year half-life, plutonium-238 is short lived enough to be a good energy producer yet long lived enough to allow for missions of many decades.

All radioisotope thermal generators used for deep space missions have used plutonium-238.   RTG’s were also used to power the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Packages left by astronauts on the moon.    The RTG used for the Mars Science Laboratory provides 110 watts of electricity and uses about 4.5 kilograms of plutonium-238.  Larger RTG’s have been built for deep space probes, which provide up to 300 watts of power and use 7.8 kilograms of plutonium-238.  Some spacecraft have used multiple RTG’s, for example, Cassini was equipped with three RTG’s which provided a total of 900 watts of power to the spacecraft.

There are other isotopes that can also be used to provide power for RTG’s, but none are as desirable as Pu-238.   Strontium-90, a high energy beta emitter, which can be extracted from spent fuel, also produced significant amounts of heat, but would require substantially more shielding and produces less power per gram of material.  Isotopes of Curium have been studied as well, but also provide much less power and require greater shielding.  Americium-241 has also been considered, but at least four times as much material would be needed to produce the same amount of power, and greater shielding would also be required. Still, Am-241 is regarded as being the second most well suited fuel for RTG use.

Worldwide production of Am-241 is only a few kilograms per year, with US production capacity standing at only 500 to 750 milligrams annually.   Most of this material is already used to fill demand for smoke detectors and moisture gauges.  In order for the US to have a viable chance of using Am-241 as an RTG fuel, production would have to be ramped up significantly.

At one time, plutonium-238 was relatively cheap and easily available.  The United States had large stocks of the material and used it for numerous space missions.  Yet since the early 1990’s, that has not been the case.  Since then, only Russia has had the capacity to produce plutonium-238 and the price has skyrocketed.   US missions have been entirely dependent on plutonium-238 purchased from Russia at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.  Yet now even this limited supply is threatened, as Russia has begun to signal that it will no longer be able to provide the quantities of Pu-238 that the US (or potentially other nations) would require for continued space exploration.

Production of Plutonium-238:

The plutonium that can be extracted from light water spent fuel contains significant amounts of plutonium-238, but it’s combined with other isotopes of plutonium, making it unusable.  Separating out the plutonium-238 would require a complex plutonium enrichment system, which is far less practical than simply preparing the plutonium-238 on its own.

To produce plutonium-238, the first thing that is required is neptunium-237.  Neptunium-237 is produced as a byproduct of the reprocessing of spent fuel.   When a nucleus of uranium-235 absorbs a neutron, it will usually fission.  However, in a thermal spectrum reactor, some of the uranium-235 (about 18%) will absorb a neutron and not fission.  Instead, the uranium-235 becomes uranium-236.  Uranium-236 has a low neutron cross-section, so most of the uranium-236 generated in a reactor will just remain uranium-236, but a small amount of it does absorb a neutron and become uranium-237.  Uranium-237 has a very short half-life of only six days, decaying to neptunium-237.  Another source of neptunium-237 in spent fuel is the alpha decay or americium-241.

Spent fuel contains about .7 grams of np-237 for every one hundred kilograms of fuel.  That might not seem like much, but fuel reprocessing operations routinely go through hundreds of tons of fuel.   Because Np-237 is the only isotope of neptunium present in spent fuel in any significant quantity, it does not require any enrichment.  Instead, simply chemically separating the neptunium out yields nearly 100% neptunium-237.

After removing the neptunium-237, it is fabricated into targets which are irradiated with neutrons in a high flux reactor.   The targets are then removed and processed to separate out the plutonium-238 that is produced.  The plutonium-238 is then fabricated into RTG fuel tablets.

The end of US production:

The United States ended the practice of spent fuel reprocessing in 1977 when it was banned by the Carter Administration because of “proliferation concerns.”  Since then, the ban has been lifted, but as all reprocessing operations were shut down in the 1970’s and little support can be found for restarting the practice, the US still has no capacity to reprocess spent fuel.  After 1977, some material from plutonium production reactors continued, which yielded some neptunium-237, but that also ended in 1992, with the end of the cold war.

Today, the United States reprocesses no fuel at all and therefore cannot produce any neptunium-237.  There may still be some of the material remaining, though it’s doubtful that very much is left.   It should still be possible to obtain Np-237, purchasing it from countries with major spent fuel reprocessing programs, such as Russia, France or Japan.   However, this depends entirely on the willingness of such nations to provide it and may be expensive, since additional steps beyond normal reprocessing are required to produce the highly concentrated neptunium necessary for plutonium-238 production.

Getting enough Np-237, however, is not the biggest problem that the United States faces in producing Pu-238, however.   The US has a shortage of suitable reactors where the neptunium could be irradiated to produce the final plutonium-238 product.  Irradiating the targets requires a reactor with a very high neutron flux and the ability to receive materials for irradiation.  During the Cold War, the United States operated reactors at the Hanford and Savannah River sites primarily for the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons.  These same reactors could be used to irradiate materials for the production of medical and industrial isotopes along with materials like plutonium-238.  Therefore, up until the late 1980’s, the US had ample capacity for plutonium-238 production.   In the early 1990’s, the United States shut down all such reactors over “proliferation concerns.”   Russia, on the other hand, converted theirs to the full time production of peaceful isotopes, which is why they have been the world source for plutonium-238.

There are other reactors in the United States that could potentially produce plutonium-238, but not many of them.   The US has seen an unfortunate reduction in the number of research and irradiation reactors available.  Many, such as the Fast Flux Test Facility were shut down due to “proliferation concerns.”  Others like the High Flux Beam Reactor were closed after celebrities lobbied heavily against them.  Many simply were closed due to age and have not been replaced, given the lack of construction of new research reactors in the US in recent years.

There are only two reactors in operation that might be usable for producing plutonium-238.  One is the High Flux Isotope Reactor at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.  However, the HFIR is already running at near full capacity for basic materials research and producing specialty isotopes.  It’s the only source of the vital isotope Cf-252 in the United States.  It also hosts a recently installed cold neutron source.   Because of this, the HFIR does not have enough available capacity to produce Pu-238.  That leaves one reactor: the Advanced Test Reactor.   The ATR is located at the Idaho National Laboratory.  It’s the only source in the US for production of cobalt-60, an isotope critical to medicine and industry.  It’s also one of only a few reactors that can be used to simulate extended fuel irradiation in a light water reactor, making it critical to fuel studies.  It’s not entirely clear to what extent producing Pu-238 at the Advanced Test Reactor might limit its capacity for other important functions.

The Advanced Test Reactor has been the focus of recent efforts to restart US Pu-238 production.   Several bills and proposals to begin production at the site have been floated, but funding has not been provided.  Most recently, a funding request for the relatively small amount of fifteen million dollars by the DOE was shot down by Congress.  No explanation was given, but it seems no US legislators are interested in restarting plutonoum-238 production, quite possibly because nobody’s spent any money lobbying for it and some have spent money lobbying against it.

Restarting production in the US may prove more difficult than simply finding a suitable reactor.   Producing the final Plutonium-238 tablets used for providing heat to RTG’s requires that the irradiated targets be dissolved, the plutionium-238 processed out and fabricated into the final RTG fuel.   The material is very hot, both in terms of radioactivity and literally.  Handling and processing it requires special facilities such as hot cells and plutonium chemical separation facilities.  The United States has limited capabilities in this area, with most of the facilities capable of fabricating special nuclear materials shut down over “proliferation concerns.”

That said, the US should have enough capacity for processing such materials to make at least a modest Pu-238 production program possible, if only funding is provided and the effort to do so is undertaken.   Ideally, enough would be made to allow for its use on spacecraft without extreme conservation measures taken, but that seems to be politically unlikely due to “proliferation concerns.”

In the end, we are left with a few options for the US space program, not all of them very appealing:

1. Restart domestic production of plutonium-238
2. Continue to rely on the limited Russian capacity to produce the material and hope they do not cut production or sales, as they seem to be indicating will happen.  Perhaps this could be avoided by paying an even more exorbitant amount to Russia for the material.  Continue with only limited deep space flights due to this limited source.
3. Hope that some other country steps up to the plate and starts making plutonium-238.  There’s a good chance that a country like China might start domestic production in the coming years, as they become more ambitious in their space program.  Whether they’ll share with the US is another issue.
4. Rely on another isotope that will result in less energy per kilogram, require greater shielding and therefore dramatically reduce spacecraft capabilities and increase launch expense.
5. Rely exclusively on solar power for space exploration.  Space exploration will therefore be limited to the inner solar system, out to about the orbit of mars and a little bit further, even out to Jupiter, although this will require very large solar arrays and will be restricted in capability due to very limited power capacities.   Beyond Jupiter, exploration by space probes will be impossible and will have to cease entirely.  And while exploration of the inner solar system will still be possible, landers that require significant amounts of continuous power will not be possible, thus making the Mars Science Laboratory the last of its kind.

Personally, I vote for choice 1.

If that sounds stupid, you have not heard anything yet.

The multi-billion dollar Apollo Program brought back about 382 kilograms of lunar material (rock and soil samples).   Soviet unamanned sample-return missions brought back less than a third of a kilogram of material. There are also lunar meteorites, which are composed of material blasted off the moons surface by impact events, which eventually made their way to earth.  Although these meteorite samples do have scientific value, they events that brought them to earth combined with contamination and weathering means they do not have the same value as rocks collected on the actual surface of the moon.

The scientific value of moon rocks is enormous.  Analysis can help determine the composition of the moon, the age of the moon, the formation of the earth-moon system, the composition of the solar system and the levels and types of particles emitted by the sun.   The study of moon rocks is also critical to determining how future lunar missions might be carried out and to what extent the moon might be able to provide some of the resources necessary for such missions.  Analysis of moon rocks resulted in the giant impact hypothesis becoming the most accepted scenario for the formation of the moon.

While the material brought back from the moon has been subject to analysis and experimentation for more than forty years, there’s still much to learn.   Since the samples and the areas they were gathered from is relatively limited, many of the rocks are very unique in composition.   For example, the “Genesis Rock,” which was recovered during Apollo-15 appears to be the oldest rock of its type ever recovered.  At more than 4.5 billion years old, the rock dates to the very early days of the solar system.  It is possible that other samples may contain tiny fragments of the moon’s primordial crust, which would be even older.

It’s also possible that we won’t ever know if any of the samples do, because it seems NASA has lost track of at least a portion of the lunar samples in its custody.   Despite being the most prized samples ever collected, the samples have not been guarded as well as one might think.   A few of the rocks and fragments were given away as “goodwill rocks” to foreign heads of state.  Others were given to astronauts or other dignitaries as mementos, although NASA states that they still own the actual rocks and just lent them out.  Some went to museums and other public displays.  A few are though to have been stolen or were sold without authorization.   All in all, NASA only has about 295 kilograms of the samples left in its own custody.

A new report, however, indicates that the problem of missing moon rocks may be even worse than thought.   As one might expect, NASA has routinely allowed the samples to be sent out for analysis and study by third parties.   One might expect that this would also include some very well maintained documentation and security.  After all, the library seems to know when a book is overdue and moon rocks are a lot harder to replace than a missing book.   Unfortunately that would not appear to be the case.

Via Space.com

NASA Has Lost Hundreds of Its Moon Rocks, New Report Says

NASA has lost or misplaced more than 500 of the moon rocks its Apollo astronauts collected and brought back to Earth, according to a new agency report.

In an audit released Thursday (Dec. 8), NASA’s Office of Inspector General states that the agency “lacks sufficient controls over its loans of moon rocks and other astromaterials, which increases the risk that these unique resources may be lost.”

The report stresses the importance of maintaining stricter guidelines for the release of lunar materials to researchers, and more meticulous inventory procedures for their storage and return.

“NASA has been experiencing loss of astromaterials since lunar samples were first returned by Apollo missions,” inspector general Paul K. Martin detailed in the report. “In addition to the Mount Cuba disk, NASA confirmed that 516 other loaned astromaterials have been lost or stolen between 1970 and June 2010, including 18 lunar samples reported lost by a researcher in 2010 and 218 lunar and meteorite samples stolen from a researcher at [NASA's Johnson Space Center] in 2002, but since recovered.”

….

Martin’s office audited 59 researchers who had received samples from NASA, and found that 11 of them, or 19 percent, could not locate all of the borrowed materials.

The report also found that the Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office at the Johnson Space Center in Houston had records of hundreds of samples that no longer exist, and loans to 12 researchers who had died, retired or relocated, sometimes without the office’s knowledge and without returning the samples.

“According to the Office of Inspector General, out of the 26,000 samples NASA has on loan, it has lost just 517,” Pearlman told SPACE.com. “That’s not to excuse the space agency and its curators, but with so many samples spread across the globe, some losses are probably to be expected.”

Still, the misplaced moon samples are truly regrettable, he added, and could be an indication of a broader issue within the public psyche.

“Maybe it is a sign of the times that some scientific researchers and educational organizations that were loaned samples and then lost them would no longer recognize the rarity and historical significance of the lunar material,” Pearlman said. “It seems that the moon, or at least its exploration by humans, has lost some of its shine over the past four decades.”

Regardless of how long it has been since man walked on the moon, it would seem we are not going to be headed back there for at least a few years and probably quite a lot more, so these samples are not easily replaced!  Not only that, but allowing such loose control of these samples really does not help the public perception of NASA’s competence.   Furthermore, if they don’t even know what is going on with these samples, how can they possibly know if some have been contaminated or even replaced with some other material?

I would not imagine that most people would treat a multi-million dollar gemstone with such carelessness.   Anyone in their right mind would keep close tabs on it and, at the very least, store it in a safe when not being used or displayed.   At the very least, NASA should regularly check with researchers who borrowed lunar material to make sure it’s secure, and also to see if they still need it.   It seems some just about forgot that they had the stuff.  If they are no longer actively using it for research, it needs to be returned so it can be used by others or stored properly.   Whoever the 11 are who misplaced it, they shouldn’t be getting any other NASA samples any time soon, or at least not until they figure out what happened to their lunar samples.

I am also perplexed by how the death of researchers could end up compromising the samples.  Samples of this type should never be handed over to the custody of a single person.  The loans should be made directly to the research institutions and they should be kept on sight in common areas, not in some scientist’s night table or glove compartment.

This really is a big problem and it needs to be addressed, not only because of what it means for the study of lunar material but also other materials NASA may lend out for study.  NASA has conducted sample return missions of comets and of the solar winds and is planning on someday gathering samples from the surface of mars and beyond.  It also has numerous materials that were grown in microgravity, exposed to conditions in space or created by elaborate processes.  Allowing other research institutions access to these materials is important, but accountability is critical.

The Russian Phobos-Grunt mission was to be the first sample-return mission to the mars system.   The probe was not intended to land on mars.  Instead, it would include a lander bound for the martian moon Phobos and an orbiter.   The lander would include a series of scientific experiments along with a soil-collection system, capable of recovering 200 grams of material for return to earth.   Taking soil from Phobos is a bit easier than from mars, since the moon has less gravity and thus lifting off for the return to earth would be much easier. While Phobos may not be mars, it would still be an amazing achievement to bring back material from the vicinity of mars and a step toward conducting sample return missions on other moons in the solar system and eventually on mars itself.

Although Russian-lead, the probe was an international effort.  It carried an independent mars orbiter, Yinghuo-1 from the Chinese Space Agency.  It was to be the first Chinese interplanetary spacecraft.   It also carried a privately-funded experiment by the Planetary Society, which was aimed at proving whether bacteria could survive the trip between planets.  The European Space Agency also contributed to the program and provided assistance in the telemetry and ground-segment of the mission.

The probe lifted off successfully on November 9 and entered “parking orbit” around the earth.  From there it was supposed to preform systems tests and then fire a rocket engine to send it out of earth orbit and onto mars.  Unfortunately, for reasons unknown, the probe did not respond to commands.   Initially it sent back a series of weak signals which appeared to show it had entered safe mode, indicating some kind of systems failure or disrupting event.   Attempts by Russian controllers to send commands to the spacecraft failed to elicit a response and only a few weak signals were detected by ground receivers.

Additional efforts by Russian and European agencies to reestablish communications with the spacecraft have now officially ended.  Last week, ground stations in Australia did manage to pick up a weak signal from the spacecraft, but since then it has been completely silent.   It may be some sort of power systems problem which has resulted in the probe failing to obtain the necessary electricity to run systems from the solar panels, leaving it only the remaining energy in on board batteries.   Right now, it’s not certain what caused the mission to be lost.

The probe will likely return to earth some time in the next few months, as its orbit degrades.   Some concern has been expressed about the toxic hydrazine propellant onboard, but that’s unlikely to reach the ground.  In all likelihood, the tanks of the spacecraft will be breached up and the hydrazine burned up before it gets anywhere near the surface of earth.

The Soviet and now Russian space program has a long history of successful unmanned planetary probes, including some very impressive missions to Venus as well as lunar probes and missions to comets.  Yet it has suffered some extremely bad luck when it comes to mars.  Of the nineteen Russian missions to mars, dating back to 1960, not a single one has been entirely successful, with many exploding on launch or failing to successfully reach martian orbit.

There’s something a little ironic about the Soviet Union never being able to get to the red planet.

This is truly one of the most exciting unmanned space missions in a long time, and perhaps the most exciting to visit mars since exploration of the planet’s surface began in 1978 with Viking 1.   The probe is a rover, somewhat similar in design to the rovers Spirit and Opportunity which proved to be astoundingly long-lived and robust machines.

It’s build on the success of the previous rover missions, but is far more bold and ambitious.  The rover will be physically much larger than the previous rovers and will have considerably greater scientific instrumentation and on board computing power.   The rover will carry extensive analytical instruments.  Like previous rovers it will have an alpha-particle x-ray spectrometer, but will also have a laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy system, along with a host of other scientific instruments for analyzing soil and rock, examining samples and detecting environmental variables like particle radiation, temperature, pressure and light levels.   The rover will have the best camera systems yet taken to mars and will be able to take full motion video, even capturing ten frames per second of high definition video.   With two gigabytes of radiation-hardened storage it will be able to cache thousands of pictures and volumes of scientific data for transmission back to earth.

What makes this all possible and what makes the MSL so much more capable than previous rovers is the source of power.   Spirit and Opportunity were designed to be solar powered.  As we all know, solar cells don’t provide a huge amount of energy on earth, but on mars it’s even less.  Under ideal conditions, the Exploration Rovers could gather .6 kilowatt hours of energy each day from their solar panels.   However, conditions were rarely so good and dust on the panels made the amount of energy the panels provided in a day even less.  This is a severely limiting factor, forcing the rovers to spend considerably more time sitting idle and charging their batteries and making it a necessity that energy be used as frugally as possible.

The Mars Science Laboratory has its own nuclear power source, providing vastly more power, day or night.   It’s not a reactor but a radio thermal generator, powered by the decay of plutonium-238.  The power source will deliver a constant supply of more than 100 watts to the spacecraft.  By mars probe standards, that’s a real lot, especially because it’s continuous.  With a half life of 88 years, it’s likely that the mission will end due to equipment failure before any noticeable reduction in power output occurs as a result of the decay of the plutonium-238 heat source.

Getting enough plutonium-238 to power future missions could be a problem due to lack of capacity to produce it in the US and tightening supplies from Russian producers, but that’s another story.

Despite the astounding science that is provided by interplanetary missions, the use of anything “nuclear” for any purpose is sure to draw some protests.   (Don’t even get me started on how stupid it is to complain about polluting outer space with radiation)  Some of the opponents claim that the material is so dangerous it could cause catastrophe if the rocket exploded or the probe crashed back to earth.  Of course, both because of the design of the RTG and the material used, dispersal is unlikely even in that event, and the worst case would result in only minimal exposure to anyone.  Still, some have tried to stop the launch or at least protest it.

But not many seem to really be buying into it anymore.  In fact, the protests have dwindled down to almost nothing…

Via Florida Today:

Plutonium protests can’t draw a crowd
Don’t expect protesters to turn out in force over the potential safety risks from Saturday’s planned launch of the plutonium-powered Mars rover Curiosity from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Citing everything from apathy to holiday and shopping distractions, those known for staging protests during past launches of plutonium-fueled probes from the Cape and Kennedy Space Center will be no-shows this time around.

An Atlas V rocket carrying the rover and its 10.6 pounds of plutonium-238 is scheduled to launch at 10:02 a.m. Saturday.

“It’s not that we’re not concerned, but folks are so worried about the economy right now it’s hard to drum up support over something that ‘might’ happen,” said Maria Telesca-Whipple, a Rockledge resident who is an organizer with the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space.

…

Past NASA launches of plutonium-fueled probes, such as New Horizons in 2006, Cassini in 1997, Ulysses in 1990 and Galileo in 1989, have drawn protesters to the Space Coast. All launched without any release of radiation.

But efforts to rally protesters to show up for Saturday’s launch have proved futile, organizers said.

Pax Christi Tampa scheduled a rally two weeks ago at a busy intersection, and “no one showed up,” said John Stewart, who spearheaded the event and has been pushing an opposition movement in Florida since the summer. He’s sent out more than 400 newsletters, handed out flyers on the street and been on radio to warn Floridians. But, thus far, he admits he’s received no feedback.

“Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space.” Wow. I guess they spend most of their time protesting the sun. Dare I suggest that maybe it’s not simply other concerns distracting the public,m but maybe people are actually wising up? Or perhaps the public is impressed by the images and information brought back by space probes and is realizing that these are great achievements of science that should be supported. (I can dream, right?)

I am a little concerned, however.   Excited as this mission makes me, it also leaves me a little worried.   The probe has a long and treacherous trip to mars and must survive a very rough landing.  Despite all the engineering that has gone into it, probes have failed many times and this mission is certainly not a sure thing.   It’s a lot of money and a huge capability being placed on one probe, so I’m sure I’m not the only one holding my breath for it to succeed.   Hopefully this August I’ll be letting out a huge sigh of relief and seeing some amazing pictures get beamed back.

Unfortunately, it has also already attracted the attention of some nutters who seem to think that an “X” seen on the planet means some kind of intelligent life has already been on Mercury.

Via News.com.au

X on Mercury’ – the new ‘Face on Mars’?

AFTER six-and-a-half years and $450m, NASA’s Messenger probe has paid its way.

Sent to become the first craft to orbit Mercury – from Earth, anyway – Messenger’s successful rendezvous briefly reignited interest in the Sun’s nearest neighbour.

Since March 30, it has sent back thousands of images from the surface, but apart from the novelty factor of the first few, most since have only been of interest to the kinds of people who waited six-and-a-half years for them.

So we’ve seen lots of craters and erosion, but then again, what did we expect from an environment exposed to temperatures that range from between 485C to -184C? Signs of life?

What that means is outside the field of view are two impact sites. The criss-crossing lines are made up of mounds of “ejecta” thrown up by whatever struck the planet.

So in reality, it’s all just a coincidence, albeit a fascinating one.

Or is it?

No. it is just a coincidence.

First, notice a few things about the X:

It’s not a perfect cross. It does not intersect at perfect right angles and it’s not symmetrical. The upper line of craters actually fades out and the bottom line is crossed by yet another line of craters that does not have any obvious geometric relation to the other parts of the lines of craters.   It’s also not exactly centered in the larger crater.

So what we have is an entire planet (which is a pretty big place) which is covered in craters and which just happens to have at least one place where two lines of craters intersect at nearly right angles in the approximate center of a larger crater.

Having craters in a line is not itself unusual at all.   The term is crater chain.  This happens when a single body breaks apart due a single asteroid breaking apart due to tidal forces of when a large impact ejects material that then causes smaller secondary impacts.

Earth’s moon is another familiar celestial body with many craters.  Like Mercury, the moon does not have a dense atmosphere or other forces to erase the millions of years of impacts.   The craters of the moon have been well mapped, and the moon has many many similar crater chains.  Shown to the right is a photograph taken by the Apollo-12 astronauts.  It shows a similar crater chain.

Crater chains like this have been observed on numerous other planets and even on the earth.

The MESSENGER probe has also photographed an apparent smiley-face crater and this image which is said to look like a Fraggle (a Muppets character).

Perhaps my mind is just in the gutter, but I see boobs.

That said, there is something that really irritates me about this entire thing.   The “Mysterious X” has gotten a lot more press than it should and is being talked about endlessly on UFO forums and boards.   With all this obsession over a couple of intersecting crater chains, something important has been lost:  Mercury has always been a fairly difficult planet to observe and study because of its orbit and proximity to the sun.   The only probe to do a close flyby of Mercury was Mariner 10, which only managed to image less than half of the planet and took only a few brief scientific measurements.  MESSENGER is the first spacecraft to orbit the planet and that in itself is an achievement.  We are now receiving the best images and scientific data about the planet we have ever had.

Via Yahoo News (includes video clip of Daily Show Interview)

New book says USSR was behind Roswell UFO
By Claudine Zap

Is truth stranger than conspiracy-theory fiction? A new book on Area 51 that’s already generating a ton of buzz says there was no alien spacecraft that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. Instead, Stalin did it–maybe.

According to Annie Jacobsen, the reporter who authored “Area 51,” the spaceship was actually a Soviet spy plane that came down during a storm. Jacobsen claims it was filled with bizarre-looking, genetically engineered child-sized pilots. Then-Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was hoping, Jacobsen alleges, that the news would cause widespread panic in the U.S.

The story gets even stranger: The leader of the USSR had apparently been inspired by the 1938 radio adaptation of the HG Wells story “War of the Worlds,” produced by Orson Welles. The broadcast triggered panic in some listeners who tuned in and mistook it for a real-life alien invasion. (Though later students of the episode claim that the media of Welles’ day vastly exaggerated the scale of public alarm over the broadcast.)

And those ET-looking aviators? They were scientific experiments created by the “Angel of Death,” Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, for the USSR after the war. The flight was piloted remotely, according to accounts in the book, and was filled with a crew of “alien-like children.”

According to Jacobsen’s source, a retired engineer who was put on the project in 1978, the look of the human experiments could explain the alien conspiracy theories: “They were grotesquely deformed, but each in the same manner as the others. They had unusually large heads and abnormally shaped oversize eyes.”

Is any of this true? There’s no way to prove it. Documents surrounding the Roswell incident are still classified–as is virtually all information related to the mystery spot.

Still, lack of proof hasn’t exactly stopped the book from sparking speculation on the media circuit and on the Web. In the last day, Yahoo! searches skyrocketed 3,000 percent for “area 51 book.” And the tome is penned not by a crackpot conspirator, but a respected journalist.

Even the New York Times gives her credence, writing in its review: “Although this connect-the-dots UFO thesis is only a hasty-sounding addendum to an otherwise straightforward investigative book about aviation and military history, it makes an indelible impression. ‘Area 51′ is liable to become best known for sci-fi provocation.”

The claim is a bit convoluted and difficult to really take apart. Apparently it’s claimed that an aircraft of Soviet origin, which was either based on German technology or captured directly from the Germans crashed in Roswell, either accidentally or intentionally, for the purpose of creating a panic. This aircraft was either a spy plane or simply designed to create a panic or do both. It carried some kind of freaky children, either as pilots or just to scare people because they looked freaky.

Problems with this whole story:

• The Soviet Union was not flying spy planes over the US in 1947.   Indeed, the Soviet Union never had a high altitude reconnaissance program to the extent that the US had, but in 1947 they certainly did not have the ability to mount spy flights over the US.   Piston-engined aircraft would never have been sitting ducks for aerial defenses of the day and would have been easily detectable and limited in altitude.   Jet powered aircraft would have been able to attain higher altitudes and speeds, potentially making them more survivable (although jets in 1947 were still not capable of the speeds or altitudes necessary to evade ground-based air defenses or interceptor aircraft), but the jet engines of 1947 were gas-guzzlers, making it unlikely that a jet aircraft could have made it to the continental United States from the Soviet Union.  In-flight refueling was still experimental and the Soviets lacked friendly territory significantly closer to the US to base aircraft.
• Remote-control of an aircraft over the continental United States from the Soviet Union would have been effectively impossible in 1947.  The curvature of the earth prevents VHF or UHF radio signals from reaching the aircraft and communications satellites, which are used to pilot modern drones, did not exist.   The only radio communications that could reach over the horizon would have been in the HF region.   HF radio would have been a very poor choice for remote control of an aircraft.  It lacks the bandwidth to transmit much data and is prone to noise and distortion.   It would be difficult to transmit instrument data and commands and impossible to transmit television pictures.
• If a spy plane were to be sent to the United States, it would have carried a payload consisting of survey cameras and possibly equipment like radio receivers, tape recorders and radar systems.  It would certainly not have genetically modified humans sitting in it, especially if it were remotely controlled, in which case there’s no point in having any crew at all.
• In 1947, genetic engineering as we know it simply did not exist.   At the time, not even the basic structure of DNA had yet been established.  The only methods available for modifying organisms were basic breeding techniques.   It would have been impossible to create a genetically modified organism as complex as a mammal, much less one that was fully viable and capable of functioning at a high enough level to fly an airplane.
• Joseph Mengele’s experiments were hideous, inhumane and also generally unsuccessful.  There’s no evidence that Mengele ever managed to produce any kind of amazing breakthrough in genetics.   Most of his experiments were very crude.
• Mengele’s experiments were carried out primarily at Auchwitz, which was captured by the Soviet Union in early 1945.  By July 1947, barely two years had passed.  Thus, even if the Soviet Union began using his work to create modified humans immediately upon capturing the information, there would not be enough time.   With a nine month gestation period, they could not have produced even children by the time of the Roswell Incident – they would still be infants.   The brunt of Mengele’s experiments began in 1943, so even if he had previously begun a crash program to genetically modify humans, by 1947 the oldest would be toddlers.
• You don’t trust children, certainly not toddlers, even the regular, non-deformed kind with a secret spy plane.   Even if the plane was remote controlled, it would still be risky.   For one thing, you don’t know what information they might divulge should they survive the crash.  Young children are unpredictable.
• If the incident really were caused by a secret Soviet aircraft carrying hideously deformed genetically modified children, there’s no reason to believe the US would have kept it secret.  The Cold War was as much about propaganda and making the other side look bad as it was about secrecy.  When the Soviet Union shot down a US spy plane in 1960, the incident was immediately made public, with the Soviets claiming the US was illegally invading their territorial airspace and conducting spying operations.   If the claims of the Roswell incident were true, there are few things that would be a better PR event for the US, to show the horrific extent of Soviet human experiments and prove they were actively spying on the US.
• The idea that the plane was intentionally crashed to create panic is absolutely absurd on numerous levels.   First, the 1938 War Of the Worlds broadcast didn’t actually cause a national panic, just a few minor incidents.  Secondly, if you actually did crash a plane containing deformed children, presumably that would be figured out pretty quickly once it was analyzed by authorities.  Even if some people did believe it was extra-terrestrial, the fact that it crashed does not, in and of itself, imply that you are being attacked by aliens and therefore would likely cause interest but not panic.  Finally, if this were the aim, you would want to crash it somewhere other than the remote desert.

This whole story is wacky on so many levels it’s amazing it got any media attention at all… but it did.

Via Popular Science:

Former Apollo Astronaut and Senator Says Mining Helium on the Moon Could Solve The Global Energy Crisis

Former astronaut, Apollo moonwalker, geologist and former Senator Harrison Schmitt has a modest plan to solve the world’s energy problems. All we need is $15 billion over 15 years and some fusion reactors that have yet to be invented. And we’ll need a moon base.

Schmitt’s idea isn’t novel–he thinks the U.S. should go back to the moon, this time to mine the surface for helium-3, an isotope of helium that is rare on earth but relatively bountiful on the moon. The Russians have been talking about mining helium-3 from the moon for years, but they’ve never put forth a viable plan. Schmitt thinks his, all things considered, is pretty realistic.

So how does Schmitt’s plan break down? We’ll need $5 billion for a helium-3 fusion demonstration plant, because as of right now no such thing exists. We’ll also need to invest $5 billion more in a heavy-lift rocket capable of launching regular moon missions, something akin to the Apollo-era Saturn V.

A moon base for mining the stuff would cost another $2.5 billion, and though Schmitt didn’t really specify in his recent presentation to a petroleum conference, the other $2.5 billion could easily be chalked up to operating costs in an endeavor of this magnitude.

But it could pay for itself while developing critical spaceflight technologies and enabling a mission to Mars. Schmitt says a two-square-kilometer swath of lunar surface mined to a depth of roughly 10 feet would yield about 220 pounds of helium-3. That’s enough to run a 1,000-megawatt reactor for a year, or $140 million in energy based on today’s coal prices. Scale that up to several reactors, and you’ve got a moneymaking operation.

Why go to all this trouble? Helium-3 is abundant on the moon and produces little to no radioactive waste that must be cleaned up and stored. The reaction necessary would burn at a much hotter temperature than other fusion reactions, but the chance of environmental disaster via radioactive spill is virtually nil. Plus we would establish a permanent presence on the moon.

Throw in another $5 billion, and we might even be able to populate said moon base with a clone work force and some soothing, Kevin Spacey-esque AI.

Did anyone miss the part about the fusion reactors that HAVE YET TO BE INVENTED? Aside from that, a number of the contentions made are just plain wrong: Helium-3 fusion does not produce zero radioactive waste, it’s not that abundant on the moon and you would not just need a Saturn-V sized rocket, but thousands of them.

Now four reasons why this whole idea is stupid

#1.  We have no way to use helium-3 fusion or fusion of any elements to produce usable energy.

Let me repeat this because it is by far the most important deal breaker on this whole issue:  nuclear fusion for the purpose of energy generation does not exist.   The only way we can produce fusion energy that is greater than the energy necessary to initiate and contain the fusion is with an H-bomb.  Fusion can also be produced in the laboratory, but it always uses more energy than it produces.   Also, producing more than a relatively small amount of nuclear fusion requires extremely complex and costly equipment.

Since fusion reactions do produce energy, it is possible, at least in theory, that fusion could be used as an energy source IF the technical challenges could be overcome.   To this end, a great deal of research is being conducted just as it has been for decades.

Will fusion power ever become a reality?   Maybe.   Then again, maybe not.   It’s possible that tomorrow a researcher will stumble across a novel way of producing nuclear fusion cheaply and simply while generating huge amounts of energy.   I wouldn’t bank on it though.

There are several methods of producing fusion which are being investigated as potential energy sources.  The one that has received the most effort is magnetic confinement fusion using the tokomak design.   Some tokomaks have approached “break even” energy balances for short periods of time.  An ambitious project is currently under way known as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. It is expected to begin operation in 2018 with the ambitious goal of producing more energy than is consumer for periods of several minutes.

Of course, a project like ITER is not going to represent any kind of major power source. In order for that to happen, fusion power systems will need to operate reliably for extended periods of time. Not only that, but they will need to be economical enough to be built by the hundreds or thousands. If the current path of fusion research is followed, we have no chance of seeing effective fusion power generation for at least many decades, if ever.

#2.  It offers few, if any, advantages over other potential fuels

Most fusion research has focused on deuterium and/or tritium (heavy isotopes of hydrogen) as fuel for generating fusion.   The lowest energy (and thus easiest) fusion reaction to produce uses deuterium fusing with tritium.  Deuterium on deuterium fusion is another option, which requires slightly more energy and higher temperatures.  Other research has considered the use of boron as a fusion fuel.

Deuterium is found in abundance in all water on earth.   Tritium is not found in nature but can be produced by the neutron bombardment of lithium.   Boron is also easily obtained.

The only advantage of using helium-3 as fuel (if you can call it that), rather than deuterium and tritium is that it does not produce neutrons when it is used in combination with deuterium.   In practice any fusion reactor powered by helium-3 and deuterium will produce some neutrons because deuterium atoms will also fuse with other deuterium atoms.  So to be more accurate, a helium-3 fusion reactor would produce less neutron radiation than one fueled by deuterium alone or deuterium and tritium.

The reason that this is sometimes considered to be an advantage is that neutron irradiation tends to leave materials radioactive and degrades most materials that would be used to construct a reactor.  Consequently, the housing of a fusion reactor would have to be replaced periodically after a certain number of years.  The old housing would be slightly radioactive and considered low-level or medium-level waste.   For those who consider all radioactive material evil this is a big problem.

However, the lack of neutron production can also be a disadvantage.   The neutrons produced by a fusion reactor could be used to generate more fuel in the form of tritium by surrounding the fusion reactor with lithium.  They also provide a way of harvesting energy from the reaction.

So a helium-3 based reactor would generate a bit less low-level waste and might need to have the housing replaced somewhat less frequently but would also not be capable of breeding more fuel.

Oh, and did I mention this is all speculation since none of these exist anyway?

#3.  Getting helium-3 from the moon is absurdly difficult

Getting to the moon is difficult.  To do so you need a big rocket and generally, you can only use that rocket once.   Because of this, any craft that goes to the moon will necessarily cost hundreds of millions of dollars to send there.  Getting something back from the moon is even harder, because it requires that a spacecraft be sent to the moon with the capability of launching itself back into space and returning to earth.   That means the spacecraft is going to have to be fairly large and heavy and thus necessitate an even larger rocket.

The Apollo Program used the Saturn-V to launch a manned capsule to the moon.   This is the largest rocket ever built and each one was only good for sending a single mission and a single lander to the moons surface.  Each Apollo Lunar Module could only carry a maximum payload of a few hundred kilograms.   Perhaps if the craft were unmanned and thus did not need to have life support systems or a crew on board, more could be brought back.   None the less, it would still require a massive expenditure and enormous rocket power to get even a ton of material back from the moon.

But there’s another problem.  Helium-3 is not just sitting in a compressed gas tank on the moon, waiting to be taken back.   It’s embedded in the rocks and soil on the surface of the moon.  The actual amount of helium-3 in a given quality of rock is miniscule, so bringing the rock back to earth to process out the He-3 is not an option.   Instead, huge volumes of rock and soil would need to be collected on the moon and brought to some kind of moon-based extraction facility.   This would be an enormous mining operation, requiring many robotic excavators and movers and a large system to extract the helium-3.  Not only that, but it would need to be powered somehow, requiring its own nuclear reactors or massive solar power systems.  Presumably each piece of equipment would require its own massive rocket to reach the moon.

Once the moon rock is collected, it would have to be pulverized and heated to outgas the helium from the rock.   Unfortunately, doing this will not result in only helium being collected.  Rather the moon rock will produce a mixture of nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor and other gases from which the helium must be chemically separated.   This would not be a huge difficulty, since helium is an inert gas, but it is being done on the moon, so all the equipment, once again, has to be launched on massive rockets.

But there’s yet another huge problem.  The helium which is extracted from lunar material contains at least 30 times more helium-4 (regular helium) than it does helium-3.  Helium-4 is nowhere near valuable enough to make it worth going to the moon to get.   This leaves two choices:  Either bring back the extracted helium and accept the fact that more than 95% of the payload is going to be wasted on helium-4 or separate the helium-3 from the helium-4 on the moon.

Isotopic separation is one of the most complex and energy intensive industrial processes in existence.  It requires massive cascades of centrifuges or gaseous diffusion membranes where gas is pumped at high pressure and isotopic concentrations are increased slightly in a process that must be repeated hundreds or thousands of times.   The mass difference between helium-3 and helium-4 and the fact that it’s already a gas would make the process slightly simpler than enriching something like uranium, but it would still require that a huge and complex operation be mounted on the moon! Yes, we’re talking about an enormous industrial facility, typically requiring at least hundreds of workers, hundreds of tons of specialized equipment and many megawatts of power on the moon.

#4 You don’t actually have to go to the moon to get helium-3

Assuming we ever develop a viable fusion reactor (which we may never do, but then again, we might in the distant future) and if we decide to run that reactor on helium-3, then we don’t actually have to build an enormous mining/extraction/enrichment establishment on the moon.   There is another way to get helium-3, and it’s where all the helium-3 used for experimental fusion, cryonics and other processes come from.

Helium-3 is the decay product of tritium.  Tritium is relatively easy to produce by the neutron bombardment of lithium targets either in a nuclear fission reactor, or, if ever fusion power reactors became available, in such a fusion reactor.  Tritium decays with a half-life of 12.3 years, so every kilogram of tritium synthesized will produce a half a kilogram of helium-3 in about 12 years.   Most of the helium-3 currently available was recovered from the tritium capsules in nuclear weapons.   As long as there is at least a few years leadtime, simply upping the production of tritium will allow for helium-3 to be collected.

It has been pointed out that producing helium-3 this way would require significantly greater tritium production than has been realized before.  Even during the height of the Cold War, the US and Soviet Union only produced a couple of kilograms a year of tritium for the purposes of nuclear weapon boosting.   If tritium-derived helium-3 were to power society, it many tons would need to be produced each year.

Still, compared to building an isotope-enriching facility on the moon, it sure seems a lot easier.

But it kept on going. It continued to work for months and then years. Along the way there were some glitches. Drilling tools became dull and a wheel eventually got stuck. The rover covered nearly eight kilometers and sent back volumes of scientific data. It observed martian dust devils and other meteorological phenomena and took readings during all periods of the martian year.

In late 2009, the rover became stuck in soft ground in a crater it had been exploring. Having suffered a motor failure and problems with bearings, the rover was unable to get free, but continued to observe and report scientific data to earth.

Finally in March 2010, the rover began to shut down due to lack of sufficient solar power. This was expected and NASA had hoped that communications might be reestablished when longer martian days once again brought power levels high enough to bring the rover out of sleep mode. That was a year ago, and since then NASA has continue to listen for the signals of the rover and send commands in the hope it would respond. It has not.

And so after six years on the Red Planet and five years of functioning, NASA has declared that Spirit is dead and attempts to reestablish communication will be terminated.

It had to happen eventually, and all in all we should not be sad for this loss, but amazed by the amazing longevity and utility of the little rover. While the hardware may be dead, the mission is far from over, as scientists will be analyzing the data returned for years to come.

Spirit’s twin, Opportunity, however, is still alive, although it too has suffered a few problems.

A little off topic, but it’s amazing to hear how often the rover is talked about in human terms.  It’s often called a “tough little guy” or stated that it “had a lot of spirit” or referred to as “he.”    There has always been a tendency to attach human qualities to inanimate objects, but none more so than these kind of robotic devices.   Perhaps it’s because it is kinetic and travels around, moving a sampling arm and rotating cameras.   Perhaps it is because the stereoscopic cameras remind us of eyes.

Of course, it really doesn’t have a personality.   It may respond to the enviornment, navigating around a rock or something, but that’s only because some logic gates are wired to respond to a signal and make it do that.   There’s no thought involved and, for energy efficiency reasons, the software that controls the rover is very simple and runs on extremely low power computer circuitry.   So it’s not really “dead” because it never was alive.

But I’m still a little sad to see it end.

Via Reuters:

Strange life signs found on meteorites-NASA scientist

WASHINGTON, March 6 (Reuters) – A NASA scientist reports detecting tiny fossilized bacteria on three meteorites, and maintains these microscopic life forms are not native to Earth.

If confirmed, this research would suggest life in the universe is widespread and life on Earth may have come from elsewhere in the solar system, riding to our planet on space rocks like comets, moons and other astral bodies.

The study, published online late Friday in The Journal of Cosmology, is considered so controversial it is accompanied by a statement from the journal’s editor seeking other scientific comment, which is to be published starting on Monday.

The central claim of the study by astrobiologist Richard Hoover is that there is evidence of microfossils similar to cyanobacteria — blue-green algae, also known as pond scum — on the freshly fractured inner surfaces of three meteorites.

These microscopic structures had lots of carbon, a marker for Earth-type life, and almost no nitrogen, Hoover said in a telephone interview on Sunday.

Nitrogen can also be a sign of Earthly life, but the lack of it only means that whatever nitrogen was in these structures has decomposed out into a gaseous form long ago, Hoover said.

“We have known for a long time that there were very interesting biomarkers in carbonaceous meteorites and the detection of structures that are very similar … to known terrestrial cyanobacteria is interesting in that it indicates that life is not restricted to the planet Earth,” Hoover said.

Hoover, based at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, has specialized in the study of microscopic lifeforms that survive extreme environments such as glaciers, permafrost and geysers.

He is not the first to claim discovery of microscopic life from other worlds.

To begin with, the way this is being reported, with the name of NASA being thrown around, makes it sound like the US’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration is fully behind this claim. They’re not. There’s no official involvement of NASA in this story other than the fact that the guys who has come out in support of these findings is employed by NASA. That does not, of course, mean that he represents the consensus of NASA scientists.

In fact what we have here is a lot less than it might seem. The report makes some rather large logical leaps over the fact that a meteor was found to contain small tube-like structures that look something like earth bacteria, although they’re a bit smaller than typical bacteria and don’t actually have enough distinct features to be conclusively ruled to be biological in origin. The meteorite also was found to contain carbon, which itself is not unusual as it is a fairly common element.

The source of the report is hardly as reputable as one might expect given the attention it’s gotten. The Journal of Cosmology really isn’t a scientific journal at all. It doesn’t exist in print and has a website that might have passed for acceptable in 1995. You can also look at some of the other articles published in this outlet to get a feeling for the level of scientific credibility we’re dealing with.

For more information on this topic I’d recommend reading a blog post made by PZ Meyers.

As PZ Describes it:

the ginned-up website of a small group of crank academics obsessed with the idea of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe that life originated in outer space and simply rained down on Earth.”

In the end one really can’t rule out the possibility that these structures could perhaps be biological in origin, but at the same time there’s little evidence that they are biological. Thus, Occums Razor would tend to favor dismissing that hypothesis.

To my (admittedly amateur) eye, the images look a lot more like mineral filaments that might result from heating or some other non-biological process than they do bacteria.

Of course, there was no Apollo-20. There would have been, but the program was cut short early on to include only missions up to Apollo-19.   Then, further cuts resulted in Apollo 18 and 19 being axed, although some of their mission objectives were rolled into Apollo 15, 16 and 17.

The launch of a Saturn-V is pretty hard to hide.   The only facilities equipped to handle and launch the rocket were at Cape Canaveral, Florida, which is not far from populated areas that can easily observe the launch.   The flights were fairly easy to track into orbit and even beyond, even with amateur telescopes and radio receivers.   Not only that, but all the hardware from Apollo was accounted for.   All rockets were either used for the Skylab program or left as museum pieces.

Problems:

Some major technical problems with the video (other than it looks like the thing is made of paper mache)

1. “Roger Beeps” – These are those familiar whistling sounds that come at the end of a voice transmission to indicate the end of the statement.   They ONLY come after voice transmissions.  They are not just produced randomly, unless perhaps a microphone is accidentally activated.  They seem to be added here just to make the video seem more Apollo-like.
2. Constant whistling sound – Probably added for no other reason than it sounds very eerie and is the kind of thing one might associate with a distant radio transmission.   In fact, this is the sound of “whistlers” which are often heard on AM radio, but would not be present in multiplexed FM voice over microwave that was used by the Apollo spacecraft.
3. Color Banding and Hallows – This is a pretty clear attempt to replicate the visual artifacts sometime seen color television transmission during the Apollo project, a result of the field sequential color system used by the video cameras of the day.  However, in this case, it’s off the mark.   The color banding should not have as constant a footprint and just does not look like it did on Apollo TV broadcasts.
4. No Talking – If you’ve ever watched a real video from an Apollo Spacecraft, you’ll note that the crew was in nearly constant communication with mission control.  In part this was because they could not see how the video was being received on earth and were constantly asking and receiving information on whether the feed needed to be adjusted.   Mission control also directed the astronauts as to where to point the camera and what they wanted to get images of.
5. Wrong Kind of Interference – Apollo-era video transmissions did indeed suffer from occasional noise, but it looked nothing like what is seen in this video.   There’s no apparent random static noise but rather there are translucent horizontal lines shown over the image.  These were very clearly overlayed on the video.
6. The Video is Too Dark – Notice that the quality of the video is very poor in part because it is very shadowy and therefore details are difficult to see.   In reality, the television cameras used for the Apollo missions were the absolute state of the art for their day and had the highest dynamic range and best gain control available.  These cameras were purpose-built to provide excellent images even in situations where the lighting was imperfect.   By the final Apollo missions, the RCA J-Series camera was being used.  It had excellent light sensitivity and range.  Presumably an “Apollo 20″ mission would have used these cameras, if not even better ones.

Yes, people actually believe this is real!