Tag: exploration

Exowater

Bright new deposits seen in 2 gullies on Mars suggest water carried sediment through them sometime during the past 7 years.

Terraforming just got 1% easier 🙂 Also, in other news, what’s the big deal? Water has been found on mars for some time:


2007-03-16: Lots of water on Mars

Mars has enough water ice at its south pole to blanket the entire planet in more than 10m of water if everything thawed out.

2007-04-11: Extrasolar water atmospheres

We now know that water vapor exists in the atmosphere of one extrasolar planet and there is good reason to believe that other extrasolar planets contain water vapor

2011-10-26: First extrasolar water world? Gliese 581d.
2013-12-05: More detailed studies of extrasolar atmospheres

The presence of atmospheric water was reported previously on a few exoplanets orbiting stars beyond our solar system, but this is the first study to conclusively measure and compare the profiles and intensities of these signatures on multiple worlds. The 5 planets — WASP-17b, HD209458b, WASP-12b, WASP-19b and XO-1b — orbit nearby stars.

2013-12-26: Europa has a 201km high water vapor plume. Marked down as a prime tourism destination.

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has observed water vapor above the frigid south polar region of Jupiter’s moon Europa, providing the first strong evidence of water plumes erupting off the moon’s surface.

2014-09-11: Extrasolar ice

A team of scientists has discovered the first evidence of water ice clouds on an object outside of our own Solar System. Water ice clouds exist on our own gas giant planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune — but have not been seen outside of the planets orbiting our Sun until now.

2014-11-23: Europa has an ocean 100km deep, with 3x as much water as earth. Looks like NASA is getting serious about a mission there. That mission will be a defining moment for this century: Imagine what will happen if they find life. See also this amazing overview picture:

2015-04-10: Looks like the Mars water estimates vary:

Mars has distinct polar ice caps, but Mars also has belts of glaciers at its central latitudes in both the southern and northern hemispheres. A thick layer of dust covers the glaciers, so they appear as surface of the ground, but radar measurements show that underneath the dust there are glaciers composed of frozen water. New studies have now calculated the size of the glaciers and thus the amount of water in the glaciers. It is the equivalent of all of Mars being covered by more than 1 meter of ice.

2016-11-28: There’s now about 12 of them in the solar system

Pluto is a wondrous world indeed. Another new finding makes it even more remarkable: evidence for a subsurface ocean of water. This had also been reported on previously by AmericaSpace, but the new update strengthens the case. A water ocean on Pluto? How is that even possible? Well, first it is a subsurface ocean, similar to ones on Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus, among others. Temperatures on the surface are much, much too cold for liquid water (water ice is hard as rock and at lower latitudes near the equator, temperatures on Pluto can reach almost -200 degrees Celsius), but deep below the surface seems to be a different story.

2017-04-26: Most habitable planets are waterworlds

We find that most habitable planets have surfaces that are over 90% water. If Earth is indeed unusually dry for a habitable planet, then one might wonder what the mechanism was. Does the Solar system have some distinguishing feature that was responsible? For example, perhaps the low eccentricities and inclinations of Solar system planets are inefficient at promoting water delivery. It also appears feasible that the Earth has an unusually deep ocean basin. The gravitational potential associated with its surface fluctuations is much higher than any other body in the Solar system. In turn, this may suggest that the Earth has unusually strong tectonic activity, and consequently, an abnormally strong magnetic field.

2018-08-17: Another Mars water estimate

The radar investigation shows that south polar region of Mars is made of many layers of ice and dust down to a depth of ~1.5 km in the 200 km-wide area analyzed in this study. A particularly bright radar reflection underneath the layered deposits is identified within a 20 km-wide zone.

2018-08-18: More data on exoplanet water

Our data indicate that 35% of all known exoplanets which are bigger than Earth should be water-rich. These water worlds likely formed in similar ways to the giant planet cores (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune) which we find in our own solar system. The newly-launched TESS mission will find many more of them, with the help of ground-based spectroscopic follow-up. The next generation space telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, will hopefully characterize the atmosphere of some of them. This is an exciting time for those interested in these remote worlds. This is water, but not as commonly found here on Earth. Their surface temperature is expected to be in the 200-500 Celsius range. Their surface may be shrouded in a water-vapor-dominated atmosphere, with a liquid water layer underneath. Moving deeper, one would expect to find this water transforms into high-pressure ices before we reaching the solid rocky core.

2018-12-29: Korolev crater

ESA’s Mars Express mission recently photographed the Korolev crater on Mars, filled almost to the brim with water ice. When I first saw this image I thought, oh cute!, assuming the crater was maybe 10m across. But no, it’s 82km across and the thickest part of the ice is over 1600m thick.

2021-10-12: Exoweather:

JWST is a dream come true for exoplanet astronomers. It’s the most ambitious space telescope ever built. I like to say that the JWST will be 10000x better than the Hubble Space Telescope. A 10x bigger mirror, so with more light-gathering power you can observe things that are fainter; 10x more wavelength coverage — well into the infrared where Hubble stops. Having the infrared wavelength coverage will let us push to much cooler and thus potentially more habitable planets than we’ve been able to study before, and it helps us see through the clouds on these planets. There’s also 10x better stability, and 10x better spectral resolution. That means we can see the exact wavelengths in the planet’s color spectrum that are getting absorbed by molecules in its atmosphere, which lets us determine the chemical composition of atmospheres more precisely. There is no planet known where JWST will have the sensitivity required to detect biosignatures like this. Oxygen is really challenging to detect because the features are small compared to other molecules. For observable planets that are in the habitable zone of their stars, even if there is much more oxygen than is present on Earth, we would still need 10s of transits of the planet in front of the star to detect it. Any added difficulty, like clouds in the atmosphere or instrumental noise from JWST, would make it prohibitive. We would basically need to get lucky in every possible aspect to have a prayer of seeing oxygen, and in my experience exoplanets are always tougher than expected. I’m really optimistic that we’ll see some of the easier-to-observe molecules, particularly CO2. While that isn’t a biosignature, it’s still an important piece of the puzzle of habitability.

2023-05-13: About 20 Water Objects in the Solar System

Re-analysis of data from NASA’s Voyager spacecraft, along with new computer modeling, has led NASA scientists to conclude that 4 of Uranus’ largest moons likely contain an ocean layer between their cores and icy crusts. Their study is the first to detail the evolution of the interior makeup and structure of all 5 large moons: Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, Oberon, and Miranda. The work suggests 4 of the moons hold oceans that could be 10s of km deep.

Ocean DNA

In this elegant research vessel, Craig Venter set sail around the world to shotgun sequence the millions of viruses and bacteria in every spoonful of seawater. From the first 5 ocean samples, this team grew the number of known genes on the planet by 10x and the number of genes involved in solar energy conversion by 100x. The ocean microorganisms have evolved over a longer period of time and have pathways that are more efficient than photosynthesis. Another discovery: every 300 km across the open ocean, the microbial genes are 85% different. The oceans are not homogenous masses. They consist of myriad uncharted regions of ecological diversity… and the world’s largest genetic database.

Neptune

The NEPTUNE program will deploy a regional cabled ocean observatory on the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia. Extensive networks of instruments, connected to the observatory’s fiber-optic/power cable, will enable studies of a wide range of oceanographic, geological, and ecological processes. Via the Internet, NEPTUNE will provide unprecedented real-time and archived data to a global community of scientists, engineers, educators, decision makers, and learners of all ages.

an underwater robotic research network the size of GB with a fiber optic internet uplink. finally.

Google Earth Archaeology

I found more in the first 5, 6, 7 hours than I’ve found in 25 years of traditional field surveys and aerial archaeology.

2007-01-07: overview article. a bit thin on detail, unfortunately.
2014-05-05: holy shit:

A study of Cold War spy-satellite photos has tripled the number of known archaeological sites across the Middle East, revealing 1000s of ancient cities, roads, canals, and other ruins.

Flooded Ice Age Kingdoms

17-7 ka ago, at the end of the last Ice Age, terrible things happened to the world our ancestors lived in. Great ice caps over northern Europe and north America melted down, huge floods ripped across the earth, sea-level rose by more than 100m, and 25m km2 of formerly habitable lands were swallowed up by the waves. Marine archaeology has been possible as a scholarly discipline for 50 years – since the introduction of scuba. In that time, only 500 submerged sites have been found worldwide containing the remains of any form of man-made structure or of lithic artifacts. Of these sites only 100 are more than 3 ka old.

you’ll definitely need UAV to scour millions of square kilometers

Robot Exploration

A fleet of 100 robotic submarines could in 5 years’ time be roaming the vast unexplored stretches of the world’s seafloors and helping unlock their mysteries. “The pace of exploration in the ocean is going a little too slowly”. Only 5% of the ocean floor has been explored in detail, which means there may be numerous new species and geothermal processes waiting to be discovered.

NOAA plans to map the oceans floors with unmanned vehicles.
2010-10-25: Antarctica Ocean UAV. Such a baby step. we should have fleets of fully autonomous ocean robots by now, mapping the sea floors.

Gavia, a bullet-shaped robot developed by the University of British Columbia, is currently in Antarctica on a mission to explore heretofore uncharted areas of the ocean.

2013-04-21: Some speculation

excavating the past will mean deploying teams of remote-sensing robotic machines semi-autonomously flying, crawling, gridding, scanning, squeezing, and non-destructively burrowing their way into lost rooms and buried cities, perhaps even translating ancient languages along the way.

2018-11-20: Robot Wreck Discovery

The wreckage of the ARA San Juan (S-42) was found by Ocean Infinity. Ocean Infinity used 5 Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) to carry out the search. Ocean Infinity’s ocean search capability is the most advanced in the world. Their AUV’s are capable of operating in depths from 5 meters to 6000 meters and covering vast areas of the seabed at unparalleled speed. The AUVs are not tethered, allowing them to go deeper and collect higher quality data. They are equipped with side scan sonar, a multi-beam echo-sounder HD camera, and synthetic aperture sonar. Ocean Infinity is able to deploy 2 work class ROVs and heavy lifting equipment capable of retrieving objects weighing up to 45T from 6000 meters.

journey to the north pole

On his latest expedition in February 2004, Ben set out from Cape Arktichevsky in Northern Siberia in an attempt to be the first person in the world to make a complete crossing of the frozen Arctic Ocean in a 2000 km journey ending in Canada, solo and unsupported. The expedition was a traumatic one: out of the 4 solo attempts, Ben was the only one to reach the North Pole. A Finnish woman died within 24 hours of being on the Arctic Ocean, a French Marine fell through thin ice and was rescued with severe frostbite and an American was airlifted out with frostbite and a broken ankle. Ben holds the record for the longest solo arctic trek by a Brit, and became the youngest person ever to reach the North Pole on May 11th 2004. After experiencing first hand conditions described by NASA and Environment Canada as ‘the worst on record’, Ben has raised international awareness regarding the extent to which climate change is affecting the Arctic. He noticed conditions that were up to 15 degrees warmer than in 2000, and had to negotiate vast, unprecedented areas of thinning ice and open water.

well worth a listen.