September 14

Around the Moon and Back

1968 — Zond 5 Begins a Historic Journey

21:42:10 UTC

On September 14, 1968, at approximately 21:42:10 UTC, the Soviet Union launched Zond 5 from Site 81 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard a Proton-K rocket. The spacecraft was placed first into Earth orbit and then sent toward the Moon on a free-return trajectory.

Zond 5 was a version of the Soyuz 7K-L1 spacecraft being developed as part of the Soviet effort to send cosmonauts around the Moon. No people were aboard this flight, but the spacecraft carried an unusual collection of living passengers—including two Russian steppe tortoises, along with insects, plants, microorganisms, and other biological specimens. Scientists hoped to learn more about how living organisms would respond to a journey beyond Earth's immediate environment.

Four days later, on September 18, Zond 5 swept around the Moon, passing approximately 1,950 kilometers (1,210 miles) above its surface. The spacecraft then headed back toward Earth. On September 21, it reentered Earth's atmosphere and splashed down in the Indian Ocean, where Soviet recovery vessels retrieved it. The tortoises and other biological specimens survived the journey.

The mission achieved an extraordinary milestone: living creatures from Earth had traveled around the Moon and returned safely. It also demonstrated important technologies required for human lunar missions, including navigation across hundreds of thousands of kilometers and high-speed atmospheric reentry after returning from the Moon.

The timing was particularly significant. Only three months later, in December 1968, Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders would become the first humans to travel around the Moon.

Why It Matters: Zond 5 demonstrated that a spacecraft could travel from Earth, pass around the Moon, and return living passengers safely to Earth. It represented an important technological bridge between robotic lunar exploration and human voyages to the Moon.

 

Also on This Day

1712 — Giovanni Domenico Cassini Dies

Time unknown

On September 14, 1712, the influential Italian-born French astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini died in Paris.

Cassini was one of the outstanding observational astronomers of the seventeenth century. Among his achievements, he discovered four moons of Saturn—Iapetus, Rhea, Tethys, and Dione—and identified the prominent division between Saturn's A and B rings that still bears his name: the Cassini Division.

He also made important observations of Jupiter and Mars and contributed to efforts to determine the scale of the solar system.

Centuries later, his name would travel to Saturn aboard the Cassini spacecraft, the NASA-European Space Agency-Italian Space Agency mission that entered orbit around Saturn in 2004 and transformed our knowledge of the planet, its rings, and its remarkable family of moons.

Why It Matters: Cassini helped establish planetary astronomy as the careful study of other worlds as physical places with measurable characteristics. His discoveries remain part of the language of astronomy more than three centuries after his death.

1926 — J. L. E. Dreyer Dies

Time unknown

On September 14, 1926, Danish-born astronomer Johan Ludvig Emil Dreyer, usually known as J. L. E. Dreyer, died in Oxford, England, at age 74.

Dreyer's most enduring contribution was the New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars, published in 1888 and universally known as the NGC. The catalogue contained 7,840 objects, with thousands more subsequently included in Dreyer's supplementary Index Catalogues.

His system remains part of the working vocabulary of astronomy. Familiar objects continue to be identified by their NGC numbers: the Andromeda Galaxy is NGC 224, the Orion Nebula is NGC 1976, and the Whirlpool Galaxy is NGC 5194.

Dreyer was also an important historian of astronomy. He wrote about the development of astronomical thought and devoted considerable scholarly attention to the life and observations of Tycho Brahe.

Why It Matters: Dreyer helped organize the deep sky. His catalogues gave generations of astronomers a common system for identifying thousands of objects beyond the solar system—a system that remains in widespread use today.

1958 — Mohr Sounding Rockets Reach the Upper Atmosphere

Time unknown

On September 14, 1958, three experimental sounding rockets designed by German engineer Ernst Mohr were successfully launched near Cuxhaven, West Germany. Their dart-like payloads reached an altitude of approximately 50 kilometers (31 miles).

The achievement followed unsuccessful launch attempts in June. Mohr's single-stage, solid-fueled rocket accelerated a narrow payload dart that separated after burnout and continued upward because of its more efficient aerodynamic shape. The successful September flights reached their intended altitude.

Fifty kilometers is below the 100-kilometer Kármán line commonly used to define the boundary of space, but sounding rockets occupy an important place in the history of space science. They allow instruments to investigate portions of Earth's atmosphere that are too high for balloons while avoiding the complexity and expense of placing a spacecraft into orbit.

Why It Matters: Mohr's experiments formed part of the postwar development of sounding-rocket technology—an important scientific tool for studying Earth's upper atmosphere and the environment approaching space.

 

The Bigger Picture

September 14 brings together three stages in humanity's effort to understand and eventually travel beyond Earth.

Cassini represents observation. With increasingly capable telescopes, astronomers discovered that the planets were not simply wandering points of light but complex worlds surrounded by rings and moons.

Dreyer represents organization. As telescopes revealed thousands of objects beyond the solar system, astronomy required systematic catalogues so that scientists could identify, compare, and communicate what they observed.

The sounding rockets of 1958 represent experimentation beyond the ground. Astronomical and atmospheric instruments increasingly could be carried above the dense lower atmosphere.

And Zond 5 represents exploration. Only ten years after the Mohr rocket experiments reached 50 kilometers above Earth, another spacecraft departed Earth altogether and began a journey of hundreds of thousands of kilometers around the Moon and back.

The progression captures much of the story at the heart of On This Day in Astronomy and Space: humanity observed the heavens, learned to map and understand them, developed machines capable of rising above Earth, and eventually began sending those machines to other worlds.

At a Glance

1712 — Time unknown — Giovanni Domenico Cassini, pioneering observer of Saturn and its moons, dies in Paris.

1926 — Time unknown — J. L. E. Dreyer, compiler of the New General Catalogue (NGC), dies in Oxford.

1958 — Time unknown — Ernst Mohr's experimental sounding rockets successfully reach approximately 50 kilometers above West Germany.

1968 — 21:42:10 UTC — Zond 5 launches from Baikonur on the historic mission that will carry living organisms around the Moon and safely back to Earth.

September 13

 Humanity Reaches Another World

1959 — Luna 2 Reaches the Moon

22:02:04 UTC

On September 13, 1959, at approximately 22:02:04 UTC, the Soviet spacecraft Luna 2 struck the Moon, becoming the first human-made object to reach the surface of another celestial body.

Launched from the Soviet Union the previous day, Luna 2 was placed on a direct trajectory toward the Moon. After traveling through space for roughly a day and a half, the spacecraft impacted the lunar surface in the region between Mare Imbrium and Mare Serenitatis, near the crater Autolycus. NASA places the impact roughly 160 miles from the site where Apollo 15 astronauts would land twelve years later.

Luna 2 was not merely intended to demonstrate that the Moon could be reached. The spacecraft carried scientific instruments for investigating cosmic rays, radiation, magnetic fields, and the space environment. Its measurements found no significant lunar magnetic field or radiation belts comparable to Earth's. The spacecraft also carried metallic spheres bearing Soviet emblems, which were intended to scatter upon impact.

The achievement came less than two years after Sputnik 1 inaugurated the Space Age. Sputnik demonstrated that humans could place an artificial object into orbit around Earth. Luna 2 crossed another threshold: something built by human hands had now traveled from Earth to another world.

Why It Matters: Luna 2 transformed reaching another celestial body from an aspiration into an accomplished fact. Every successful planetary landing and impact mission that followed—from the Moon and Mars to asteroids and comets—belongs to a history whose first physical contact with another world occurred on September 13, 1959.

 

Also on This Day

1850 — John Russell Hind Discovers 12 Victoria

Time unknown

On the evening of September 13, 1850, English astronomer John Russell Hind discovered the asteroid 12 Victoria while observing at George Bishop's Observatory in London.

Hind was comparing his observations in the constellation Pegasus with a recently prepared star chart when he noticed an object that did not belong among the mapped stars. He correctly recognized it as a previously unknown member of the solar system.

Victoria was only the twelfth asteroid known to astronomy. When the first asteroid, Ceres, had been discovered in 1801, astronomers had no idea that the region between Mars and Jupiter contained a vast population of small worlds. Discoveries such as Victoria gradually revealed the true nature of what we now call the asteroid belt.

The asteroid's name produced an interesting nineteenth-century controversy. Officially, Hind named it for Victoria, the Roman goddess of victory, but the name also honored Britain's reigning Queen Victoria. Some American astronomers objected because the developing convention discouraged naming asteroids after living people, and the alternative name Clio appeared for a time in American publications.

Hind eventually discovered ten asteroids, becoming one of the most successful asteroid hunters of his generation.

Why It Matters: The discovery of Victoria was part of a profound change in humanity's picture of the solar system. What had once seemed to consist principally of the Sun, planets, and their moons was increasingly understood to contain a much larger and more diverse population of smaller worlds.

1985 — An F-15 Destroys a Satellite in Orbit

Time not established

On September 13, 1985, U.S. Air Force Major Wilbert D. “Doug” Pearson climbed rapidly in a specially modified F-15A Eagle and launched an ASM-135A anti-satellite missile toward an object hundreds of kilometers above him.

The target was Solwind P78-1, an aging scientific satellite that had been used to study the Sun. The missile released a miniature kinetic-kill vehicle that homed in on the satellite and destroyed it through a high-speed collision. The test marked the first—and ultimately only—time the ASM-135 system destroyed an actual satellite in orbit.

The achievement demonstrated something technologically extraordinary and strategically troubling: a weapon carried by an aircraft in Earth's atmosphere could successfully strike an object traveling at orbital velocity high above the planet.

The test also illustrated another danger. Destroying a satellite at orbital velocity created a cloud of debris. Such fragments can remain in orbit and pose collision hazards to other spacecraft, making destructive anti-satellite testing an enduring concern in the increasingly crowded environment around Earth.

Why It Matters: The 1985 test demonstrated that space had become more than a realm of scientific discovery and peaceful exploration. It had also become strategically important enough to be treated as a potential arena of military conflict—and showed that actions in space could leave consequences long after an individual mission ended.

 

The Bigger Picture

September 13 presents three remarkably different moments in humanity's changing relationship with the universe.

In 1850, John Russell Hind stood at a telescope and discovered another small world orbiting the Sun. Astronomy was still fundamentally an activity conducted from Earth: humans looked outward and gradually learned what populated the heavens.

In 1959, that relationship changed. Luna 2 did something no telescope could do. Humanity sent a machine across the gulf between Earth and Moon and physically touched another celestial body for the first time.

By 1985, human activity had expanded into near-Earth space so extensively that satellites had become important not only for science and communication but also for national security—and nations were developing technologies capable of destroying them.

These events reveal both the promise and the responsibility that accompany technological progress. We discovered other worlds, learned how to reach beyond our own, and eventually confronted the consequences of bringing human competition into space with us.

September 13 therefore tells more than a story of technological advancement. It reminds us that our increasing ability to reach the universe also raises an enduring question: What will humanity choose to do with the power to operate there?

At a Glance

1850 — Time unknown — John Russell Hind discovers asteroid 12 Victoria at George Bishop's Observatory in London.

1959 — 22:02:04 UTC — Luna 2 impacts the Moon, becoming the first human-made object to reach another celestial body.

1985 — Time not established — An ASM-135A missile launched from an F-15 destroys the Solwind P78-1 satellite, the first satellite destroyed by a weapon launched from an aircraft.

Europa Clipper Mission Teleconference

 On Monday, September 9, NASA will hold a media teleconference to provide an update on the Europa Clipper mission, that will study whether Jupiter’s moon Europa could be hospitable to life. The teleconference will occur after a key decision point meeting earlier that day regarding next steps for the mission. The teleconference can be watched here: https://www.nasa.gov/live/

If you would like information on the Europa mission and the spacecraft, I have a book for you! The book is called Journey to Europa: The NASA Europa Clipper Mission, and it is available in Kindle and paperback form. Click on the image below to check it out!

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Potential Sign of Life on Venus

Artist's concept of the thick clouds that obscure Venus’ surface. Image Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser & NASA/JPL/Caltech

An international team of astronomers have confirmed that the cloud tops of Venus contain traces of phosphine, a gas that is produced by microbial life. The gas is also produced by some Earth-based industrial processes. That said, no known non-biological processes can create phosphine in the conditions found on Venus.

The find raises two intriguing possibilities: One, the possibility that Venus may harbor life in its clouds. And two, the phosphine could be the result of some unknown chemical process, which would be an enticing subject of scientific study.

You may read the full article at Astronomy.com

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Martian Clay Found

The Curiosity rover selfie is composed of 57 individual images taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), a camera on the end of the rover's robotic arm. The images are stitched together into a panorama, and the robotic arm is digitally removed. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover confirmed that the region it's exploring, called the "clay-bearing unit," prooved to be an accurate name. Two samples the rover recently drilled at rock targets called "Aberlady" and "Kilmarie" have revealed the highest amounts of clay minerals found during the mission. Both drill targets appear in a new selfie taken by the rover on May 12, 2019, the 2,405th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.

The region is located on the side of lower Mount Sharp and stood out to NASA orbiters before Curiosity landed in 2012. Clay often forms in water, which is essential for life; Curiosity is exploring Mount Sharp to see if it had the conditions to support life billions of years ago. The rover's mineralogy instrument, called CheMin (Chemistry and Mineralogy), provided the first analyses of rock samples drilled in the clay-bearing unit. CheMin also found very little hematite, an iron oxide mineral that was abundant just to the north, on Vera Rubin Ridge.

Other than proof that there was a significant amount of water once in Gale Crater, what these new findings mean for the region is still up for debate. It's likely that the rocks in the area formed as layers of mud in ancient lakes - something Curiosity also found lower on Mount Sharp. Water interacted with sediment over time, leaving an abundance of clay in the rocks there.

Amid this new drilling and analyzing, Curiosity took a break to watch some clouds - all in the name of science. The rover used its black-and-white Navigation Cameras (Navcams) to snap images of drifting clouds on May 7 and May 12, 2019, sols 2400 and 2405. They're likely water-ice clouds about 19 miles (31 kilometers) above the surface.

The mission's team has been trying to coordinate cloud observations with NASA's InSight lander, located about 373 miles (600 kilometers) away, which recently took its own cloud images. Capturing the same clouds from two vantage points can help scientists calculate their altitude.

More information about Curiosity is at: https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/

More information about Mars is at: https://mars.nasa.gov/

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Happy Birthday, Pioneer 10!

Pioneer 10 was launched March 2, 1972. Shown, artist rendering of Pioneer 10 flyby of Jupiter. Image credit, NASA.

March 2 marks a birthday, of sorts, for NASA's Pioneer 10 mission. On this day in 1972, the spacecraft was launched on the first mission to the planet Jupiter.

Originally designated Pioneer F, the spacecraft weighed 258 kilograms (569 pounds), completed the first mission to the planet Jupiter and, later, became the first of five artificial objects to achieve the escape velocity that will allow them to leave the Solar System. The project was conducted by the NASA Ames Research Center in California, and the space probe was manufactured by TRW Inc.

The spacecraft was launched on March 2, 1972 by an Atlas-Centaur expendable vehicle from Launch Complex 36A at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Between July 15, 1972, and February 15, 1973, it became the first spacecraft to traverse the asteroid belt. Photography of Jupiter began November 6, 1973, at a range of 25,000,000 kilometers (16,000,000 mi), and a total of about 500 images were transmitted. The closest approach to the planet was on December 4, 1973, at a range of 132,252 kilometers (82,178 mi). During the mission, the on-board instruments were used to study the asteroid belt, the environment around Jupiter, the solar wind, cosmic rays, and eventually the far reaches of the Solar System and heliosphere.

Pioneer 10 crossed the orbit of Saturn in 1976 and the orbit of Uranus in 1979. On June 13, 1983, the craft crossed the orbit of Neptune, the outermost planet, and so became the first human-made object to leave the proximity of the major planets of the Solar System. The mission came to an official end on March 31, 1997, when it had reached a distance of 67 AU from the Sun, though the spacecraft was still able to transmit coherent data after this date.

After March 31, 1997, Pioneer 10's weak signal continued to be tracked by the Deep Space Network to aid the training of flight controllers in the process of acquiring deep space radio signals. There was an Advanced Concepts study applying chaos theory to extract coherent data from the fading signal.

The last successful reception of telemetry was received from Pioneer 10 on April 27, 2002; subsequent signals were barely strong enough to detect, and provided no usable data. The final, very weak signal from Pioneer 10 was received on January 23, 2003 when it was 12 billion kilometers (80 AU) from Earth. Further attempts to contact the spacecraft were unsuccessful. A final attempt was made on the evening of March 4, 2006, the last time the antenna would be correctly aligned with Earth. No response was received from Pioneer 10. NASA decided that the RTG units (the spacecraft's power generators) had probably fallen below the power threshold needed to operate the transmitter. Hence, no further attempts at contact were made.

To learn more about Pioneer 10 and the NASA Pioneer missions, visit these sites.

NASA Pioneer Missions

Web Archive of the NASA Pioneer Mission Home Page

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Phoenix Mars Lander Is a Bit Dusty

The above animation "blinks" between two images: One taken May 25, 2008, the other taken December 21, 2017. Both show the landing site for NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander. The later image shows the result of dust layering. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

A late 2017 image of NASA's Phoenix Mars mission, which landed nearly a decade ago in the norther regions of Mars, shows that dust has covered some marks of the landing.

The Phoenix lander itself, plus its back shell and parachute, are still visible in the image taken December 21, 2017, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. But an animated-blink comparison with an image from about two months after the May 25, 2008, landing shows that patches of ground that had been darkened by removal of dust during landing events have become coated with dust again.

In August 2008, Phoenix completed its three-month mission studying Martian ice, soil and atmosphere. The lander worked for two additional months before reduced sunlight caused energy to become insufficient to keep the lander functioning. The solar-powered robot was not designed to survive through the dark and cold conditions of a Martian arctic winter.

Both images in the animation were taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The one with three patches of darker ground -- where landing events removed dust -- was taken on July 20, 2008. The one with a more even coating of pale dust throughout the area was taken on December 21, 2017. Both image cover an area roughly 300 meters wide at 68 degrees north latitude, 234 degrees east longitude.

The University of Arizona, Tucson, led the Phoenix mission and also operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colorado. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, managed the Phoenix Mars Lander Project and manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space, Denver, built both the Phoenix and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft.

For more information on the Phoenix Mars Lander, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission and NASA's Mars exploration program, check out these site.

Phoenix Mars Lander Mission

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mission

NASA's Mars Exploration Program

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