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Science

Curiosity Drills a Hole into Mars

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Curiosity drills a hole into a Rock on Mars
Curiosity drill site (Source: NASA, JPL-CalTech, MSSS)

The Mars rover Curiosity has drilled a small hole into a rock on the surface of the martian planet today. The hole is about 2cm deep and this “mini-drill” test is in preparation for a larger drilling operation to be performed later on.

The test was performed on a patch of flat rock called “John Klein.The team plans to use Curiosity’s laboratory instruments to analyze sample powder from inside the rock to learn more about the site’s environmental history. Eventually researchers plan to find out whether or not the environmental conditions for life ever existed on the red planet.

For the official post you can head to the NASA news site

Small Asteroid to Do a Close Flyby of Earth

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2012 DA14 is a small asteroid that is going to be flying past Earth on February 15th. The asteroid was discovered in February of 2012 by astronomers at the La Sagra Sky Survey. 2012 DA14 will be so close to Earth when it passes us that it will be within the Earth’s geosynchronous satellite ring, that’s pretty close. That distance is where some communications satellites reside, however it will be far above most other equipment and therefore will be a relatively low risk as it passes Earth at a blazing speed of 17,400 mph.

2012 DA14 Asteroid
2012 DA14 Asteroid Path (Source: NASA)

NASA will be taking advantage of this close approaching asteroid by studying it as it passes us.  2012 DA14 isn’t every large, it’s approximately 150ft across and won’t be visible by the naked eye when it passes us, but it should be visible through a telescope.

Update [NASA]

King Tides Show Up On West Coast

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Tidal movements on Earth

For the next few days ocean tides will be much higher ( and lower) than they typically are due to a phenomenon called “King Tide”‘. These tides are popular among surfers as they create the best conditions for the sport. Some people use the very low tides to explore areas of the beach that are normally always underwater, a metal detector could turn up something cool.

So where do these King Tides come from? Well how these tides work is actually pretty amazing. Our orbit around the Sun isn’t a perfect circle, it’s actually an elliptical orbit. As the Moon travels around Earth it also travels in an elliptical orbit. This means that at certain points in our orbit around the sun or our moon’s orbit around the Earth, we are closer and farther away. When we are closest to the sun we call this point, the perihelion. When the moon is closest to Earth we call that point the perigee. When we are closer to the moon or the sun this causes us to see a greater influence from these celestial bodies on our tides.

Every once and a while the sun will be at perihelion and the moon will be at perigee at the same time, or very close to the same time. This causes the greatest posible influence on our tides (King Tide). We are closest to the sun in January and usually within the first week, we are farthest from our sun in July.

Graphite Disc Moves When Light Strikes It

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This video is of a graphite disc floating over a magnetic field, which is then being spun by nothing but laser light. Temperature changes where the laser hits the graphite surface, cause changes in the magnetic field allowing it to spin. This is a pretty cool discovery considering it could lead to new technologies like a solar powered turbine. [Mashable]

Another Cosmic Catastrophe Avoided

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Eros
Eros (Credit: NASA/JPL/JHUAPL)

It seems that we have survived several “end-of-the-world” scenarios but now you can add another reason to celebrate to your list. Another massive asteroid named ‘2011 AG5’ was expected to possibly hit Earth sometime around the year 2040. The asteroid was discovered early in 2011 and ever since we have been keeping track of it’s movement to see if it really could be a world-ender.

Space is a massive place and it can be truly difficult to pinpoint whether or not a single chunk of space rock will hit Earth, but University of Hawaii at Manoa astronomers along with the help of NASA, can safely say that the asteroid is not on a collision course with Earth.

It’s good to know that somebody is watching the skies above us. Now we can only hope that when we are in the path of a giant, we can do something about it. There are a few methods being drawn up about how to avoid an impact. Some of these ideas include crashing spacecraft into astroids to alter their course and steer them away from our planet. However, there are not any solid plans in place at this time to help avoid such impacts.

If there are any space projects that are going to be put together, you would hope that one of the top priority missions would include saving our planet. I would like to see missions that focus on landing on asteroids and studying them, with the ultimate goal being to understand how to alter their trajectory. It sounds simple enough but it takes a lot of force to move these giant and all of this would have to be controlled over long distances. Again, it’s a case of us knowing so much but knowing so little. For now it seems that we have a little more time to figure things out, let’s hope we do before we absolutely have to.