Month: April 2023

We’ve seen our share of photos of Mars from orbit and from the surface, but what about its moons? The United Arab Emirates’ Hope orbital mission to Mars sent home beautiful new high-resolution images of the red planet’s moon Deimos as it flew less than 100 km from the moon last month. This is the next spacecraft to come to Deimos in almost 50 years.

In the photos, the science team say their images of Deimos help provide evidence the moon was not a captured asteroid but came from Mars itself during an impact in the ancient past, much like Earth’s moon.

Our main image shows Deimos orbiting 20,000 km above Mars, a stunning sight. It almost looks like Deimos is about to fall on Mars! (It is not).

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The images were acquired on March 10, 2023 by the spacecraft’s EXI Digital Exploration Camera.

The United Arab Emirates’ Hope spacecraft captured this image of Martian moon Deimos from about 100 km away. Photo credit: United Arab Emirates Space Agency.

The Hope mission team tweeted that the camera captured 27 images of Deimos in 25 minutes thanks to a close flyby of Deimos.

“Many bugs caused by the camera system have been fixed, and contrast and brightness have been adjusted to improve the overall visibility of the Deimos interface.”

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Mars’ two moons, Phobos and Deimos, have long been thought to be captured asteroids. These two potato-shaped moons are among the smallest in the Solar System: Deimos is 12.6 km (7.8 miles) across and Phobos is 22.2 km (13.8 miles) across. Both are lumpy, heavily cratered and covered with dust and loose rocks. They are thought to be captured asteroids because they are among the dimmer objects in the solar system and appear to be composed of carbon-rich rock mixed with ice.

Deimos takes 30 hours for each orbit around Mars, while Phobos whips around Mars three times a day with an orbit just 6,000 km (3,700 miles) above the Martian surface.

Another instrument on the Hope spacecraft, EMIRS, a Fourier transform thermal infrared spectrometer, also collected infrared spectral data from almost the entire surface of Deimos.

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The team said on Twitter: “These results support the interpretation that Deimos may consist of merged pieces of Mars that may have been ejected in a large impact, rather than a captured carbonaceous D-type asteroid.

“The observed surface temperatures suggest the possibility of freezing of volatile materials at the poles of ‘Deimos’ and the almost inhomogeneity of the surface, in addition to the possibility that it contains fine and coarse sand grains of centimeters.”

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“The infrared spectral data also shows similarity to data from the largest Martian moon, Phobos, and suggests a basaltic origin for the moon’s formation. These results support the hypothesis that Deimos may consist of connected pieces of Mars that were likely the result of a large collision.”

The team said their data suggests that a Deimos is not a rocky asteroid, but that it came from Mars itself after an impact and was then dragged into its orbit. This will likely be discussed, with future data and additional studies required.

The science team also noted that Phobos will also be studied by their instruments on an upcoming flyby.

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From the climateREALISM

By Linnea Lueken

A recent article on OilPrice.com explains why wind energy is unprofitable and details some of the economic hurdles faced by the development of industrial wind energy. Supply chain problems, inflation, likely high fossil fuel prices, and other issues have resulted in billions of dollars in losses. Despite this, wind power companies are not afraid of going bankrupt, largely due to the fact that governments are mandating that more and more wind turbines be added to the grid to pursue net-zero carbon dioxide emissions policies, complete with generous subsidies.

The author of the OilPrice.com article “Wind Power Has A Profitability Problem”, Felicity Bradstock, points out that despite the massive investment and construction mandates by governments that are fueling growth in the wind power industry, “companies are realizing that this is difficult Converting wind power into profits.” Bradstock says the return on investment has not met the companies’ expectations, writing:

Last June there were reports that some of the world’s largest wind energy companies were struggling with heavy losses. Vestas Wind Systems, General Electric Co. and Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy all faced extremely high raw material and logistics costs in the wake of the pandemic as supply chains were disrupted. This came after an arms race in which wind majors competed to build the tallest, most powerful wind turbines at any cost to give them an edge over the rest.

Losses were seen across the board in 2022, with GE’s renewable energy division losing $2 billion, largest turbine maker Vestas $1.68 billion, and Siemens Energy losing $943.48 million. Dollar.

While companies appear optimistic, not least because governments are mandating the use of their products through renewable energy regulations, high demand is “promising” and “new grants and subsidies are keeping sentiment high in the wind energy industry, and we can expect more.” Incentives for new wind capacity globally as other countries and regions adopt their own climate policies.”

Given the unreliability of the product itself, the wind industry’s losses aren’t too surprising. For example, in several posts here, here and here, Climate Realism has discussed the failure of wind power to deliver the promised energy to customers.

Climate alarmists and renewable energy advocates often make claims that wind power, or renewable energy in general, is cheaper than fossil fuels, but the reality is different. The fluctuating nature of wind energy results in higher grid operating costs. In addition, the service life of these turbines is much less than that stated by the manufacturers. In the case of one of Oregon’s largest wind turbines, Bigelow Canyon, the turbines fail so often that they only survive half of their claimed service life. The facility is averaging 27.6 percent of its rated production capacity. Even when wind turbines are not in operation, power must be supplied from elsewhere, mostly from fossil-fueled plants, but the costs of sitting idle or operating such plants below peak levels are not billed to the wind farms. as it should be.

What is clear is that wind farms have huge upfront capital costs during the construction and installation of the turbines. The OilPrice.com article also confirms that these costs are increasing rapidly due to higher material costs, higher energy costs, supply chain and global trade issues.

Despite their huge losses, these companies continue to exist solely because of interventions by federal and state governments in the form of mandates, tax credits, property tax breaks, subsidies, guaranteed pass-throughs to taxpayers, and other types of support. As Climate Realism discusses here, “without government subsidies and mandates, wind and solar energy would be largely boutique power supplies for the wealthy.”

The public owes a debt of gratitude to news outlets like OilPrice.com for reporting on the high costs and limited benefits of wind energy. Unfortunately, most media reports on wind power through “pink lenses” that distort the true cost of wind power. If the technology were really that great, it could compete in the market without further government support.

Linnaeus Luke

Linnea Lueken is a Research Fellow at the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy. While an intern at the Heartland Institute in 2018, she co-authored a Heartland Institute policy brief, Debunking Four Persistent Myths About Hydraulic Fracturing.

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The large impact craters that characterize our planet are impressive reminders that asteroids and comets hit the earth from time to time. As has often been said, it is not a question of “if”; It is a question of “when” our planet will face an imminent attack from space. But an impact is an existential threat that humanity is finally starting to take seriously and start thinking about.

Seemingly spurred on by the success of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), NASA has just released a new planetary defense strategy and action plan detailing its efforts to find and identify potentially dangerous objects in order to provide advance warning and them then even repel impact track.

This 10-year strategy aims to advance efforts to protect Earth from a devastating encounter with a near-Earth asteroid or comet.

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“An asteroid impact on Earth has the potential for catastrophic devastation, and it is also the only natural disaster humanity now has sufficient technology to completely prevent,” said Lindley Johnson, NASA’s Planetary Defense Officer, in a press release of NASA. “The release of this NASA strategy reinforces NASA’s intentions for the next 10 years to ensure the agency works both nationally and internationally to protect our planet for the good of all.”

The 46-page NASA Planetary Defense Strategy and Action Plan (pdf document) was released on April 18, 2023, and follows another document released by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on April 3, “National Preparedness Strategy and Action Plan for Near-Earth Object Hazards and Planetary Defense” (PDF document.)

Each of the reports focuses on improving the detection, characterization and response to impact threats, as well as improving international collaboration to coordinate strategies between government agencies.

NASA plans to focus on six key areas for planetary defense over the next decade:

• Improving the study, detection and characterization of NEOs to work towards a complete catalog of all NEOs that could pose an impact threat to Earth
• Development and demonstration of NEO mitigation technologies similar to the agency’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, the world’s first planetary defense test mission that successfully demonstrated a method of asteroid deflection using a kinetic impactor spacecraft
• Promote international collaboration related to NEO surveying and mitigation to leverage international capabilities
• Strengthen interagency coordination between NASA and other US government agencies to improve and streamline the US government’s NEO preparedness and response planning
• Review agency internal planning to maximize use of limited resources
• Better integrate planetary defense work messages into agency strategic communications

Each of the strategy goals is broken down into short-term, medium-term, long-term and rolling timelines, with the goal of achieving all goals within the next 10 years.

The Near Earth Objects (NEOs), which NASA believes are the most important, range in diameter from 10 m (33 ft.) to over 10,000 m (33,000 ft) and reach a radius of 42 million km (30 million miles) around the earth orbit way.

NEO size and danger. (Source: Johns Hopkins University / Applied Physics Laboratory)

For decades, scientists and other advocates have argued that humanity must prepare for what is certain to happen at some point. Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart, who helped found the non-profit B612 Foundation for the Defense of the Planet, has spoken to Universe Today numerous times about defending the planet. As early as 2010, he emphasized that the technology to deflect an asteroid already existed.

“That means we don’t have to go into a big technology development program to deflect most of the asteroids that would pose an impact hazard,” he said. He added that coordination and collaboration between countries around the world are essential and perhaps even more difficult to organize than technology.

“Bureaucracy is the most likely reason we’ll be hit by an asteroid in the future, not technology,” Schweickart said. “That’s a bold statement, but if we get over it and do our job right, we should never in the future be hit by an asteroid that could threaten life on Earth.” And it’s going to be a hell of a challenge.”

This image shows NASA’s NEO Surveyor compared to an infrared observation of a star field made by the agency’s WISE mission. NEO Surveyor is the first purpose-built space telescope that will advance NASA’s planetary defense efforts by finding and tracking dangerous near-Earth objects. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Of course, finding the NEOs that may be on course for our planet is crucial. Such a mission is now officially on course. The Near Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor mission is a space telescope designed to detect near-Earth asteroids as part of NASA’s planetary defense efforts. The FY2023 Omnibus Spending Act enacted in December directed NASA to spend no less than $90 million on this mission, and it is expected to launch no earlier than 2028.

The DART mission was an important milestone in addressing the need to test ways of deflecting an asteroid. On September 26, 2022, DART rammed Dimorphos, a 530-foot. Asteroid Moonlet nearly 7 million mi. from Earth and successfully demonstrated a kinetic impact strategy to redirect a NEO onto a course to hit Earth. Dimorphos poses no actual threat, but was chosen for the test because it and its larger parent asteroid, Didymos, could be observed from Earth before and after the encounter to gauge the effectiveness of a kinetic impact.

JWST captured this sequence of the DART collision on Dimorphos. Courtesy of NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI.

“As we saw with the success of the DART mission, NASA is committed to protecting Earth from potentially dangerous asteroids and comets,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Planetary defense benefits all of humanity, and NASA’s strategy and plan of action outlines how we will continue to protect our home planet over the next decade.”

NASA says the release of this action plan is an important step forward to ensure DART’s momentum, and the upcoming NEO Surveyor mission will continue to advance to protect the Earth from potentially dangerous NEOs for generations to come.

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