Talking to Mars

This week, PhD student Diana Hayes takes a look at how we communicate with spacecraft dispersed throughout the solar system. Given the number of assets at Mars, the situation on the red planet is particularly complex and therefore particularly interesting. Like any infrastructure, maintenance is critical to enabling future science if we expect to continue to count on the capable systems we have in place today.

by Diana Hayes

Here on Earth, we’ve built a sophisticated global telecommunications network that allows us to talk to people on the other side of the planet nearly instantaneously with very little difficulty, whether that be through the internet, texts, phone calls, or video chats. It’s easy to take this interconnectivity for granted. For example, if I have data that I want to share with a collaborator in Europe, can upload it to a Microsoft server from my computer, send them a OneDrive link, and they can download it to their computer; unless something goes wrong somewhere along the way, there’s very little thought from either of us about the intricate complexities of the systems that make this possible.

But what if your collaborator is on another planet?

This is a question that every interplanetary mission needs to answer. For many missions, the answer is simple: the Deep Space Network (DSN). The DSN consists of 14 radio telescopes spread across three sites in Spain (Madrid), the United States (Goldstone), and Australia (Canberra). This spacing ensures that at least one telescope has a direct line-of-sight to every location in the Solar System further than about 30,000 kilometres from Earth. The data rates seem laughable compared to what we can achieve on the ground, as they’re limited both by the size and power of the DSN telescopes and the antennas that can be put on a spacecraft, as well as the distance between Earth and a given spacecraft. For example, as I write this, one of the DSN telescopes is talking to Juno (orbiting Jupiter) at 50 kilobits per second, while another is talking to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter at 550 kilobits per second. For comparison, the wireless internet connection here at York typically averages around 100 megabits per second.

A screenshot of NASA’s DSN Now page, highlighting a communications session between one of the deep space antennas in Canberra and the Mars Odyssey orbiter.

For orbiters and flyby missions, the DSN is good enough. You can put a reasonably large, powerful antenna on your spacecraft and talk directly to Earth with minimal difficulty. For landed missions, the situation is more complex. When landing on another planet, minimizing the weight and size of your spacecraft is essential, so you can’t really just use a big antenna unless you’re willing to sacrifice science instruments for it. The solution we’ve come up with is relay communications. Rather than talking directly to Earth, a rover or lander first transmits its data to a spacecraft in orbit, which then uses its more powerful antenna to transmit that data to Earth. Because the lander-orbiter distance is much smaller than the lander-Earth distance, you can get away with much smaller antennas on the lander. 

Over time, this strategy has led to the development of the Mars Relay Network (MRN), which consists of a number of Mars orbiters that rovers and landers on the surface can use to talk to Earth. At the moment, there are four orbiters in the MRN: the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), Mars Odyssey, and Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN). Relay communications is not the primary mission of any of these orbiters, but they all were specifically outfitted with the instruments needed to serve as part of the MRN.

There is one obvious limitation to using this method to communicate with our landers and rovers on Mars: data can only be transmitted when an orbiter is above the horizon. During rover planning, this means that we need to keep track of when orbiters are available to receive data, and to prioritize which data we want to receive first since we can’t always downlink all of the data on the rover during a single comms pass. Fortunately, because we understand the movements and capabilities of our orbiters pretty well, this is really only a minor problem. 

Top: The elevation of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as seen from Curiosity during the first week of 2025. Most of the time, the orbiter is below the horizon, passing over Gale about twice a day. Bottom: A close-up of the highest-elevation pass of MRO on January 4, 2025, highlighting how the orbiter is only above the horizon  for a very short period of time, about 15 minutes, which limits the amount of data that can be transmitted.

Less avoidable is the motion of the planets themselves. Every few years, Earth and Mars pass on opposite sides of the Sun, an event we call “solar conjunction.” When this happens, interference from the Sun can cause data corruption in the signals sent through the MRN. Corrupted data received from Mars isn’t the end of the world, since the data aren’t deleted from the rovers’ computers until they are verified to have been received intact on Earth, so any missing data can just be re-transmitted. Of more concern is data transmitted to Mars, which usually consists of rover commands. We really don’t want to send corrupted commands to our rovers, so during conjunction, we stand down from operations until the apparent angular separation between the planets is large enough for data to be transmitted reliably.

The apparent angle between Mars and the Sun, as viewed from Earth between the start of 2023 and the end of 2026. About once every two years, this angle is so small that the Sun blocks data transmission between the two planets, a period known as “solar conjunction.”

The MRN has become a critical piece of infrastructure in the exploration of Mars, but it’s facing an imminent crisis: it’s aging. Odyssey, the oldest part of the MRN, was launched in 2001, while the newest (TGO) was launched in 2016. The fragility of this age was highlighted in December of last year when the DSN lost contact with MAVEN. Although recovery efforts are ongoing, NASA has admitted that it’s unlikely that communication with MAVEN will be re-established. MAVEN had the highest data transmission capabilities of any of the four orbiters, so its likely loss leaves a gaping hole in the MRN. The other orbiters can at least partially fill that hole, but it’s obvious that something needs to be done before we lose another orbiter. Some proposals have been made, such as the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter (MTO), which was cancelled in 2005 before being revived in NASA’s 2025 budget. Dedicated telecom orbiters are much less sexy (scientifically speaking) than science orbiters, which makes justifying their cost to national legislatures much more difficult, despite their importance. 

By the way, this isn’t limited to just Mars. For example, the Huygens probe, which landed on Saturn’s largest moon Titan in 2005, relayed its data through the Cassini spacecraft. Notably, Dragonfly, NASA’s upcoming rotorcraft mission to Titan, will not be using a data relay, instead opting for direct-to-Earth communication. To make this possible with any kind of appreciable data volume while not using the much larger antennas found on spacecraft like Juno, Cassini, and Voyager, Dragonfly will be taking advantage of the large amount of energy provided by its nuclear power system (similar to the one used by Curiosity and Perseverance), which will allow it to transmit much stronger signals with a much smaller antenna.

If you’re curious about what the DSN and MRN are up to right now, check out NASA’s DSN Now (https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/dsn-now/dsn.html) and MRN (https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/mrn/) websites. 

Unravelling Martian Methane Mysteries in the Canadian Arctic

An image of our ABB methane detector deployed at Gypsum Hill on Axel-Heiberg Island in Nunavut. Alex's work here showed that the variability in a measured methane signal might be able to tell us more about our distance from the source than the total amount of methane does. This is important for how we might prospect for methane seeps on Mars. 

Oh, and look at that view!
Sometimes it's not just the results of our investigations that take our breath away.

by Alex Innanen

Almost three years ago now (and wow, time really flies) I spent three weeks in Nunavut, which you can read all about here. I talked a little in that post about why I went up and what sort of work I was doing there. But the work did not end when I landed back in Ottawa (or got back to Toronto after an extended weekend at the cottage). No, I then spent the next several months going “I guess I need to write this up in a paper somehow.” This was complicated by a few things – the fact I hadn’t ever written a paper based on fieldwork (nor read many), the fact that the results were not super clear cut, and some good old fashioned procrastination. But I ended up presenting the work a few times, including at my yearly research evaluation meetings and at a couple conferences, and it started to come together into some kind of story.
 
When I took methane measurements, I let the instrument ingest the air passing over for ten minutes, and the instrument took a measurement every second over this time period. This meant I ended up with what I took to calling a ‘spiky plot’ of hundreds of methane measurements over that ten-minute period. I noticed two things in these ‘spiky plots’. The first was that I could find the average methane concentration over that period, and that the average methane concentration tended to be highest right next to the source of the methane and drop off as I moved away downwind – typically the way you expect methane (or any gas) to work, which if nothing else meant the instrument was working. The other thing I noticed was that the variation in how spiky the spiky plot was was also higher right next to the methane source. That is to say, the methane signal varied over a much larger range when I was closest to the source, and had a much smaller range further away or upwind of the source. You can see this in the three graphs below which I took at one of the springs.

Three spiky plots. You can see that the upwind measurement has not only a lower average concentration (dashed line) but also is much, much less spiky (solid line) than the other two. Note that the y-axis is much larger on the 'Inside Wolf Spring' measurement because I saw such huge spikes of methane!

I saw this same phenomenon with the variability getting higher closer to the source even when I wasn’t moving in the exact same direction as the wind. At Wolf Spring I only moved in a (mostly) straight line in the wind direction, but at Gypsum Hill I took two sets of measurements – one along the wind direction, and one at a diagonal to the wind direction. This second set of measurements suggested that getting more data at various locations around the methane source could give us a clearer understanding of how methane behaves in a two-dimensional grid around such a source.

To that end, I sent the instrument back up to the arctic last summer in the company of an MSc student from McMaster with detailed instructions to get me a grid of measurements around Wolf Spring. My procrastination had achieved one thing – I was able to add this new dataset into my paper. And I’m glad I was! From the 2024 measurements I was able to see to impact both distance from the source and the angular distance I was from the wind direction had on the methane signal. (I’ve visualised the geometry simply below in case it’s not clear what I mean, where θ is that angular distance from the wind direction.)

Now, in 2022 I did not have any way of accurately measuring the wind direction. Instead I used a technique which is actually similar to how the Phoenix Lander did it, wherein I held up a roll of flagging tape and watched which way the wind blew it. In 2024 we were a bit more high-tech: the master’s student had access to a small weather station which gave me actual numbers for my wind direction. Knowing the position of the instrument at each measurement and the wind direction at the time of the measurement, I was able to get the distance from the source (d) and the angle of the instrument to the wind direction (θ) and combine these (d/cos(θ)) and compare this value to the average methane concentration and the variability in the measurements. I found that both fell off with increasing d/cos(θ) (or distance from the center of the methane plume), but that the variability actually fell off in a slightly more predictable way.  

Okay, you may be thinking, this is all mildly interesting but what does this have to do with planetary science? Well, as has been discussed on this blog before, there’s a lot we don’t know about martian methane. One of the unanswered questions is where it’s coming from – both in the sense of what is producing it, but of more interest to this work, the actual location from which it is being emitted. We know that we see methane plumes on Mars, but we don’t know how long they last, how the behave or, again, where they’re coming from. If we did send an instrument to Mars to investigate this, we could use what I learned in the arctic to determine what that instrument should look like and also how we should use it to find the source of these methane plumes.

I learned that the variability is a better indicator of how close we are to a methane source. The variability I saw in my spiky plots is over very short timescales, thus our hypothetical instrument should be able to make high frequency measurements to capture changes over these short timescales. I also learned that knowing the wind direction is pretty important, so our instrument should be combined with some kind of wind sensor. My measurements were taken from various locations around the methane source, so having our instrument on something that can move like a rover (or even a drone!) may be more useful than if the instrument just stands still.

There’s more I could say about this, but I don’t entirely want to spoil my paper (coming soon to an Acta Astronautica near you!). Even though it took nearly three years, it turns out there was quite a bit to learn from a few slap-dash methane measurements in the very distant north. 

To read the paper, visit: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576525003212

The Center of the Universe – My Experience Interning at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory

We often encounter kids in our outreach work who can't wait to be astronauts when they grow up. Somehow this didn't have the same pull for me. Instead, I was mesmerized by the robotic spacecraft  exploring the distant reaches of the solar system. One facility came up over and over again in watching documentary after documentary on PBS about those probes: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. It was a thrill to visit while I was in graduate school. I still don't think I'm completely recovered from having a badge and a parking pass during the 90-sol prime mission of MSL while I was a postdoc!! Because of that, it's always a joy when one of our own here at PVL gets to experience this place for themselves. First there was Raymond, then Emily and, later on, Brittney. Recently, one of our PhD students, Grace Bischof (pictured above), had the opportunity to spend the winter working projects on-lab. She relates her experience below.

By Grace Bischof

In late 2020, I submitted a scientific proposal to the Technologies for Exo-Planetary Science (TEPS) program, with hopes of becoming a TEPS trainee. Upon a successful application, I was able browse through a list of TEPS collaborators with whom I could carry out a four-month long internship (assuming they accepted my inquiry to work with them). There was quite an appealing list of places to intern with – from national collaborators at Canadian universities and within industry, to international collaborators in institutions as far as Japan. There was one collaborator, however, that immediately jumped out of the page for me: Michael Mischna, who is a researcher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

I had seen Michael’s name previously through a former PVL member – Brittney Cooper – who carried out an internship at JPL a couple years before I had arrived in the lab, and whose internship project with Michael inspired the bulk of my master’s thesis. Not only that, but as a member of the Mars Science Laboratory team since 2020, JPL was a place of legends to me, as JPL is the section of NASA that manages planetary robotic missions including the Curiosity rover. The idea of working there myself was something of a dream. In the summer of 2021, John reached out to Michael on my behalf to inquire if there was a place for me to carry out my internship with him, and luckily there was! Not only would I have the opportunity of working with Michael, but I would also be working with Leslie Tamppari, who had been project scientist on the Phoenix mission. 

After a year’s worth of delays due to the lingering pandemic, in January 2023, I packed two giant suitcases and flew down to Pasadena, California to start my adventure. After hopping off the plane at LAX (haha!), I was immediately greeted to views of the San Gabriel mountains, palm trees, and warm weather. I made my way to the house I was renting with four strangers, which luckily was not an internet scam, and spent the first couple of days unpacking and settling into my new home. 

 

(The first picture I took upon arrival in Pasadena. I couldn’t get over the palm trees.)

Although I had somehow found myself in LA during SoCal’s rainiest winter in a couple decades, nothing could rain on my parade that first day at JPL. Even the 5:30 am wake up call to ensure I was on-time for the first day’s onboarding activities felt exciting. I can clearly remember sitting on the LA city-bus as it approached the JPL gates and feeling awe at the opportunity ahead of me. The first day was spent filling in forms, giving my fingerprints, and taking a photo for my new JPL badge. Afterward, I met with Leslie and Michael to discuss the work I would be completing over the next few months, and then I was given a tour of the 168-acre lab by Michael. At JPL, you often need to have your walking shoes on to get from building to building.

Now, I should probably mention the actual science I did while I was at JPL before returning to the fun stuff. The plan was to work on two projects: the first was polishing some work I did in my master’s, using a radiative transfer model to determine the water-ice opacities at the Phoenix mission landing site. The second was to use the Mars Weather, Research, and Forecasting (MarsWRF) general circulation model to simulate the atmospheres of planets around stars with different stellar type, with future plans to expand this work to investigate the effect this would have on land-ocean distribution.

As science so often goes, the first project encountered many issues. A bug was found in the radiative transfer model which resulted in spending much of my time compiling and re-compiling, running and rerunning the model to determine the source of the issue. The MarsWRF work, however, went much more smoothly. I first spent a couple weeks becoming comfortable using the model. MarsWRF is a giant model, with many moving parts. I was set up with a NASA Supercomputing account so that I could run the model with relative quickness (often, this still took hours to days). Once I had the hang of using the model, I ran some cases simulating the ancient Martian environment to send to a team at Rice University who would use the inputs I provided for a Paleo-Mars lake model. Then, I got to work on the stellar-type investigation. I learned how to make changes to the source code of the model (which could be quite a task – altering several files to ensure that all the correct inputs were feeding into the correct scripts). Once I edited MarsWRF such that the user can define the temperature of the star they wish to simulate around, I ran the model for a Mars-like planet with a thin atmosphere around F-, G-, K-, and M-type stars. From this, we determined that, for the atmosphere that was set up, hotter stars will have more shortwave flux reach the surface of such a planet. This work was the first step in understanding exoplanet atmospheres around different stellar type and will eventually be applied more widely to understand the habitability of exoplanets based on star-type. Working on these projects with Leslie and Michael was such a delight, as they were incredibly supportive during this work.

Not only was the work I was doing at JPL extremely cool, but also the lab itself is one of the most incredible places to work. I was fortunate enough to have an office in the Science building (yes, there was big sign atop the front door reading Science). Although the office was very small and windowless, it got the job done, and I had two great office-mates. There was also ample seating around lab when I was craving a change of scenery. Sometimes I would work in the main cafeteria to be around the buzz of people conversing over their morning coffee, but my favourite place to work was the JPL mall. The mall is a big open area near the front of lab, which had plenty of tables set out to work or eat lunch outside in the fresh air. Working all day on the mall was how I managed to get a sunburn in February – a phenomenon I am not used to during Februarys in Canada. 

At JPL, cool things are happening all the time. In the main cleanroom, High Bay 1, they were assembling the Europa Clipper spacecraft when I was there. How amazing it was to look upon the brilliant people putting together a spacecraft that will one day be orbiting the moon of another planet so far out in the solar system. As cool as it is, this was one of the buildings I was only able to access if I brought an American with me. As a foreign national, there were several areas of lab that were off limits without an American escort – they take security very seriously at JPL.

 

The main cleanroom where the Europa Clipper Spacecraft was being assembled. If you look closely, you can see the workers in their bunny suits. Don’t be fooled by the worker at the front left of the picture – that’s a mannequin known as High Bay Bob, who is often moved around to appear to be carrying out various tasks. Currently, Europa Clipper has been removed from the cleanroom for testing, but a livestream of the cleanroom can typically be found on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKDA6smS9_k

One of the most memorable days for me was when I was able to visit the Mars Yard to watch the Perseverance Rover’s twin, OPTIMISM (Operational Perseverance Twin for Integration of Mechanisms and Instruments Sent to Mars) out into the yard completing some mobility testing. The Mars Yard is a big, sandy yard that is used to mimic the terrain of Mars. Here, OPTIMISM and MAGGIE (Mars Automated Giant Gizmo for Integrated Engineering – also known as Curiosity’s twin), are brought out for a multitude of testing purposes, including mobility and instrument testing, sample collection, or testing new autonomous algorithms. This day, I was also able to go into the garage to see MAGGIE, which was so incredible after working with the Curiosity rover for the past 3 years.

(Top: Outside in the Mars Yard with OPTIMISM as it completes mobility testing. Bottom: Inside the garage with MAGGIE)

Now, why is the blogpost titled, “The Center of the Universe”? Well, within the Space Flight Operations Facility on lab is the Mission Control Center. Here is where the data from the Deep Space Network antennas in Canberra (Australia), Goldstone (California), and Madrid (Spain) are managed. These giant dishes talk to the spacecraft that are currently exploring the solar system (and beyond for the Voyagers), and that communication is all funneled through the mission control room at JPL. This is also the room from which spacecraft, such as the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers, were landed on the surface of Mars. The story goes that former-JPL director, Charles Elachi, upon thinking about how all the information from the solar system comes into this room once said, “This must be the center of the universe!" There is now a big plaque in the floor in this room declaring it as the Center of the Universe. The JPL mission control center has someone within it, monitoring data around the clock to ensure there are no issues. In fact, since Southern California is so Earthquake-prone, Space Flight Operation Facility was built to be Earthquake-proof to protect the precious control center inside.

(Top: The Mission Control Center, where you can watch the DSN dishes communicating with spacecraft all over the solar system and beyond. Bottom: There is a superstition at JPL that peanuts must be passed around to ensure that launches and landings are successful, dating back to the 1960s. The lucky peanuts were eaten for Curiosity and Perseverance’s landings, among many others)

From my first day, the other interns who I met were incredibly kind and open. The JPL researchers and staff were all supportive and encouraging. I was lucky to experience only friendly and inviting people. The interns I met came to JPL from all over the world – Singapore, Australia, Italy, and Iceland, to name only a few – and were all open to having the most fulfilling experience at JPL, and in Southern California, as possible. I felt satisfied with not only the work I was doing at JPL, but also felt enriched by the experiences and memories I was making with my fellow colleagues.

Top: A hike up Echo Mountain trail which begins just north of Pasadena. This hike was organized by the Australian interns who had heard there was snow at the top of the hike. By the time we got there, one singular patch of snow about 0.25 square meters in size remained. They still made a few snowballs out of it to throw. Bottom: The view of the sunset from Joshua Tree National. My first time in the desert! We spent two nights camping in Joshua Tree, filling the days with hiking and rock-climbing (which I observed from the ground….).

The month of May came quicker than I could’ve imagined, and soon I was flying back to Toronto to continue my PhD back at York. While it was great to be back seeing my family, friends, and pets, my experience at JPL is one I will cherish forever. I feel incredibly grateful to have spent four months at such an amazing place, working with people who have such a hunger to explore what is out there in the universe. I will take the lessons I learned there with me through the rest of my degree – and hey, maybe in 2.5-years’ time when I’ve graduated with my PhD, JPL will have not seen the last of me (wink, wink, someone hire me!!).

Completing an Internship at the Canadian Space Agency (CSA)

Last fall and into the winter term, PVL PhD student Charissa Campbell completed an internship with the Canadian Space Agency. Internships with industry, other academic labs and government are a key part of life at the PVL, giving graduate students the opportunity to get to know career paths close up during their studies.
(Above: CSA headquarters in St-Hubert, QC with the Agency's new logo in the top-left corner)

By Charissa Campbell

From September 2022 until April 2023, I was completing an internship at the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) on top of my grad studies. Being a part of the Technologies for ExoPlanetary Science (TEPS) NSERC CREATE gave me the opportunity to do an internship in another (or similar) area of space exploration. This could be with another researcher or with a company such as MDA who created the Canadarm that is on the International Space Station. However, one area of expertise in space missions that I was particularly interested to learn more about was how the government prepares for a mission through their space agency. Luckily, we were able to find someone at the CSA who connected me with someone who could teach me these skills.

Based on my experience with the Curiosity rover and surface missions, I was added to the team working on the Lunar rover. Even though my expertise is with Mars, it was great to learn on the differences between Mars and the Moon. One big change is that the Lunar rover will be at the south pole, while Curiosity is at Mars’ equator, so solar lighting is extremely different than what I’m used to. This lighting is not unlike what you would find on Earth if you were to travel far up north. There are even some parts of the year that do not see the Sun for several months. However, if you are at the equator then the amount of sunlight throughout the year is very consistent. When planning for a rover at the pole, knowing how the sun lights up your workspace is very important for understanding power conditions.

There are several objectives for the rover, but the main one is to find water-ice on the Moon. Water has been thought to be in Permanently Shadow Regions (PSRs) on the Moon due to the little-to-no sunlight these regions receive. Having water directly on the Moon would significantly help future crewed missions as not only do we need water to live, but the Hydrogen in water could be used as a source of energy for rockets launched from the Lunar surface. Knowing that finding water-ice is the main objective of the rover, 6 payloads will be added. Five will be Canadian and the other will be provided by NASA. Canadensys Aerospace Corporation was selected as the Canadian company to build the rover and develop the Canadian payloads. These payloads include:

    1)    Lunar Hydrogen Autonomous Neutron Spectrometer will detect Hydrogen to help indicate if water-ice is nearby.
    2)    Frozen Regolith Observation and Science Tools (FROST) imaging suite contains three specific payloads:
        i.    Lyman-Alpha Imager will identify surface water-ice by investigating lunar surface sunlight reflectance.
        ii.    Multi-Spectral Imager will identify minerals in the lunar soil
        iii.    Multi-Spectral Imager Macro is similar to (ii) but with much higher resolution
    3)    Radiation Micro-Dosimeter will measure the amount of radiation at the surface to help determine the safety for future human crewmembers on the Moon.

Even though the launch isn’t till 2026 at the earliest, it is amazing to see Canadian technology and knowledge being developed for scientific missions. It will be the first time that Canada will send something to the Moon. The announcement for the Canadian rover can be seen here: https://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/astronomy/moon-exploration/first-canadian-rover-to-explore-the-moon.asp

Overall, I really enjoyed the internship and learned a lot that could help my future career prospects. For the first four months of my internship, I dedicated my entire time to the CSA and moved to Montreal to attend my internship in-person. Many interns were still virtual, but I wanted to fully experience what it was like working at an agency. This includes getting my own cubicle (with my name!) and my own badge that I had to scan multiple times to reach my office. The opportunity to do this in-person was too hard to pass up, even though it was relatively hard on my family as my husband and 2-year old son stayed back in Ontario. 

However, the CSA was extremely generous and allowed me to work-from-home every second Friday so that I could take the VIA train back home for that weekend to see my husband/son. I loved taking the train back/forth between Oshawa and Montreal and learned it was a great way to get some extra work done on the 4-hour one-way trip. At one point, my husband came down to Montreal with Arthur so he could see where Mommy was working for the past few months. 

One perk of working in-person at the CSA is the extensive library. They have a variety of books and offer weekly colloquium sessions. This was my son’s favourite part as he got to read and play with their space shuttles while I completed a meeting. Even though I did love being in-person and really getting to network (including meeting astronauts!) I decided to do the last four months part-time and virtual so that I could be home with my family and work on finishing up my PhD. 

Now that my time at the CSA is complete, I feel very happy with my decision to pursue this type of internship so that I could understand the finer details about how a mission goes from its early stages to being developed. It is rather a unique experience and I would recommend that if you are interested in an internship with the CSA to check out this webpage: https://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/jobs/internships-and-student-jobs.asp. I look forward to watching the news in 2026 (or later) on the Canadian Lunar rover and its success on investigating water-ice at the Moon’s southern pole.

The Next Generation of New Frontiers Exploration

NASA has several different space mission classes for exploring our solar system. These are arranged by funding level as well as by how quickly they can respond to new science. Discovery provides the least funding but is meant to respond to discoveries that may not have even been made at this point. The medium class, New Frontiers, consists of a list of exciting destinations set out in the planetary decadal survey, the latest of which was just completed last year. The largest missions are run directly by NASA and respond to deep and meaningful science questions that cannot be addressed under the other classifications.
Image caption: The four members of the New Frontiers family: The New Horizons mission to Pluto and beyond, the Juno mission to Jupiter, the OSIRIS-REx mission to Bennu, and the Dragonfly mission to Titan. In the next few years, they will be joined by a fifth member that currently only exists as an idea on paper. (NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/GFSC)

By Conor Hayes

As a planetary scientist, proposals for new missions to explore the the Solar System are understandably  quite exciting to me, and I’ve recently become interested in understanding how those proposals are prepared and selected. This January, NASA released the draft Announcement of Opportunity (AO) for New Frontiers 5, the first major AO of my time as a graduate student. Although the final AO is not expected to be released until November, this is an excellent opportunity to take a look at what missions we will expect to be proposed over the next year or so.

New Frontiers (NF) is the middle tier of NASA’s three-tier Solar System exploration program, sitting between the low-cost Discovery Program and the flagship Large Strategic Science Missions Program. As the NF5 name suggests, there have been four previous NF missions: three that are ongoing (New Horizons, Juno, and OSIRIS-REx), and one under development for launch in 2027 (Dragonfly).  The mission selected in NF5 must be launch-ready by no later than the end of 2034. 

The science objectives laid out in the NF5 AO can be traced back to the 2013-22 Planetary Science Decadal Survey. The Decadal Survey is a document created every ten years through a collaborative effort of the planetary science community that outlines the highest-priority goals for the next decade. These priorities inform the selection criteria at all three mission levels, depending on what is felt can be accomplished with those levels’ respective budget caps. NASA aims to release two NF AOs for each Decadal Survey but has fallen short of that cadence in recent years, hence why the NF5 AO was released after the completion of the 2023-32 Decadal Survey despite being the second NF AO of the 2013-22 Decadal Survey. 

So what are the science objectives of the NF5 AO? There are six mission themes, each of which has its own list of objectives. To be selected, a mission proposal must address a “proponderance of the science objectives” listed for at least one of the themes. The AO specifies that its use of “proponderance” rather than “majority” is meant to reflect the fact that not all of the listed objectives are of equal importance. A successful proposal could target a small number of high-importance objectives or a large number of low-importance objectives.

The mission themes are as follows, with a brief explanation of some of the key objectives:

Comet Surface Sample Return

In recent years, there have been several missions to return samples from asteroids that were at least partially successful: Hayabusa (Itokawa), Hayabusa2 (Ryugu), and OSIRIS-REx (Bennu). One mission has returned samples from the coma of a comet: Stardust (Wild 2). However, there has not yet been a mission to return samples from the surface of a comet.  Cometary surfaces are interesting as they are rich in volatile organic molecules that have been modified during the comet’s journey through the Solar System. It has been suggested that Earth’s organics may have been delivered through cometary impacts, providing even more motivation to return surface samples. Although some in-situ studies of cometary surfaces have been conducted remotely (most notably Rosetta at 67P), these studies have been necessarily limited by weight and cost considerations that would not be present if samples were returned to be examined in labs on Earth. Organic molecules can be fragile, so it is critical that missions in this theme are able to transport the samples to Earth without destroying  the samples by subjecting them to conditions that would degrade their constituent molecules. A cometary mission should also be able to provide context information about the site the samples were extracted from.

Io Observer

Io is the most volcanically-active body in the Solar System, and missions in this theme will be focused on understanding why that is the case. From my reading of the objectives, an Io Observer has the widest range of science to choose from, and it is unlikely that any proposal would be able to cover them all. Once the mission proposals are finalized, it will be interesting to compare how different proposals in this theme prioritize the science to be returned. These could include determining what fraction of Io’s mantle is molten versus solid, examining the tidal heating mechanisms that are suspected to drive the volcanism, looking for potential tectonic activity, and studying the interactions between the materials ejected from Io’s volcanos and Jupiter’s extremely strong magnetic field.

Lunar Geophysical Network

The goal of missions in this theme should be to examine the Moon’s interior. This could include studying its minerology and composition, as well as its interior heat flow and the distribution and origins of the radioactive isotopes that create that heat flow. To more fully understand the Moon’s interior structure, I would expect to see proposals similar to the InSight lander, which probed the interior of Mars through seismometry. Although the Moon, like Mars, is geologically dead, it experiences Moonquakes like the Marsquakes measured by InSight. The most interesting part of this theme (at least to me) is the “network” in its name. Although none of the science objectives explicitly require it, the name suggests the deployment of several spacecraft across the Moon’s surface conducting coordinated observations. With multiple stations in place, such a system would not face the same kinds of challenges that InSight did operating as a solo seismometer. 

Lunar South Pole-Aiken Basin Sample Return

The South Pole-Aiken Basin is one of the largest impact structures in the Solar System, measuring approximately 2,500 km across and 6-8 km deep. It is also the oldest known lunar basin, having formed less than 500 million years after the Moon itself. Consequently, there is interest in understanding its geology as doing so would contribute to our knowledge of the processes that formed the inner Solar System by constraining the specific timing of the Late Heavy Bombardment. Key objectives include providing in-situ validation of remote sensing data, determining the sources of the radioactive isotopes that contribute to the Moon’s internal heat, and comparing the properties of basaltic rock samples returned from the basin with those returned by the Apollo and Luna missions. In addition to returning samples to Earth, a mission in this theme should also provide geologic documentation of the sampling site.

Ocean Worlds (Enceladus)

Although Jupiter’s moon Europa loves to take all of the media attention for its potential subsurface ocean, it is not the only moon that may be hiding liquid water beneath its thick, icy crust. Saturn’s moon Enceladus is particularly interesting due to the presence of over 100 geysers near its south pole that spray massive plumes of water vapor and other volatiles at velocities sufficient to escape Enceladus’ gravitational influence and enter orbit around Saturn. Exploration of these plumes is a priority because they provide us with an opportunity to examine the contents of the potential subsurface ocean without having to drill through the crust. The goals of such a mission would be to determine if the ocean is potentially habitable and, if it is, whether or not life currently exists within it.

 Saturn Probe

Although Cassini orbited Saturn for over 13 years, it did not include an atmospheric entry probe to perform in-situ measurements of the Saturnian atmosphere like Galileo did at Jupiter. A Saturn probe mission would rectify this by launching at least one probe into the atmosphere with the goal of studying both its physical structure and its elemental composition.

~~~~

Is there one mission theme that is more likely to succeed than any of the others? At this point, it’s difficult to say, given that no missions have been proposed. Although it may be my own bias as someone who studies the Moon speaking, I would guess that either of the lunar missions might have a slight leg up over the other themes, just considering the fact that you can do a lot more science by sending $900M to the Moon rather than the outer Solar System. The target date for proposal submission is currently April 2024, with initial Step-1 selections announced by the end of 2024, so the shape of the playing field will become much clearer over the next year.

My Summer Trip to MARS

This past summer, PVL PhD student Alex Innanen traveled up to the high arctic (on an expedition led by Prof. Haley Sapers) to test an instrument called MAGE which may someday fly to Mars. Ironically, the name of the research base at which they were stationed is itself named MARS! Given the harsh conditions, the name is perhaps merited and many space agencies use this area to test out technologies they hope to use in exploration activities. (Image above: MARS as seen from up on Gypsum Hill. You can see the edge of Colour Lake below, and Wolf Mountain rising above the ridge, with Crown Glacier beside it.)

by Alex Innanen

As part of my PhD work, I have been working with an instrument called MAGE (the Mars Atmospheric Gas Evolution experiment), which is intended to study trace gases in the martian atmosphere (including methane). The instrument is an off-axis spectrometer, which I won’t get into detail about here, but it is able to measure very small amounts of and changes in methane and other trace gases.

In July, I was lucky enough to be able to take a version of the instrument up to Nunavut for testing – specifically to Umingmat Nunaat (ᐅᒥᖕᒪᑦ ᓄᓈᑦ), or Axel Heiberg Island, where the McGill Arctic Research Station (MARS) is located. MARS is at 79° N and change, which is not quite as far north as you can go in Canada but is pretty darn close. There were three of us going up: myself, Haley, and Calvin, a grad student from CalTech. Up north, we were joined by two grad students from McGill, whose group was then amalgamated with ours.

The reason for going so far away to test the instrument is because of two sites near MARS that are potential martian analogues – Lost Hammer and Gypsum Hill. Both are hypersaline (very salty) cold springs, which are home to methane seeps. The polar desert also has lots of polygonal terrain, which is formed from the freeze-thaw cycle in the ground and has also been seen on Mars. Polygonal terrain can also show interesting methane dynamics, with the troughs acting as a source of methane and the centre of the polygon acting as a sink. 

Polygonal terrain on Umingmat Nunaat seen from the air. 

But before we could get to taking measurements and making sure the instrument worked in such a remote location, we had to get there. The first leg of our journey was from Toronto to Ottawa, from where our flight would leave. We spent a couple days in Ottawa doing last minute shopping and packing and repacking out many coolers and bags of equipment and food. We had to bring not only the personal things we would need for around three weeks in the north, but also all the scientific equipment for the MAGE experiment and biological sampling that would also be done, and food to last us for our time at MARS. Altogether we had nine pieces of luggage, most of which was oversized by the airline’s standards, as well as a 40-50 L backpack apiece.

From Ottawa, we took the Canadian North airline up to Iqaluit. Iqaluit is already above the tree line and, having never been in the arctic, as soon as we set down I was blown away by the landscape, which is absolutely unlike any other place I’ve ever been. We had three hours in Iqaluit, so we left the airport to do a little looking around before it was time to get on a (smaller) plane to our next stop,
Mittimatalik (ᒥᑦᑎᒪᑕᓕᒃ, Pond Inlet). We had a brief stop there, then a quick hop to Ikpiarjuk (ᐃᒃᐱᐊᕐᔪᒃ, Arctic Bay), and then finally on to Qausuittuq (ᖃᐅᓱᐃᑦᑐᖅ, Resolute). This is where the Polar Continental Shelf Program (PCSP) has a base, and from where we would be flying out to MARS. 

The plan was to spend a few days at PCSP before flying to MARS. However, this plan was quickly derailed by the weather. It was a very wet year, and aside from us, many other teams had not been able to get to their field sites because of a combination of fog, thunderstorms, and, at MARS, an inability to land the small twin otter planes because the ground was too wet. Being stuck at PCSP was not the worst thing in the world. We got to meet lots of other scientists and learn about what they were up to, go for many hikes and appreciate the beautiful arctic landscape, and pack and repack and prepare for when we eventually were able to go to MARS.

Our field team in front of the Twin Otter that took us to and from MARS. From left to right: Calvin, Haley, Louis-Jaques, Scott and Me. 

On July 13, 10 days after we got to PCSP, it finally happened. The fog had finally lifted enough for us to get out, and while the ground was still too soggy to land right at MARS, we were able to land a few kilometers down Expedition Fjord. From there, us and our piles of equipment were ferried up to MARS by helicopter. The helicopters were a very special part of our time at MARS. We had originally planned to have only one helicopter day to take us to Lost Hammer, which is one Fjord south of Expedition. However due to the problems with the twin otter flights and other factors, we ended up having a helicopter at MARS nearly the entirety of our trip. Between us and another group we also had plenty of pilot hours, so we were able to make not only multiple trips to Lost Hammer but also to Crown Glacier and the much nearer Gypsum Hill springs (which are within walking distance, but when you’re bringing a bunch of equipment with you it’s nice to get a lift).

MAGE near the foot of Crown Glacier.

MARS is on one side of Gypsum Hill, overlooking Colour Lake and a view down Expedition Fjord. Once again I was absolutely blown away by the beauty, especially since when we landed the sun had peaked out of the clouds on its way around the sky. Like Qausuittuq, Umingmat Nunaat is a type of region known as a ‘polar desert’, but it didn’t seem like it. Not only was the tundra soggy from so much unseasonal rain, but it was carpeted with all kinds of artic plants – saxifrage, arctic poppies and even a kind of tree, the arctic willow, which instead of growing upwards sends its branches along the ground. As I was taking measurements with the MAGE instrument in the camp, a bee buzzed past me, and I was surprised to see something that looked like a butterfly. It was a butterfly! One of the great parts of staying somewhere with so many scientists is you get to learn about their areas of expertise, and there was an entomologist at MARS who told us all about the kinds of insects we might see. 

The major goal for the MAGE instrument was to be able to bring it up to almost 80° N and turn it on – success! More success followed, and I managed to get readings at MARS, the two spring sites, the polygonal terrain near MARS and at the foot of Crown Glacier. I had a lot of fun figuring out where to put the instrument, how to best run it with its power limitations, and what might make an interesting set of readings. Not only did the instrument successfully collect data on methane abundance, but we also figured out how we might be able to improve the instrument and the data we collected. For instance, I was measuring wind direction by holding up a roll of flagging tape and seeing which way the dangling end blew. An anemometer would let us get much more detailed information about how the wind effects our methane measurements.

The MAGE instrument taking measurements with Lost Hammer spring in the background. The white cone-like mound is made of Gypsum, with the spring hiding inside.

Before I left for the trip, I was extremely nervous, not only because I had never undertaken field work like this before, but also because I’d be spending nearly three weeks in one of the most remote parts of the world and had no idea what to expect. But from the moment I set foot in Nunavut I knew I’d made the right choice to go. There were still difficulties, like when it seemed like we might never make it to MARS, or getting frustrated with the limitations of the instrument, but taken altogether not only did MAGE preform admirably but doing fieldwork helped me discover and strengthen skills I didn’t know I had. I’m so grateful to have had this experience.

Hitching a Ride to the Moon (and Beyond!)

 Above, a series of ten 6-U cubesats can be seen attached to the ring which interfaces between the top of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the payload fairing. It's not unusual these days for spacecraft to use extra mass allowances for these sorts of ride-along launches. It would be very difficult to arrange a special launch just for those spacecraft, so these larger launches provide a vehicle to considerably increase the science return from a space launch and to provide access to (deep) space to others. Here at PVL, we're very excited about the coming small-space era in Planetary Science!

By Conor Hayes

The launch of Artemis I on November 16, 2022 was a highly-publicized event, and for good reason. It has been 50 years since the last time we left the Moon, and although the first crewed landing of the Artemis program is not expected to take place until 2025, Artemis I is still an exciting step towards our return to the Moon.

Much less well-advertised was the fact that the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle was not the only spacecraft riding the SLS rocket to space that night. Accompanying Orion were ten CubeSat microsatellites. The CubeSat standard was established in 1999 and has primarily been used for technology demonstrations and other missions whose higher risks make larger, more expensive satellites challenging to justify. Of course, this means that CubeSats are almost never launched on their own, instead needing to hitch a ride along with some other mission.

The ten CubeSats launched along with Artemis I were all in a 6U configuration, meaning that they each consisted of six CubeSat “units” joined together. A CubeSat unit is a box approximately ten centimetres along each edge with a mass of no more than two kilograms. This extremely small volume means that CubeSats have a very limited ability to propel themselves, so they are typically launched along with a mission that has the same target object. In the case for the Artemis CubeSats, this means that five of the ten microsatellites are aiming for the Moon as well.

So, what were the ten CubeSats that Artemis I carried into space?

ArgoMoon
ArgoMoon is a collaboration between the Italian Space Agency and Argotec, an Italian aerospace engineering company. Its primary mission is to take images of the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage – where all of the CubeSats are stored – and to confirm that the other CubeSats successfully deploy. This mission will demonstrate the ability to use a microsatellite to autonomously inspect and maneuver around another spacecraft. Once deployment of the other CubeSats is complete, ArgoMoon will test the resiliency of its communications equipment in the harsh radiation environment outside of Earth’s magnetic field.

BioSentinel
The BioSentinel CubeSat mission was created by NASA Ames to examine the effects on DNA of long-term exposure to the deep space radiation environment. This is critically important information to have as we prepare for extended missions to the Moon and Mars so that we can develop methods of mitigating DNA damage to reduce the likelihood of astronauts developing various cancers and other threats to their health. BioSentinel will use two different strains of yeast as an analogue for human cells. The health of the yeast cells during the 18 month mission will be assessed by monitoring their growth and metabolic activity and comparing it to the radiation doses measured by sensors onboard the spacecraft. The results will then be compared to three identical copies of the BioSentinel experiment, one of which will be exposed to the low Earth orbit radiation environment onboard the International Space Station.

CuSP
The CubeSat for Solar Particles (CuSP) is a technology demonstration mission developed by the Southwest Research Institute. It contains three science instruments designed to count the number of energetic particles ejected by the Sun, as well as to measure the strength and direction of the interplanetary solar magnetic field. If all goes well, CuSP could justify the creation of a fleet of similar small satellites positioned throughout the Solar System to form a space weather monitoring system. 

EQUULEUS
The EQUilibriUm Lunar-Earth point 6U Spacecraft (EQUULEUS) is one of two Artemis CubeSats provided by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Despite its small size, much science has been packed into it. EQUULEUS carries three science instruments as well as an experimental propulsion system. Two of the instruments are designed to detect the presence of dust and micro-asteroids in the space between Earth and the Moon, while the third will characterize the near-Earth plasma environment. Rather than traditional rocket fuel-powered propulsion, EQUULEUS will use water thrusters to propel itself into a halo orbit at the Earth-Moon L2 Lagrangian point and to fly-by any micro-asteroids that it discovers.

LunaH-Map
The Lunar Polar Hydrogen Mapper (LunaH-Map) was provided by Arizona State University to map water ice at the Moon’s poles. It will use a neutron spectrometer to measure the flux of high-energy neutrons leaving the lunar surface. These neutrons are suppressed by the presence of hydrogen atoms, so areas where LunaH-Map measures fewer neutrons are likely enhanced in hydrogen-bearing molecules like water. This mission will build on results from the Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector (LEND) onboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), building higher-resolution maps thanks to its lower-altitude orbit (5 km for LunaH-Map versus 20 km for LRO). Unfortunately, the satellite experienced a problem with its propulsion system shortly after deployment, meaning that it was unable to insert itself into lunar orbit. However, there are still several months left to diagnose the problem before its current trajectory will make the mission unrecoverable. If the LunaH-Map is able to diagnose and fix the problem and get the spacecraft into orbit, the mission is planned to last for 96 days, after which it will be launched into a polar crater. 

Lunar IceCube
As its name suggests, Lunar IceCube is another mission to search for ice on the Moon, developed by Morehead State University in collaboration with the Busek Company, the Catholic University of America, and NASA Goddard. It will hunt for water ice and other volatile molecules at the Moon’s poles from a 100 km orbit using an infrared spectrometer. 

LunIR
LunIR (formerly known as SkyFire), designed by Lockheed Martin Space, is another lunar mapping mission. Its primary mission objective is to test a low-cost thermal imager that could be used to characterize future landing sites on the Moon and Mars. It will also test the use of an electrospray thruster, in which electrically-charged liquid is expelled to provide thrust, for small orbital adjustments. The LunIR team have not provided updates on the spacecraft’s status post-launch, so it is currently unclear whether or not it is operating as expected. 

NEA Scout
The Near-Earth Asteroid Scout (NEA Scout) is a NASA mission that will use a solar sail to propel itself to 2020 GE, a near-Earth asteroid approximately 18 metres across. Because it is extremely difficult to identify and track objects of this size, not much is known about them, leaving a critical gap in planetary protection plans. This mission carries a single instrument – a camera that will be used to take high-resolution imagery of 2020 GE. Unfortunately, NEA Scout failed to make contact with the Deep Space Network after deployment, so the team is currently attempting to recover the spacecraft.

OMOTENASHI
The Outstanding MOon exploration TEchnologies demonstrated by NAno Semi-Hard Impactor (OMOTENASHI; some very creative acronym work!) is the second of JAXA’s contributions to the Artemis I CubeSat collection. It was designed to be a semi-hard lunar lander, using a combination of rockets and airbags to impact the lunar surface at 20–30 m/s. It would then use an onboard radiation detector to study the radiation environment at the surface. Shortly after deployment, communication with OMOTENASHI was lost. After five days of recovery efforts, the team concluded that the spacecraft’s solar panels had failed to find the Sun, leading to an unrecoverable shutdown of the spacecraft following battery depletion.

Team Miles
The final of the ten CubeSats is Team Miles, a technology demonstration mission by Fluid and Reason, LLC. Team Miles was developed to test new propulsion and communications technologies. It will fly past the Moon towards Mars, with a goal to travel at least four million km and possibly up to 96 million km.
These will certainly not be the last CubeSats launched towards the Moon as we enter the Artemis era of lunar exploration. Indeed, there are already three more prepared for launch that just missed the Artemis I integration deadline: Cislunar Explorers, Earth Escape Explorer, and Lunar Flashlight. Although they may not nearly be as flashy as larger missions like the main Artemis flights, the proliferation of microsatellites has provided excellent opportunities for groups with less available funding to get good science done without having to compete for space onboard a more expensive mission, making off-Earth research more accessible for everyone.

There and Back Again: A MAPLE Tale

 

As we approach the final year of the MAPLE project, it's time to take the instrument out into the field! This past summer, PVL PhD student Charissa Campbell and then-MSc (now PhD) student Grace Bischof took MAPLE out to Argentia, Newfoundland one of the foggiest places on Earth where the Gulf Stream meets the Labrador current. Mother nature didn't disappoint and Charissa and Grace came back with spectacular images and science.

by Charissa Campbell

This summer was quite busy as we were preparing for the deployment of our MAPLE (Mars Atmospheric Panoramic camera and Laser Experiment) instrument to the highly foggy area of Argentia, Newfoundland. There are two main field testing sites for MAPLE which includes a foggy location (large aerosols) and Arctic location (small, Martian-like aerosols). With the Arctic being more Mars-like, MAPLE will travel alone and be controlled remotely to fully mimic spaceflight conditions. However, as a starting point, we decided to travel with MAPLE to the Argentia, NL area to test in foggy conditions.

MAPLE is based on a previous experiment done by the Phoenix lander that took images of the onboard lidar laser to classify ice-water content of aerosols near the surface (https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA11030). However, the camera could only take an image of a small portion of the sky, limiting the view of the laser. MAPLE is equipped with a panoramic camera to allow the full sky to be captured, which also allows for multiple lasers to be in use at the same time and clouds to be monitored during the day. For Argentia, we equipped MAPLE with 8 different lasers in a variety of wavelengths and power (class) to try to determine if a specific set was better for future measurements. Adding different wavelengths of lasers allows us to also investigate the size of aerosols. To further increase the science output of MAPLE, we will employ techniques used with the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL, Curiosity) to calculate aerosol properties such as optical depth, wind properties and others.  By using knowledge from previous Martian surface missions, we can develop MAPLE in a way to maximize the amount of returnable data in a low-cost way.

Defining a mission as low-cost means trying to find the minimal amount of power, data volume and size needed to acquire your measurements. Since we are in the early stages of the project, we created MAPLE from scratch using a pelican case which held our components. This includes a panoramic camera, 8 lasers and a raspberry pi that is used to control the camera. Several battery packs were used, one for each laser and a separate larger one for just the raspberry pi. As MAPLE gets more automated, the lasers will eventually be controlled by the raspberry pi and power can be more streamlined through just the Pi. The size of MAPLE seemed to work well, and windows had to be installed in the top for the camera and lasers to shine through. I never took construction in school, so I had a lot of late nights with the drill to push through two rectangles for the laser windows. Luckily, we already had a bubble panoramic window so I simply had to construct a properly sized hole for the window. Somehow, I managed to fully construct MAPLE and not injure myself. We also got humidity measuring packs to see how sealed the inside was. Minimal humidity was noted within the case, which is a win considering we were in essentially a cloud most times we were on the field. One concern we did have with keeping MAPLE low-cost was that the images were rather large and I only equipped the raspberry pi with a 32GB SD card. A lot of extra time was spent moving files over to a portable hard drive so we will be looking into upgrading the size of the SD card while also optimizing the size of the images. 

The field site itself was really beautiful and was a bucket list item for me as Newfoundland was the last province for me to visit in Canada. Interestingly enough, there were no rental cars available on the whole island for the 2 week we were wanting to travel. However, with the coming end of the foggy season we didn’t want to miss the opportunity to make observations. I love taking different methods of transportation and stumbled upon a ferry that travels from North Sydney, Nova Scotia to, lo and behold, Argentia. There were rental cars available in North Sydney so my colleague and I flew directly there, picked up the car and immediately took it on the ferry across to the island. We were able to get a room on the ferry itself with 2 beds, a bathroom, and the best view of the ocean. This was ideal as the ferry is about 16 hours long, overnight, so the bed was very much needed. 

Once arrived, we got settled in the town of Placentia, which was a short drive to/from the field site which was in the port where our ferry was docked. They had a cool lifting bridge that was a great backdrop for determining when the fog was rolling in. We did most of our experiments back at our arrival dock.  It was originally a World War 2 airfield site owned by the Americans, given by the British for the sole purpose of making it a Naval airbase. The Atlantic Charter was signed just outside the port which was thought to lead to the United Nations Charter (https://www.hiddennewfoundland.ca/argentia-naval-station). As someone who loves reading history, it was amazing to do the experiments in such an area. We were on one of the old runways as it was perfect for pointing the lasers in a way determine how far the lasers could travel. This was the goal for the first day on the site.

As always, something will go wrong on the field site and that was the case on our first day. When we first started testing, we expected to fiddle with the image parameters, such as exposure, to see the laser. However, no matter what we did we could not see any of the lasers in the images. We had not brainstormed what would happen in this case so we took a rather long lunch break to think about what we could do to mitigate the problem. We decided to try taking images anyways in the sun and increased the number of images taken for each laser configuration. The sun might be so bright in the day that the camera simply cannot view them in the image. We also decided to do some trial runs when it got dark. One evening, the fog rolled in so heavily that I got MAPLE all set up late in the evening. It got so foggy that it truly felt like I was in a horror movie or unsolved mysteries as I was unable to see a few feet in front of me. Images of what MAPLE could see in the dark showed how important the dark was to our experiments. After gathering a variety of images, we knew what the game plan was for the rest of the trip. 

We finished our Newfoundland trip with images in both day and night that will be analyzed further. Many questions were both answered, and the trip was extremely useful on telling us how we need to prepare MAPLE for the Arctic. The trip was a challenge but a great way to gain leadership experience. Since I was not the only person on this trip, Grace has these words to say about her time on our field trip:

“Most of the research I’ve completed throughout my degree has consisted of analyzing data acquired from space missions – whether that be temperature, data or pictures taken from the surface of Mars. Because of this, my days usually involve sitting at my computer, writing code, and generally not moving around too much. Going to Newfoundland for fieldwork allowed me to explore different facets of research that I usually do not get to explore. Working with MAPLE meant driving out to the field site in the mornings, setting up the instrumentation, and taking several experiments to try and capture the science. There is a degree of unpredictability with fieldwork that we don’t normally experience in our day-to-day work. Will it be foggy enough? Will the batteries have enough power for the experiments? Will the inside of the instrument get too humid? Carrying out this fieldwork was a very unique experience, and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to try something new!”

 

Exploring Active Planetary Defense & the DART Mission

One strong motivation for learning more about asteroids is to understand their potential for colliding with the earth. In this week's post, MSc student Ankita Das considers the Double-Asteroid Redirect Test, or DART, Mission. (Above: Asteroid Didymos and its moonlet Dimorphos taken by the Arecibo telescope is radar taken in 2003 Source: Arecibo Observatory/NASA)

by Ankita Das

With the launch of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, the age of active planetary defense has formally begun. The DART mission is the first interplanetary spacecraft testing an asteroid redirection method to better prepare humankind for a potential mass extinction event due to the impact from a planetary body or asteroid fragment [1]. The spacecraft, launched in November 2021, is intended to crash into Dimorphos, a moonlet of asteroid Didymos, in September 2022, to see how much the speed and path of the moonlet can be altered.

Although this is the first dedicated spacecraft to be sent to an asteroid to study planetary defense techniques, ideas of such a mission have been around for decades.  In 1977, at NASA Ames Summer Study on Space Settlements, Dr. Brian O׳Leary, a former NASA astronaut candidate, proposed using mass drivers to move Earth-approaching Apollo and Amor asteroids to Earth’s vicinity during opportunities when the required velocity change to redirect them was low [2]. A critical development in this area occurred when a 2010 NASA study proposed the Asteroid Redirect Robotic Mission (ARRM) to use high-power solar electric propulsion technology to capture, and return an entire, very small (~10,000 kg), near Earth asteroid to the International Space Station [3]. In this article we reflect on how active planetary defense missions can safeguard us from a catastrophic impact events and if it is worthwhile to invest in a defense procedure.

The idea of protecting the planet from asteroid or cometary impacts emerged when researchers gained more knowledge about the small bodies of the solar system and investigated the impact history of the Earth. Upon investigation, scientists found multiple impacts from the Earth’s past, which have now been masked by erosion, geologic activities, and vegetation. The early discussions on planetary defense started once it was found that asteroid impacts most likely led to the mass extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs. In the meantime, we also gained more knowledge about the small bodies of the solar system, informing scientists about the likelihood and frequency of potentially catastrophic impacts on the Earth. These studies also helped identify how past events from the Earth’s history could be linked to impacts from outer bodies [4].

For example, the infamous Tunguska event of 1908 involved an explosion equivalent 12 megatons of TNT, attributed to a meteor air burst, where a stony meteoroid of more than 50 m in diameter entered the Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of about 27 km/s and disintegrated near the Tunguska river in a sparsely populated region of Siberia in Russia. It was estimated that about 80 million trees over an area of 2150 sq. km. perished due to the impact [5]. More recently, an event that occurred in the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia in 2013 drew attention from the scientific community where a small asteroid - about the size of a six-story building - broke up over the city of Chelyabinsk. The asteroid, about 17 m in diameter and weighing approximately 10,000 metric tons, hit the Earth’s atmosphere at about 18 km/s. The energy of the resulting explosion exceeded 470 kilotons of TNT. The blast was so strong that it triggered detections from monitoring stations as far away as Antarctica [6].

Assessing Potential Threats

The Earth Impact Database [7], maintained by the University of New Brunswick, currently identifies as many as 190 confirmed impact structures on Earth’s surface. They range from small (tens to hundreds of meters in diameter) impact craters to large ones like Vredefort in South Africa measuring 160 km in diameter, dating back to 2023 million years. It is also true that not all impacts from outer bodies would result in terrestrial craters (i.e., they could explode in the atmosphere causing only air burst like the one at Tunguska), not all impact structures on the Earth’s surface have been identified [8]. Therefore, we may consider that these events are common and frequent on geologic timescales and the fact that our awareness of the population of potential impactors in the Solar System has been improving, how much of a threat do asteroids and comets really pose? 

Imagine the possibility of an asteroid with a diameter of more than 300 m heading towards a critical infrastructure like a nuclear plant. While the probabilities of such an event may be extremely low, it is essential that we develop our understanding of the risk associated with the entry of planetary bodies, considering the potential damage even a smaller asteroid (with diameter of less than 300 m) may cause to our civilization. Potentially hazardous asteroids and comets are categorized by NASA [9] and researchers [10]. The threat and potential of an impact primarily depend on the size and composition of the object, the surface being impacted, and the angle of impact. As of today, more than 28 000 near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) have been identified with majority of them having diameters in the range 30 – 100 m [11]. Smaller objects burn up in the atmosphere harmlessly as they approached the Earth. Larger objects, even if they burn up before hitting the ground, cause air burst or explosion, leading to severe damage.

To assess the potential damage and probability of impact, first, we need to detect these objects, and then we need to monitor their orbits. This is done from ground-based and space telescopes. By applying Newton’s laws and N-body simulations (i.e., modeling equations of motions for N objects interacting gravitationally), the orbits of most of these objects are predictable for at least 100 years into the future. Only the asteroids whose orbits cross that of the Earth are potentially dangerous. However, as mentioned earlier, not all asteroids are of the same size, and the larger the object, the higher is the threat. At the same time larger objects are rarer. Events like the Tunguska and Chelyabinsk were caused by smaller bodies compared to the events that caused the mass extinction approximately 66 million years ago due to an impact from as asteroid of diameter of about 10 km [12].

Thus, although the Solar System is populated with small bodies like asteroids and comets, only a fraction of these objects are of sizes that can be damaging and can potentially go on a trajectory that will coincide with the Earth to cause an impact. Asteroids that follow orbital trajectories within Earth's "neighborhood" (i.e., within 7.5 million km of Earth's orbit) around the Sun and that are more than 140 m in diameter are potential hazard to Earth and identified as Potential Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) [13]. Ongoing research has enabled us to come up with a special classification of asteroids and objects which are closer to Earth’s orbit [14]. Not all near-Earth objects (NEOs) will impact the Earth at some point, but it is more likely that if an impact does happen, it will be an NEO.

Our Options for Defense

So, what are our options for defense as a species if an asteroid were to head our way? There are a few popular ideas. The first one is sending a spacecraft to the asteroid that can fragment the asteroid into smaller pieces. This idea sounds great but is not practical since the smaller fragments can also cause harm to the planet. Think of it as breaking down a big problem into 100 tiny chunks and having to deal with these 100 tiny chunks of the same problem. An alternate and favored line of action currently being investigated by the scientific community is deflecting the asteroid into a new orbit so that it misses the Earth completely. This can be achieved in a few ways. One would be to crash a spacecraft into the asteroid itself to gently nudge the asteroid into a newer orbit. This is what the DART mission is set to test on the asteroid Dimorphos, a small (160 m diameter) asteroid  in orbit around a larger orbit of the asteroid Didymos (780 m diameter). DART’s LICIACube spacecraft will crash on Dimorphos to create a kinetic impact that will change the orbit of Dimorphos around Didymos.

Image: Schematic of LICIACube attempting to change the orbit of Dimorphos
Image Source: Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory /NASA

Although Didymos is not a threat to Earth, this will be a demonstration of how effective the kinetic impactor method is when it comes to changing the course of an asteroid, called redirection.

Another idea involves the gravity tractor method that exploits the gravitational attraction of a spacecraft with the asteroid to cause continuous minuscule changes in the orbit, which would, cumulatively, over time result in a more visible change of the trajectory of the asteroid. The only downside to this method is it is a long process that involve several years [15], and hence we will need to know about the asteroid well in advance from the date of potential impact. This brings us to the question, what happens if we discover an asteroid heading our way and we do not have sufficient time to send a spacecraft to the asteroid to deflect it? Such a scenario will call for a damage control strategy where the trajectory of the asteroid is monitored, the potential places on the Earth where the asteroid is expected to impact is calculated, and measures are taken to minimize the damage that could be caused to life or infrastructure.

To conclude, planetary defense is an exciting field of study which is necessary for the safekeeping of the planet. In 2016 NASA established the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) to manage its ongoing mission of planetary defense. NEOs and NEAs need to be monitored constantly, in addition to the continued identification and discovery of additional potential impactors capable of significant damage so that we can prepare for a potentially catastrophic impact event. The DART mission is a critical mission that will be our first step in equipping ourselves better in the event of a hazardous asteroid coming Earth’s way.

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Sources:

[1]  https://www.nasa.gov/specials/pdco/index.html 
[2] Mazanek, D. D., Merrill, R. G., Brophy, J. R., & Mueller, R. P. (2015). Asteroid redirect mission concept: a bold approach for utilizing space resources. Acta Astronautica, 117, 163-171.
[3] https://authors.library.caltech.edu/86061/1/Asteroid_Redirect_Robotic_Mission.pdf
[4]  Sleep, N. H., Zahnle, K. J., Kasting, J. F., & Morowitz, H. J. (1989). Annihilation of ecosystems by large asteroid impacts on the early Earth. Nature, 342(6246), 139-142.
[5] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0019103518305104?via%3Dihub
[6]  https://www.space.com/33623-chelyabinsk-meteor-wake-up-call-for-earth.html
[7]  http://www.passc.net/EarthImpactDatabase/New%20website_05-2018/World.html
[8]  https://www.boulder.swri.edu/~cchapman/crcepsl.pdf
[9]  https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/about/neo_groups.html
[10]  http://www.boundarycondition.com/NEOwp_Chapman-Durda-Gold.pdf
[11]  https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/stats/size.html
[12]  https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/97JE01743
[13]  https://solarstory.net/asteroids/near-earth-asteroids
[14]  https://space.nss.org/national-space-society-planetary-defense-library/
[15]  https://iaaspace.org/wp-content/uploads/iaa/Scientific%20Activity/conf/pdc2015/IAA-PDC-15-04-11.pdf