50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing Blog Post

This week, PVL Undergraduate Researcher Ariella Sapers reflects on a significant anniversary for space exploration: the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Moon landings. Above, a photo of a plaque like the one left on the lunar surface by Apollo 11. And yes, folks, that is Richard Nixon's signature on the bottom (to my knowledge the only politician whose name is written on a monument off the Earth) - it took the efforts of three different administrations to pull off this event.

By Ariella Sapers

With the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing just passing, I thought it was only appropriate to dedicate a blog all about the event and the celebrations that occurred here at York University!

On July 20th 1969, three brave men, Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz’’ Aldrin, and Michael Collins took a leap of faith as part of NASA’s Apollo 11 lunar mission and headed to the moon. The Apollo Lunar Module, The Eagle, landed on the moon at 20:17 UTC in which Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the surface of the moon on July 21st at 02:56 UTC. With this walk, human beings had officially walked on the surface of a planetary body that wasn’t Earth. 

The Wonderful Life as Interim Observatory Director of the Allan I. Carswell Observatory

This past year while I was in Australia, PVL PhD student Indiana Jones (I mean, Charissa Campbell - see the photo below the cut below) took on a very unusual TAing assignment in the Department of Physics. But she handled the assignment with grace, growing into the role. She returns to the lab with a new skill-set that I have no doubt will help her reach her graduate student goals.

By Charissa Campbell  

From January till July 2019 I had the great honour of being the Interim Observatory Director of the campus observatory, known as the Allan I. Carswell Observatory. The great Paul Delaney was on sabbatical for 6 months and needed a temporary replacement to maintain the observatory while he was gone. I immediately jumped on the idea when Paul asked me as not only would I gain valuable outreach and leadership experience, but it would allow me the ability to work with telescopes, always a passion of mine.

The observatory houses two telescopes, a 40 cm and 60 cm. This size describes the diameter of the primary mirror in the telescope. The bigger the mirror, the brighter are the objects that you observe, allowing you to see dimmer things that are often farther away. We’ve been lucky enough to be able to get a new telescope with a 1 m mirror, the largest on a Canadian campus (https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/university-new-telescope-research-1.4287794). It was supposed to be installed December 2018 (before Paul left on sabbatical), but was unfortunately delayed. This is common with important piece of equipment, especially of the astronomy related kind. I will admit that I was a little relieved that the 1 m was delayed until Paul got back as I would have been significantly busier as the telescope would have been in high demand for tours, media, etc. Keep an eye out for when the new telescope is ready! For more information on the different events the observatory does, feel free to check out their website: http://observatory.info.yorku.ca

Dr. Godin’s TEPS Internship or How I learned to stop Physicsing and Love Micro-Biology

PVL PDF Paul Godin recently returned from his TEPS internship at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. It was a productive trip and he made many friends along the way, including the character over his shoulder to the right in the picture above.

By Dr. Paul Godin

Many members of the PVL receive funding from the Technologies for Exo-planetary Science (TEPS) NSERC CREATE program (http://teps.science.yorku.ca/). TEPS is more than just funding for the group, it also provides opportunities for go on international research internships. This past spring, I was accepted for an internship at the Space Life Sciences Lab (SLSL) at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The SLSL was originally built as a collaboration between NASA and the University of Florida to conduct biology-based experiments relevant to the space program. However, about 10 years ago NASA sold off their portion of the building to Space Florida, a state government agency responsible for promoting the space sector in Florida; the University of Florida portion remains. My internship was under one of these University of Florida professors, Dr. Andrew C. Schuerger. 

Andy’s lab focuses on planetary protection, which is insuring that missions to other planets don’t accidentally contaminate those worlds with terrestrial microbes. As such Andy’s lab conducts experiments testing the limits of bacterial survivability in extreme environments. The centerpiece of his lab is a state-of-the-art Mars simulation chamber, capable of recreating the temperature, atmosphere, and UV light conditions on Mars.

The Mars Global Dust Storm of 2018: how dusty was it really?

This past year we've been treated to a once-in-five-years event, a Global Dust Storm on Mars. Curiosity has had a front row seat and PVL PDF Christina has been right there, through it all: designing observations, acquiring images and analyzing them to see just how dusty everything gets in Gale. The TLDR? very very very dusty.

by Dr. Christina L. Smith

Some of the members of the Planetary Volatiles Laboratory are also members of the Science Operations Team via Prof. Moores’ Participating Scientist proposal (thanks NASA and the Canadian Space Agency!). As part of that we get to participate in operations roles (aka be part of the team that plans what the rover does on any given day – which is super cool in case you were wondering :) ). But also we get to use the data that comes back and, if the science case warrants it, propose new observations.

For me, that means monitoring the dust using images that we take using two different cameras. One is Curiosity’s Navigation Cameras (we call it “Navcam”) - not technically one of the science instruments as they are primarily for navigational and engineering uses. But, luckily for us, these cameras are also scientifically calibrated so we can happily use them for science! The other camera I use data from is Curiosity’s Mast Camera (we call it “Mastcam” - sense a theme here?) and that one is a colour imager so we get more information about the colour than with Navcam’s images as Navcam’s images are taken only in the reddish region of visible light. But Navcam is more sensitive than Mastcam, so they complement each other really nicely.

Is Pluto in Danger?

Spring is in the air. Aside from cherry blossoms, new leaves on the trees and rising temperatures (perhaps in some places, but apparently not Toronto), that means that we have new students in the lab. One of those new students is Ariella Sapers and she is starting off her work with us by diving right in with this article on Pluto. As you'll see from her article, it's definitely not springtime for Pluto. The image she has chosen, shown above (Credit: NASA, ESA and G. Bacon (STScI)) the artist gives a a distinctively cold cast to their view of this dwarf planet and it's large moon Charon from the surface of one of the outer-lying moons.

By Ariella Sapers

I’m one of the many people that strongly believe Pluto needs to become a planet again. Even though the three characteristics that define a planet  (is in orbit around the Sun, has sufficient mass to assume hydrostatic equilibrium (a nearly round shape), and has cleared its orbital pathway) make logical sense, there is no real logic needed for the Pluto lovers out there who are mad with this decision. Ever since Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, it has been a beloved member of our Solar System. That is until 2006 when Pluto officially was demoted to a “Dwarf Planet,” due to the fact that it does not clear its orbital pathway. With that being said, there are mysteries and wonders about Pluto that are still being discovered to this day.

As we know, New Horizons flew by Pluto July 14th 2015 making it the first spacecraft ever to explore Pluto. I couldn’t have been the only one who woke up extra early to watch this flyby happen and I couldn’t have been the only one amazed by the images that we received on Earth. These images were breathtaking: being able to see an object 4.67 billion miles away from Earth in detail was quite an accomplishment for the New Horizons team. It was a huge leap for science as we would now be able to understand and learn more about Pluto’s atmosphere. 

The Continuing Adventures at the Canadian Light Source

This past February, a team from PVL once again descended on the Canadian Light Source (CLS), pictured above, to learn more about the conditions that prevailed in the atmosphere of early Mars and maybe even to learn something that could help current-day orbiters understand their results.

By Charissa Campbell

Recently, some of the PVL team traveled back to the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon to perform more experiments at the Canadian Light Source (CLS). Our first trip was discussed by project lead, Dr. Paul Godin in a previous PVL blog post (http://york-pvl.blogspot.com/2018/11/searching-for-liquid-water-on-mars-at.html). Unfortunately our U of T member (Tyler Wizenberg) could not attend this trip because he was traveling to the arctic for experiments at the same time. To fill his shoes, PVL PhD candidate Giang Nguyen tagged along.

For some background information, the purpose of these experiments is to better understand how liquid water could have existed on the surface of early Mars. Currently, Mars atmospheric models have not been able to show the surface temperature rising above 0°C. However, abundant evidence of erosion by water has been seen from orbit and there are surface geological experiments pointing towards liquid water having been present on the surface (https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4398). 

If water erosion is evident then there must be another explanation for warming in the ancient Martian atmosphere that current atmospheric models cannot explain. This is where our experiment comes in: looking at the collision-induced absorption (CIA) of greenhouse gases to test a theory from Wordsworth et al. (https://doi.org/10.1002/2016GL071766) that these gases might provide additional atmospheric absorption not currently included in models that would allow surface temperatures to rise. If our experiments agree with Wordsworth's models, it may be another piece to the puzzle towards understanding water and early Mars.

Answer me, these questions... five?

I can tell you that as Scientists, we get plenty of questions from all over, in fact learning how to field such questions and to get someone an answer (even if you don't already know!) is a big part of the job. This week, Christina, pictured above, takes some time away from her mission control work to answer some common questions in this space.

By Dr. Christina Smith

This time for my blog post, I thought I’d try a slightly different tack to usual. I often find that I get questions when in social situations about science-y or space-y or astronomy-y... things. So, I thought I’d open up the floor on social media to Solar System questions which I would then answer (or attempt to answer) in this blog post. And here we go!

P.S. In the discussion below, I have taken lots of information from papers and sources rather than pulling the information out of my own brain so the references are there in brackets and refer to the full links at the end in case you want to take a gander!

P.P.S. this was quite fun to do and I might do it again, so if you have any questions add them in the comments :)