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Excerpts from JPL mission updates are provided as a public service as part |
Background screen credits: NGC 5775 - Imaged March 21/22, 2001 using the 16" Kitt Peak Visitors Center telescope as part of the Advanced Observing Program.
| Planetary Highlights for November - Our nearest planetary neighbors are up close and personal this month. Mercury and Venus reach greatest eastern elongation within 3 hours of each other on the 3rd. Mars will be at opposition on the 7th having just passed closest to the Earth on October 29th. All three are visible in the evening skies this month. | |
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Mercury - Is at greatest eastern elongation (24°) on the 3rd. Mercury is visible in the evening skies low on the western horizon during the first 2 weeks of November. Mercury is in inferior conjunction on the 24th. Mercury shines at magnitude -0.3 on the first. |
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Venus - Is at greatest eastern elongation (47°) on the 3rd. Look to the west soon after sunset to spot Venus moving through the constellation of Sagittarius this month. Venus sets at 7:23 pm on the 1st and 7:32 pm by month's end. Venus brightens to magnitude -4.6. |
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Earth - N/A. |
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Mars - Is at opposition on the 7th. Mars rises about 5:14 pm on the 1st and about 2:45 pm by month's end. Mars is in the constellation of Aries this month. Mars appears at its brightest this month. Mars shines at magnitude -2.3 on the 1st and dims to magnitude -1.7 by the 30th. |
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Jupiter - Can be spotted in the early morning twilight glow low on the eastern horizon this month. Jupiter rises at 5:49 am on the 1st and about 4:23 am by month's end. Jupiter is in the constellation of Virgo. Jupiter shines at magnitude -1.7. |
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Saturn - Rises around 11:01 pm on the 1st and about 9:05 pm by month's end. Saturn is stationary on the 22nd. Saturn is in the constellation of Cancer. Saturn shines at a magnitude of 0.2. |
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Uranus - Sets at 1:23 am on the 1st and about 11:21 pm by month's end. Uranus is in the constellation of Aquarius and shines at a magnitude of 5.8. |
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Neptune - Sets at 11:28 pm on the 1st and about 9:32 pm by month's end. Neptune is in the constellation of Capricornus and shines at a magnitude of 7.9. |
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Pluto - Sets about 7:53 pm on the 1st and about 5:58 pm by month's end. Pluto is in the constellation of Ophiuchus. Pluto shines at magnitude 14.0. As always, good luck at spotting this one. |
"The Cassini spacecraft will gaze at Saturn's largest moon, Titan, during an Oct. 28, 2005, flyby. The radar instrument will peer through the moon's hazy layers and provide new clues to the nature of the surface seen by the Huygens probe, which landed on Titan in January 2005."
For the latest mission status reports, visit Cassini Mission Status web page. The speed and location of the spacecraft along its flightpath can be viewed on the "Where is Cassini Now?" web page.
"Comet Tempel 1 may have been born in the region of the solar system occupied by Uranus and Neptune today, according to one possibility from an analysis of the comet's debris blasted into space by NASA's Deep Impact mission. If correct, the observation supports a wild scenario for the solar system's youth, where the planets Uranus and Neptune may have traded places and scattered comets to deep space."
For the latest mission status reports, visit http://www.nasa.gov/deepimpact and http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/.
During life's busy schedule, it's tough keeping up with all that's in a day's work, so it's understandable that facts about comets Wild 2 (pronounced "Vilt 2") and Tempel 1 get mixed up. Yet there are easy ways to differentiate between the two, or any other comets. Resembling human fingerprints, no two comets are exactly alike.
During a five-year period, NASA launched two missions, Stardust and Deep Impact, to explore two different comets for scientific studies. Both are short-period comets with orbits taking them between Jupiter and Mars, and were believed to be prime specimens of study due to their positions in their natural environments. It turns out that their histories, locations, sizes and shapes were found to be very different."
Stardust LPSC 2004 Abstracts
"Abstracts of the Stardust science results from the Comet Wild 2 encounter are now available here (Adobe Acrobat reader required): ftp://www.lpi.usra.edu/pub/outgoing/lpsc2004/full07.pdf"
For more information on the Stardust mission - the first ever comet sample return mission - please visit the Stardust home page.
Mars Global Surveyor Images - October 20-26, 2005
"The following new images taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft are now available:
Information about how to submit requests is online at the new Mars Orbiter Camera Target Request Site, at http://www.msss.com/plan/intro"
Newly-released MOC images can be seen in the MOC Gallery, a web site maintained by Malin Space Science Systems, the company that built and operates MOC for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA.
Mars Global Surveyor has completed its eighth year orbiting the red planet. MGS reached Mars on 12 September 1997. The first MOC images were obtained on 15 September 1997.
Visit the MGS pages at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/index.html. There are over 200,000 images of Mars from the MGS, check out the newest MGS images of the surface of Mars.
An upgraded Web site offers images from Mars as soon as they are received from the camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. It also has user-controlled navigation to scroll and zoom within selected images, plus a global map for finding images.
Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) web site.
Mars Odyssey Themis Images October 24-28, 2005
The Odyssey data are available through a new online access system established by the Planetary Data System at: http://starbrite.jpl.nasa.gov/pds/"
Visit the Mars Odyssey Mission page.
"Spirit is healthy and has begun driving downhill from the top of "Husband Hill" toward the south basin. Elevation maps produced from the panoramic camera imagery taken at and near the summit of Husband Hill showed a safe traverse (with vehicle tilts under about 20 degrees) across ridge lines east of the summit. These ridge lines (informally called "Haskin upper ridge" and "Haskin east ridge") are the planned traverse paths for coming weeks. When possible, Spirit will drive each day."
Opportunity Status: Maneuvering Around Ripples - sol 613-618, Oct 212, 2005
"Opportunity is healthy and has been making excellent progress around "Erebus Crater." At the beginning of the week, the rover was in automode as it was still recovering from a partial uplink, but on sol 614 the team sent a real-time activate command and the rover performed remote sensing. The team is no longer operating under restricted sols, and Opportunity traveled 101.65 meters (333 feet) in four sols. The rover is generally heading westward around the crater, but traveled northward on sol 618 to avoid some larger ripples to the west."
Visit the Mars Exploration Rover page.
"The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter set the record for interplanetary missions, sending back the most data in a single day.
An unprecedented amount of data - the equivalent of 13 CDs - was returned by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission in a single day! NASA's latest mission to Mars sent 75 gigabits of data back to Earth from millions of miles away, including beautiful pictures of the Moon."
More information about the mission is available online at http://www.nasa.gov/mro.
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