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Space News Update — April 1, 2013 —

Contents

In the News

Story 1:

‘Alien Spaceship’ looking Dragon set for Unveiling by SpaceX this Year!

Story 2:

InSight mission to find what lies beneath Martian surface

Story 3:

Yvonne Brill, a Pioneering Rocket Scientist, Dies at 88

Departments

The Night Sky

ISS Sighting Opportunities

Space Calendar

NASA-TV Highlights

Food for Thought

Space Image of the Week

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1. ‘Alien Spaceship’ looking Dragon set for Unveiling by SpaceX this Year!

Later this year SpaceX will unveil the design of a new and upgraded version of the firm‟s Dragon spacecraft

that will look like “an Alien spaceship,” said Elon Musk, the CEO and Chief Designer of SpaceX, at a NASA

media teleconference on Thursday, March 28.

Musk announced the SpaceX plans at the briefing to mark the successful conclusion of the latest unmanned

Dragon cargo carrying flight, known as CRS-2, to the International Space Station (ISS) earlier this week with a

Pacific Ocean splashdown on Tuesday, March 26.

Dubbed „Dragon 2‟, the futuristic capsule will eventually boast the ability to propulsively land on Earth‟s

surface – perhaps back at the Kennedy Space Center – instead of splashing down in the Pacific Ocean beneath a

trio of parachutes.

At the moment, imagery of „Dragon 2‟ is SpaceX Top Secret ! I asked.

How is the „Dragon 2‟ different from the current „cargo Dragon‟?

“It‟s going to be cool,” gushes Musk.

“There are side-mounted thruster pods and quite big windows for astronauts to see out,” SpaceX founder Musk

explained. “There are also landing legs that pop out at the bottom. So It looks like a real alien spaceship.”

One day, Musk hopes that an advanced Dragon will ferry humans on an interplanetary journey to the alien

surface of Mars. Perhaps the lucky astronauts will even visit our Curiosity.

Dragon 2 will also enable a transition to maximize use of the capsule by significantly increasing the quantity of

cargo hauled up to the ISS, Musk stated.

The SpaceX Dragon CRS-2 capsule blasted off on March 1 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape

Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. It docked at the orbiting lab complex on March 3 and remained attached

for 3 weeks until departing and returning to Earth on March 26.

Launching more mass to orbit will be a boon for the science research capability of the ISS, said NASA‟s ISS

Program scientist Julie Robinson. “We have over 200 investigations active.”

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“The SpaceX flights are so important to our use of the International Space Station,” said Robinson.

With three successful Dragon docking flights to the ISS now under his belt, Musk said his goal now is to „push

the envelope‟.

Whereas initially SpaceX‟s goal was to minimize risk in order to fulfil SpaceX‟s $1.6 Billion commercial

contract with NASA to fly 20,000 kg of sorely needed science experiments, equipment, gear, food and supplies

to the ISS with a dozen Dragon cargo capsules.

SpaceX, along with Orbital Sciences Corp, are both partnered with NASA‟s Commercial Resupply Services

program to replace the cargo up mass capability the US lost following the retirement of NASA‟s space shuttle

orbiters in 2011.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said at the telecom that the Orbital Sciences Antares rocket is on schedule

for a test flight from NASA Wallops in Virginia slated for mid-April.

Antares will launch the unmanned Cygnus cargo spacecraft to the ISS. Read my launch site update and visit to

Antares – here.

Simultaneously, SpaceX will also debut a more powerful version of the Dragon‟s Falcon 9 launch vehicle later

this year that eventually will be both recoverable and reusable – long the Holy Grail in space exploration.

The new Falcon 9 version 1.1 “will be a meaningful upgrade” said Musk. “It will have 60-70% greater thrust

capability, greater redundancy and more engine to engine protection. It will be more robust.”

Falcon 9 v 1.1 will incorporate the significantly more powerful Merlin 1-D first stage engines that will increase

the liftoff thrust to about 1.5 million pounds – and serve as the launch vehicle for „Dragon 2‟.

SpaceX will also start testing the capability to recover the spent Falcon 9 first stage from the Atlantic Ocean.

Thereafter SpaceX will eventually try and have the first stage fly itself back to the Cape Canaveral, Florida

launch complex using the so called “Grasshopper‟ version of the Falcon 9.

But Musk strongly advised that will take several test flights to demonstrate such recovery technologies.

“I really want to emphasize that we don‟t expect success on the first several attempts,” Musk emphasized.

“Hopefully next year, with a lot more experience and data, we should be able to return the first stage to the

launch site, deploy the landing legs and do a propulsive landing on land back at the launch site.”

The overarching goal is to dramatically cut costs and increase efficiency to make space more accessible,

especially in these ultra lean budget times.

SpaceX is also developing a manned version of the Dragon capsule and aims for the first crewed test flight

perhaps in 2015 depending on NASA‟s budget.

If all of Musk‟s dreams work out, they could spark a revolutionary change in spaceflight and the exploration

and exploitation of the High Frontier.

Source: Universe Today Return to Contents

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2. InSight mission to find what lies beneath Martian surface

NASA's next Mars lander will launch in 2016 to take the red planet's

pulse and temperature, listening for tremors, measuring underground

heat and monitoring the wobble in its rotation to answer fundamental

questions about what lies beneath the desert world's rust-colored

surface.

Scientists expect the answers to help their understanding of how

planets like Earth and Mars coalesced and evolved after the birth of

the solar system, according to Bruce Banerdt, principal investigator

for the InSight lander due to launch in March 2016.

"The InSight mission is a geophysical mission to Mars," Banerdt

said. "It's going to go to Mars and take its vital signs. It's going to

take its heartbeat - the seismic activity of the planet. It's going to take

its temperature by measuring the thermal gradient of its surface,

which tells us how much heat is coming out. And it's going to

measure its reflexes by looking at how its rotation wobbles with the tidal effects of the sun."

Based on a proven lander design successfully demonstrated by NASA's Phoenix mission in 2008, the InSight

spacecraft will make a rocket-assisted touchdown in a region named Elysium Planitia, a broad equatorial plain

dotted with extinct volcanoes.

"It's very flat," Banerdt said. "There are lava flows nearby, and we have already picked out landing ellipses

around the flow." Banerdt is a researcher based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Teams identified 16 potential landing zones around the western side of Elysium Planitia. All of the ellipse-

shaped landing site candidates meet the lander's engineering constraints, which stipulate an area of sufficiently

low altitude to allow the spacecraft to safely make a parachute- and rocket-assisted descent.

InSight also needs a flat landing area free of large rocks with penetrable soil to a depth of at least 5 meters, or

about 15 feet. The mission's two main instruments, a seismometer and drilling heat probe, require a site with

soft rock-free soil.

According to a presentation by Matt Golombek, a geologist at JPL, the list of 16 candidate landing sites will be

whittled down to and a half-dozen locations by the end of this year. Officials will select two or three finalists by

the end of 2014, ultimately leading to a final decision on InSight's destination by the end of 2015.

A high-resolution camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will take detailed photos of each landing

ellipse throughout the process, looking for hazards such as steep slopes and boulder fields.

Unlike NASA's Curiosity rover, which targeted a science-rich landing site on the flank of a three-mile-high

mountain, InSight's landing site will be selected based solely on engineering and safety considerations.

The three-legged InSight lander, built by Lockheed Martin Corp., will set down on Mars in September 2016,

starting a surface mission expected to last at least two years.

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InSight was selected by NASA in August as the next project in the agency's Discovery program, which fields

planetary exploration missions on tightly-controlled budgets. InSight's cost to NASA is capped at $425 million,

excluding launch vehicle costs.

Engineers know the capabilities and limits of the Phoenix lander system, which was originally designed for a

mission that was supposed to launch in 2001. The 2001 lander, named Surveyor, was canceled in the wake of

the back-to-back failures of NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander missions in 1998.

The understanding will keep InSight's costs under control and simplify the mission's development, Banerdt said.

The stationary lander design, with its roots in the late 1990s, showed exemplary performance during the

Phoenix mission, which launched in 2007 and touched down on the red planet's northern polar plains in May

2008.

The biggest change from the Phoenix spacecraft to InSight is a suite of new instruments. Instead of analyzing

soil and scouring the surface for signs of ice, as Phoenix did, the InSight mission will deploy a seismometer to

make the first direct measurements of Mars quakes. The lander will also employ a hammering drill to burrow up

to 15 feet underground, taking temperature readings to measure heat changes at different layers immediately

beneath the Martian surface.

The French space agency, CNES, is providing InSight's $42 million seismometer. Germany is funding the

lander's underground heat probe.

Scientists will also analyze radio signals bouncing between Earth and the InSight spacecraft, detecting tiny

wobbles in the red planet's rotation, revealing properties of the Martian core.

All the investigations have the objective of telling scientists about the interior of Mars. Banerdt said researchers

can take that information a step further, comparing InSight's findings with what is known about Earth and the

moon to paint a clearer picture of how the solar system's rocky planets formed and cooled.

"Mars is kind of the Goldilocks planet," Banerdt said. "It's not too big, it's not too small, it's just right. If it was

too big, it would have retained a lot of activity and erased all the evidence that we're looking for. If it was too

small, it never would have undergone the same processes that formed the Earth."

Among others, InSight will address questions such as:

Does Mars have a liquid or solid core?

What is the size of the Martian core?

How thick is the Martian crust?

How common are Mars quakes?

What is the composition of the Martian mantle?

How often do meteorites strike the Martian surface?

Up to now, Banerdt said, scientists could only guess answers to such questions.

"We are missing cold, hard data, and this is what this mission will provide," said Suzanne Smrekar, InSight's

deputy principal investigator based at JPL.

"We've done a lot of exploring on the surface of Mars, and we have missions coming up to study the

atmosphere," Banerdt said, referring to a pair of upcoming spacecraft - NASA's MAVEN mission and Europe's

Trace Gas Orbiter - focused on the Martian atmosphere.

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MAVEN will launch in November, and the Trace Gas Orbiter is scheduled to launch in January 2016, two

months before InSight.

"But when it comes to what's below the surface of Mars, we don't understand as much," Banerdt said. "We are

plugging that last big hole in the basic understanding of Mars."

Don't expect InSight to produce color panoramic images like the Curiosity rover. The lander will carry a set of

black-and-white cameras, utilizing spares left over from NASA's rover missions to save money, according to

Banerdt.

The cameras will monitor movements of the lander's robotic arm as it picks up the seismometer and drill

instruments from the spacecraft's payload deck and places the devices on the Martian surface.

Source: Spaceflight Now Return to Contents

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3. Yvonne Brill, pioneer in spacecraft propulsion, dies at 88

Yvonne Brill, a pioneer in spacecraft propulsion who suspended a

promising career to raise three children and then returned to work full time

to achieve her greatest engineering successes, died March 27 at a hospital in

Princeton, N.J. She was 88.

She had complications from breast cancer, her son Matthew Brill said.

At a time of debate over women‟s prospects for both having a family and

reaching the highest career levels, accounts of Mrs. Brill‟s life suggest that

she managed to “have it all.” She was internationally respected in her field

and spoke openly about the struggles she faced in being devoted to family

and work.

As a specialist in the chemistry of propulsion, she made vital contributions

to the operation of the orbiting space satellites that have become essential to

modern life, placing the most remote areas of the globe in virtually instantaneous communication. She held a

patent for a widely used propulsion system.

She was described by a women‟s engineering organization in 1945 as being possibly the only woman with a

technical job who was involved in rocket propulsion.

In 2011, President Obama awarded her the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. In 1987, when

scarcely any women were members, she was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Mrs. Brill left full-time engineering work in the late 1950s when pregnant with her first child. She continued to

do consulting work and returned to the rigors of a demanding career when she joined RCA Astro Electronics in

1966.

“I really wanted to go back to work,” she said in an interview with the Society of Women Engineers. Still, she

said, it was not easy: “I felt very put upon.”

But she accepted the difficulties and lack of time for herself because “I was happy in my job, I liked what I was

doing.” In addition, she said, “I felt that I was making real progress . . . introducing all these new ideas.”

Yvonne Madelaine Claeys was born Dec. 30, 1924, in a suburb of Winnipeg, in the Canadian province of

Manitoba, to parents who emigrated from Belgium and who, she once recalled, probably never finished high

school.

She said she “just sort of didn‟t really realize that I was relatively intelligent until I got to high school and

started to get top marks.”

Her father, she once said, believed that when she finished her education, she should “open up a small dress

shop” or similar enterprise. But, she said, “I just wasn‟t cut out for that.”

After graduating from the University of Manitoba in mathematics in 1945, she went to work for the Douglas

Aircraft Co. in California and gravitated to the chemistry of propellants.

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While in the Los Angeles area, she received a master‟s degree in chemistry from the University of Southern

California.

While at a chemistry lecture, she met her future husband, Bill Brill, who held a PhD in chemistry. Later they

faced a challenge: His job opportunities were in the east, hers in the west.

Her decision to follow his career, she said, was based on her belief that “good jobs are easier to find than good

husbands.” The saying became part of family lore.

The couple moved east, eventually settling near Princeton. It was in the year after her 1966 return to full-time

work that she created the hydrazine resistojet, which is also known as the electrothermal hydrazine thruster.

It provides an effective way of adjusting the positions of communications and monitoring satellites to ensure

proper operation. The achievement required Mrs. Brill to work many nights and weekends.

From 1981 to 1983, she worked at NASA headquarters in Washington as a manager in a solid rocket motor

unit. She had also worked in London for the International Maritime Satellite Organization and was known for

fostering the careers of women in technical fields.

Mrs. Brill was inducted in 2010 into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, along with the two co-

inventors of Post-it notes, prompting a Washington Post reporter to write that it required two men for the

stationery item, but only one woman for the space thruster.

Her husband died in 2010 after 58 years of marriage. Survivors include three children, Matthew Brill of

Swedesboro, N.J., Joseph Brill of Denver and Naomi Brill of St. Paul, Minn.; and four grandchildren.

As described by her son Matthew, Mrs. Brill‟s idea for the space propulsion system was to reheat the ejected

propellant before it left the nozzle. It enhanced efficiency, cut costs, reduced the payload weight and extended

the useful life of the satellites.

The device was “a very simple idea,” her son said. “Mom always felt fortunate that she was lucky enough to

think it up.”

Source: The Washington Post Return to Contents

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The Night Sky

Source: Sky & Telescope Return to Contents

Monday, April 1

The red carbon stars U and V Hydrae, and the Ghost of Jupiter planetary nebula (magnitude 7.7), all

reside within a few degrees of each other in central Hydra. See Gary Seronik's Binocular Highlight

column and chart in the AprilSky & Telescope, page 45 (and for more on the Ghost of Jupiter, page 56).

Tuesday, April 2

As spring advances, wintry Orion tilts farther over as it declines in the west-southwest after dark.

Orion's Belt in its middle is almost horizontal. Orion is brightly framed between Jupiter on its right and

Sirius on its left.

Last-quarter Moon tonight (exact at 12:37 a.m. Wednesday morning EDT).

Wednesday, April 3

Jupiter's moon Io crosses Jupiter's face from 7:56 to 10:08 p.m. EDT, followed by its tiny black shadow

(much more visible) from 9:03 to 11:15 p.m. EDT.

Thursday, April 4

This evening Comet PanSTARRS, fading every day, is passing 2° west (lower right) of the Andromeda

Galaxy, M31. They may appear about equally dim low in the northwest just as twilight is ending, for

observers at fairly high northern latitudes. Think photo opportunity.

Friday, April 5

The huge, bright Winter Hexagon is still in view after dark, filling the sky to the southwest and west.

Start at bright Sirius in the southwest. It marks the Hexagon's lower left corner. High above Sirius is

Procyon. From there, look upper right to Pollux and Castor, lower right from Castor to Menkalinen and

Capella, lower left to Aldebaran (with brighter Jupiter hogging the limelight near it!), lower left to Rigel

at the bottom of Orion, and back to Sirius.

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ISS Sighting Opportunities For Denver:

SATELLITE LOCAL DURATION MAX ELEV APPROACH DEPARTURE

DATE/TIME (MIN) (DEG) (DEG-DIR) (DEG-DIR)

ISS Mon Apr 01/05:21 AM 4 32 10 above NW 28 above ENE

ISS Tue Apr 02/04:33 AM 1 22 20 above N 20 above NE

ISS Tue Apr 02/06:07 AM 6 51 10 above WNW

12 above SE

ISS Wed Apr 03/05:18 AM 5 80 19 above NW 10 above SE

ISS Thu Apr 04/04:30 AM 2 43 38 above ENE 11 above ESE

ISS Thu Apr 04/06:04 AM 5 18 10 above W 10 above S

ISS Fri Apr 05/05:16 AM 3 34 33 above SSW 10 above SSE

Sighting information for other cities can be found at NASA‟s Satellite Sighting Information

NASA-TV Highlights (all times Eastern Daylight Time)

April 1, Monday

12:20 p.m. - ISS Expedition 35 In-Flight Event with WGME-TV, Portland, ME and NASA Flight Engineer

Chris Cassidy – JSC (Public and Media Channels)

April 4, Thursday

12:50 p.m. - ISS Expedition 35 In-Flight Event for the Canadian Space Agency for a Student Science

Challenge in Fall River, Nova Scotia - JSC (All Channels)

12:05 p.m. - ISS Mission Control Console Interview with the Digital Learning Network - JSC (All Channels)

Watch NASA TV online by going to the NASA website. Return to Contents

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Space Calendar

Apr 01 - Cassini, Orbital Trim Maneuver #346 (OTM-346)

Apr 01 - Asteroid 2032 Ethel Occults HIP 103224 (6.7 Magnitude Star)

Apr 01 - Asteroid 2013 EN89 Near-Earth Flyby (0.033 AU)

Apr 01 - Asteroid 2013 EQ4 Near-Earth Flyby (0.071 AU)

Apr 01 - Asteroid 20103 de Vico Closest Approach To Earth (1.488 AU)

Apr 01 - Asteroid 3665 Fitzgerald Closest Approach To Earth (1.667 AU)

Apr 01 - Asteroid 11926 Orinoco Closest Approach To Earth (1.704 AU)

Apr 01 - Asteroid 203 Pompeja Closest Approach To Earth (1.873 AU)

Apr 01 - Asteroid 35334 Yarkovsky Closest Approach To Earth (2.069 AU)

Apr 02 - Asteroid 91007 Ianfleming Closest Approach To Earth (1.779 AU)

Apr 02 - Asteroid 9533 Aleksejleonov Closest Approach To Earth (1.974 AU)

Apr 02 - Asteroid 1157 Arabia Closest Approach To Earth (2.217 AU)

Apr 02 - 50th Anniversary (1963), Luna 4 Launch (Soviet Moon Flyby Mission)

Apr 03 - Moon Occults Pluto

Apr 03 - Comet P/2011 U1 (PANSTARRS) Closest Approach To Earth (2.127 AU)

Apr 03 - 40th Anniversary (1973), Salyut 2 Launch (USSR's 2nd Space Station)

Apr 04 - Comet P/1999 D1 (Hermann) Closest Approach To Earth (1.230 AU)

Apr 04 - Asteroid 10189 Normanrockwell Closest Approach To Earth (1.923 AU)

Apr 04 - Asteroid 60186 Las Cruces Closest Approach To Earth (2.139 AU)

Apr 04 - Asteroid 2848 ASP Closest Approach To Earth (2.795 AU)

Apr 04 - 45th Anniversary (1968), Apollo 6 Launch (Last Test Flight of Saturn V)

Apr 05 - Cassini, Titan Flyby

Apr 05 - Comet 222P/LINEAR At Opposition (3.091 AU)

Apr 05 - Comet C/2010 R1 (LINEAR) At Opposition (5.109 AU)

Apr 05 - Asteroid 4 Vesta Occults TYC 1848-02042-1 (11.6 Magnitude Star)

Apr 05 - Asteroid 5738 Billpickering Closest Approach To Earth (1.041 AU)

Apr 05 - Asteroid 49272 Bryce Canyon Closest Approach To Earth (2.020 AU)

Apr 05 - Asteroid 2801 Huygens Closest Approach To Earth (2.235 AU)

Apr 05 - 40th Anniversary (1973), Pioneer 11 Launch (Jupiter & Saturn Flyby Mission)

Source: JPL Space Calendar Return to Contents

Pioneer 11 launching from Space Launch Complex 36A.

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Food for Thought

Astronomical Pranks of April Fools’ Past

The first day of April is always a traditional time for pranks and

puns, and astronomers and scientists aren‟t above an April

Fools‟ Day shenanigan or two. Hey, I gotta admit, as a freelance

science journalist, even my radar will be up tomorrow as I‟m

sure that someone will try to slide some wowzers by the

credulous media, as they always have in the past. If the aliens

wanted to conquer the Earth it‟s wide open to „em on April 1st,

I‟m just sayin‟. Who would believe the tweets were for real, as

they landed ray guns ablaze on the White House lawn? Trust us;

you won‟t see such April Fools‟ hi-jinks from Universe Today.

If you read it here, the alien invasion is for real, and you can

begin stockpiling food and ammo appropriately in the best

tradition of Falling Skies.

Here are just some of the classic astronomical April Fools‟ jokes

perpetrated in the past:

In 1974, John Gribbin published The Jupiter Effect, claiming that a Grand Alignment of the planets would spell

doomsday for the Earth on March 10th

, 1982. On April 1st 1976, Astronomer Sir Patrick Moore made an

announcement along a similar vein to BBC listeners. A rare conjunction of the planets Pluto (which was still

classified as a planet at the time) & Jupiter would weaken the gravitational field of the Earth at precisely

9:47AM. This would cause the law of gravity to become temporarily suspended, and cause things to fly about.

Big hint: Pluto was nowhere near the gas giant at the time. Not that it would matter or have any consequence for

the Earth! Although the hoax was quickly revealed, that didn‟t stop several listeners from calling in and

reporting observed results from the fake Jovian-Plutonian Gravitational effect!

Many questionable astrophysical papers have been spotted in the wild trying to sneak past the guardians-that-be

over the years on & around April 1st. On April Fools‟ past, we‟ve learned that Schrödinger‟s Cat is not alone,

the supposed discovery of the “bigon” particle, and that the “non-detection of the tooth fairy” has been reported.

Hey, never let it be said that science geeks lack a sense of humor. What‟s especially amazing is when one of

these tall tales actually makes it past the credulous media and into print!

One of our favorites hit the servers last year on March 30th

just in time to gain traction for April Fools‟ Day

with the cryptic title On the influence of the Illuminati in astronomical adaptive optics. OK, I‟ll admit

we didn‟t question the veracity of the claim for oh, like, maybe a tenth of a second. For those without

enlightenment into the world of Woo, the Illuminati are purported to be the shadow cult organization going

back to the Middle Ages that‟s supposed to be behind, well, every nefarious plot in modern society. “They put

the eye over the pyramid on the back of a dollar bill, man…” as some true believers will claim. And while

they didn‟t have adaptive optics technology way back in Galileo‟s time, the mock study does assert a tenuous

link between the Illuminati and the “astronomical rise” of Brittany Spears and Lady Gaga.

Are Martians secretly hollowing out a base on the Moons of Barsoom? The Moons of Mars were also the

setting for an April Fools‟ prank in 1959. The Martian moons are bizarre in their own right. Orbiting at 6,000 &

20,060 kilometres above the surface of the Red Planet, Phobos & Deimos are almost certainly captured

asteroids. In fact, Phobos orbits its primary closer than any other moon in the solar system. Phobos will crash

into Mars millions of years in the future.

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The hoax was perpetrated when Walter Scott Houston, posing as Dr. Arthur Hayall of the fictitious University

of the Sierras made a claim in the Great Plains Observer that Phobos & Deimos were in fact artificial satellites.

Though the joke ran its course, the idea has cropped up in fringe circles over the years. Russian scientist Iosif

Shklovsky made a similar allusion years later, asserting that the low density of Phobos indicated that was

hollow (!) Mariner 9 returned the first close-up views of Phobos in 1971, showing a decidedly asteroid-looking

appearance. Of course, this hasn‟t stopped the likes of folks like Richard Hoagland (he of the face on Mars)

from resurrecting the outlandish claim, all of which started as a practical joke. And of course, with the advent

of the Internet, you don‟t have to wait until April 1st to receive modern day hoax emails proclaiming ”MARS

WILL APPEAR AS BIG AS THE FULL MOON!!!” which now apparently happens every August.

Spurious moons are apparently the “low-hanging fruit” of astronomical April Fools‟ pranks. In 2012, an image

of a purported moon of the planet Mercury‟s as discovered by the MESSENGER spacecraft appeared in the JPL

Photojournal. The captioning declared the moon had been named Caduceus and was 70 metres in diameter.

Perhaps such a prank is appealing because there‟s nothing immediately outlandish about the idea. New moons

get discovered periodically on first reconnaissance missions past planets. For a brief time in 1974, Mariner 10

project scientists did indeed think they had discovered a Mercurial moon. Reading on through the press release,

however, revealed that a collision course of MESSENGER with the moon was set to cause it to “arrive at Earth

by 2014.” The “moon” also bared a suspicious resemblance to the asteroid 243 Ida as seen by the Jupiter-bound

Galileo spacecraft in 1993.

Some April Fools‟ hoaxes have presented ideas that have actually gained scientific traction in reality over the

years. On March 31st, 2005, NASA‟s Astronomy Picture of the Day website contained the teaser “Water on

Mars!” for its next presentation to follow on the next day. A flurry of discussion followed; was there a

discovery from the Spirit & Opportunity rovers forthcoming? We should‟ve checked the calendar first. The next

day, APOD featured water… in a glass, sitting atop a Mars bar. What‟s ironic is that recent announcements

from the Mars Science Laboratory support the idea of ancient water on the Red Planet, so the MSL may well

have had the last laugh.

The Museum of Hoaxes also hosts a list of astronomy & space-themed April Fools‟ Day pranks that have been

perpetrated over the years. From a Soviet space capsule landing outside of Kankakee, Illinois to life discovered

on Jupiter in 1996, it‟s all enshrined for the curious. One of our faves is Google‟s 2004 announcement that they

were accepting applications at a new research center… based on the Moon in Copernicus crater. The ability to

survive “with limited access to such modern conveniences as soy low-fat lattes,” was cited as a prerequisite, but

a sushi chef and two massage therapists would be on site. At least the assignment wouldn‟t be totally austere!

What astronomical hi-jinks await us as we flip our calendars over to April 1st, 2013? Feel free to tell us here at

Universe Today of your true tales of April Fools‟ astronomy pranks past & present that you‟ve spotted in the

wild. Think twice before re-tweeting that link tomorrow, and don‟t believe those reports of “nearby gamma-ray

bursts of doom” or “alien invasions…” or at least, wait until you‟ve seen the “greens of their eyes!”

Source: Universe Today Return to Contents

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Space Image of the Week

New York City at Night

Image Credit: NASA

One of the Expedition 35 crew members aboard the Earth-orbiting International Space Station exposed this 400

millimeter night image of the greater New York City metropolitan area on March 23, 2013.

For orientation purposes, note that Manhattan runs horizontal through the frame from left to the midpoint.

Central Park is just a little to the left of frame center.

Source: NASA Return to Contents