Hope - UAE's Emirates Mars Mission : Goals - Hurdles

Hope the spacecraft ; credit : MBRSC, UAE

After getting freedom from British in 1971, a small piece of land in the Arab world, UAE, aspires to go beyond Moon in a most inspirational attempts by the modern human kind. This need not to be underestimated from this group of Arabs who boast of : world's tallest building and a driver-less metro. Though established as one of the richest countries per capita, but with the oil wealth sliding and the expensive infrastructure projects which are expected to fuel the economy are on the down trend, the leaders of the nation are looking for some mean of boosting the morale of just around 12% Emiratis, the native Arabs, to get interested in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Vow.... they made it.... The Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) in Dubai with a humble beginning of developing a earth orbiting satellite with the help of South Korea (2007) has now prepared to a deep space mission to Mars. A bold step taken by UAE’s vice-president and prime minister, Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum in 2014 that they would celebrate the 50th Independence year by going to Mars has been seeing the fruits of seeds sown earlier.

Hope team, Women force; credit : MBRSC, UAE

The UAE's mission to mars is called HOPE ("Amal" in Arabic) or EMM, Emirates Mars Mission. A team very young engineers (all Emiratis) with an unbelievable average age of 27-years were pooled into the Hope's mission primarily to draw the attention of youth towards STEM. Another remarkable aspect of this team is: women make 34% of the total work force and an astonishing 84% of the science team. The science team lead by Sarah Al Amiri, a computer engineer turned Planetary Scientist, with the over all team lead is Omran Sharaf another very young member. As the story of reaching to planet Mars evolved... the seniors picked up exactly the place where they left in taking UAE into Space. They instructed the youngsters to "build the mission" NOT to "buy". Its a wise, tested and well calculated move... they approached University of Colorado Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), which had just completed a successful mission to Mars, the MAVEN spacecraft exploring the Martian atmosphere in one of the finest details. Along with:  University of California Berkeley Space Sciences Lab (SSL), Arizona State University (ASU) School of Earth and Space Exploration. Another remarkable decision was to go with a solid science goal; for this they approached, the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group, an advisory group convened by NASA that includes scientists from around the world.

GOALS:
The Hope mission has its eyes firm on cracking a fundamental issues related to Martian atmosphere. Today, Mars atmosphere is few hundred times less than that of earth's. There are many questions unanswered on what happened to the prevailing atmosphere around Mars that was existing at one time. Mars also has seasons and its own storms erupting around the year.  They got 3-goals set which would enhance the understanding Martian atmosphere as a whole: 1. By measuring the lower atmospheric parameters to understand the climate dynamics on Mars. 2. Role of weather in permitting the loss of Hydrogen (and Oxygen) into higher atmosphere. 3. To understand the structure and variability of Hydrogen (Oxygen) in upper atmosphere to estimate the overall loss of Martian Atmosphere to space.

The most successful (>70%) nation to reach the red planet, USA, has majority of the missions on the ground (rovers), the recent MAVEN (2014) orbiter indeed accomplished a huge success in measuring the various atmospheric parameters and solar flux reaching to the planet. The Indian Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) too had a great deal of success of measuring O, CO, CO2 presence in upper atmosphere by sampling at site employing a mass spectrometer, apart from acquiring few hundreds of pretty pictures of Mars. While both MAVEN (~ 150 X 6,200 km) and MOM (~ 470 X 74,000 km) were in highly elongated orbits and had many other objectives apart from studying the Martian atmosphere; the Hope is completely dedicated to study the lower/upper atmosphere and the interplay among them; ultimately trying to explain the secrets behind the loss of atmosphere. Its planned orbit of around 20,000 X 40,000 km is ideally suited to study Mars on multiple occasions in a day.

Unlike majority of the interplanetary probes which carry variety of instruments to address various scientific goals; Hope carries only 3-types of spectral imagers; meaning these are wavelength based imaging instruments; also capturing visible images of the "Red Planet" at 12-megapixel sensor. They are very powerful tools in providing spatial-scientific information, a unique combination, of late entered into many space missions.

EXI instrument; credit : MBRSC, UAE

In detail: 1. Emirates eXploration Imager (EXI) would provide details on the optical depths of dust and water ice in the Martian atmosphere and column abundance of Ozone gas
2. Emirates Mars Infra Red Spectrometer (EMIRS) will provide the details of global distribution of key atmospheric parameters over the Martian daily and yearly, including dust, water ice (clouds), water vapor and temperature profiles
3. EMM Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer (EMUS) measures relative changes in the thermosphere (highest atmospheric layer) and the radial variability of both the Hydrogen and Oxygen.

HURDLES:
Reaching Mars has been among the toughest hurdles for space faring nations. Out of the 57-attempts made by humans around half of them (30) ONLY have made it to Mars. USA is sitting right on top of the mountain of success including the very first probe to reach planet mars (Mariner-4, 1965). India holds the unique distinction of being the very first country to reach Mars in its first attempt. While European Space Agency had a decent rate of success, Russia had to face many failures including one failed attempt in the recent past along with  China (Phobos grunt, Russia-China, 2011). The technological advanced and meticulously working Japan has plans of reaching out to Mars in 2024, the next available celestial window.

As they say "Rocket science" is truly tough nut to crack, the Mars journey involves placing the spacecraft into helio-centric orbit and guiding it towards Mars in the next 8-months. There are dedicated group of people called "mission team".  This group needs to take many crucial decisions in selecting proper helio-centric (around the sun) orbit, making course correction as the spacecraft slips out of its intended orbit. The ultimate test of this team would be would be to perform a kind of  "slamming" of the brakes of spacecraft which is racing almost at the speeds of around 120,000 km/hr to reduce it to 18,000 km/hr. Having captured by planet Mars, the last hurdle for this team would be to park it in the intended orbit.

As a trained spectroscopist, I like to hold my personal reservations on few finer aspects of the imaging spectrographs; though  they have seen the timely tested missions in the recent past (MAVEN) but some of the spectral resolution on EMUS (1.3 nm) are highly ambitious as they demand a very very narrow field of view of 0.14 X 0.2 degree which curtails the throughput (light gathering power) to feeble levels. Again, in my view... this is very meager issue as compared to reaching planet Mars... How sweet that feeling will be?

The Hope spacecraft is planned to be launched from Japan using a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H-IIA launcher and is set to arrive at Mars in February 2021.

I wish each and every group member of Hope ... all the very best ... they have demonstrated immense amount of dedication and showed a high level of maturity as narrated by their mentors at LASP (from the interview).

Hope..... to meet you on Planet Mars......

[Like to offer credit to Elizabeth Gibney's article for some of my reference, appearing in Nature .... ]

VIKRAM STATUS - 3

It is 17.00 hrs lunar time .....

(Report time: 19.09.2019; 15.00 hrs)
Its going to be another 2-earth days time left, that there will be some amount of light which can soak Vikram's solar panels in bringing life back. Its almost dusk like scene on the moon for Vikram. Once the night kicks in; it has to bear the bone freezing -200C for another 14-earth days.

A sad news from NASA is; their Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) on Sept. 17 imaged the south pole landing site of Vikram lander, "but long shadows in the area may be obscuring the silent lunar explorer" is the statement on their part.

Have a look at the landing site of Vikram (courtesy: NASA)... you need extraordinary skills to be able to spot a flat location. Had the Vikram succeeded in applying breaks to counter the huge forward (orbital) velocity; reaching down to 400-m, ISRO had every other hurdle worked out in the form of a built in Artificial Intelligence by employing a Hazard Detection and Avoidance System (HDAS). As things stand today.... the HDAS had no chances of coming into play.

Vikram landing site            Credit: NASA

This is the time for me as well to throw my hat in the ring..... in predicting what could have been the scenario......

"It could have been malfunctioning of those two diagonal 800-N variable thrust engines which could NOT have delivered the 'THROTTALABLE' performance." Hence the tumble (flip) which could have occurred at 2.0 km altitude, leaving no chance for the built in mechanism to assist in soft landing.

Vikram Status -2 ; Chandrayaan II

Vikram - last contact @ 335-m NOT 2.1-km

13th September, 14.00 hrs IST

As per the Indian Express report (12th Sept), the last signal received from Vikram appears to be from as low altitude as 335-m.

Lets see what could have happened during the 2-phases of breaking in the height range of 18-km to 400-m.

Tapan Mishra, Ex-SAC (Space Application Center) and PRL (Physical Research Laboratory) director, Ahmedabad; distinguished scientist @ ISRO-HQ; has written in his facebook account the details of Vikram landing of 15-minutes. In his smooth flow of words; he has thrown light on what exactly would happen when Vikram switched from Rough breaking (18-7.4 km) to Fine breaking (7.4-km to 400-m). Apparently, it was a switch-over from 4-cornered retro engines to 2-diagonally opposite engines for the fine breaking phase from 7.4-km to down below upto 400-m. Without mentioning the actual cause of the Vikram incident; he did warn that during the fine breaking the operation of 2-diagonally opposite engines is a pretty involved and tricky procedure. Considering the fact that a less filled fuel tank would "slosh" leading to the exhaust of fuel to these engines and hence would lead to un-even burn. Hence, it will be very difficult to provide a "uniform centrally directed breaking force"; this  is what clearly emerges from that discussion.

Taking a cue from the above explanation; it can be conjectured that:

1. Though the switch-over to 2-engines from 7.4-km and downwards would have occurred.

2. The signal loss at 2.1 km could be due to a tumble; taking the direction of communication (antenna) away and hence the signal loss

3. Best part is: Vikram did sail through 2.1-km to 335-m. If one recalls; it had 3-more milestones below 400-m to accomplish: a. @400-m: hover and activate Hazard Detection and Avoidance sensor b. @100-m: select one of the 2-targeted locations c. @10-m: stop and hover to ensure the point of landing

4. Since, the above 3-milestones are AI-based. There is a very high probability of Vikram making it safely to lunar surface and hence a good news, which could emerge in these couple of days....

Wishing ISRO-team again a very best of luck.

Vikram Status : Chandrayaan II

12th September, 2019; 11.00 hrs IST.
Post 7th Sept., 1.55 am; every space enthusiast and an Aam aadmi is seeking the status of Vikram. The resolve and intent shown by ISRO is commendable in tracing down Vikram within 40-hours (roughly). It was an extra-ordinary effort on part of ISRO to employ Imaging IR Spectrograph (IIRS) to pick Vikram. As per ISRO norms; the payloads would be made operational as per the prior determined sequence from their hibernation status. I am sure, the waking up of IIRS is an exception as it provides unprecedented 80-m resolution images.
The palpable pressure on ISRO can also be judged by the fact that they have requested public faith in them as theier best efforts are behind the salvaging efforts of Vikram.
In my view: though ISRO was fully prepared for any eventuality ("15-min terror"); they had to face rude shock of uncertainty as Vikram descended below 3-km. As per the views expressed by anonymous team members; the lack of simulations on Vikram could have been the reason behind unknown situations faced by Vikram.

Lets face it... on moon, you got ambiance (atmosphere) which is 10-orders of magnitude less than what you feel on earth (760 torr of atmosphere). You could never ever simulate these conditions for testing the throttelable retro engine (800-N capacity) lets say. There was no way you could simulate 100s of kmph speeds to test breaking mechanisms. As per one report; even a simple drop of Vikram from an aircraft would have given some handle on testing out the AI behind the Hazard Detection Avoidance Sensor system. Well.... Vikram had not reached that phase at 2.1 km anyway.
So as we have completed 6-earth days out of the 14-available on the moon to perform post Vikram operations....Having spend 4+ years for the Chandrayaan-I; Moon Impact Probe mission time... I can assure every one that Team ISRO is not going to leave any stone un-turned....
Lets wish ISRO....... all the very best....

Fate of VIKRAM lander ; Chandrayaan II

A grab of display panel of Vikram landing @ Bylalu, ISTRAC ; Courtesy: DD

It is just around 60-hrs that the contact of Vikram lander had lost. The support, ISRO got starting from the Prime minister and other ministers is commendable; not to forget the foreign media, NASA and of course millions of Indians who kept themselves awake post mid night and were not able to sleep after the episode. A poem went on to pour the feelings of Vikram mentioning that how hard it was as it had to face the aspirations of 1.2 billion people. While ISRO has been working very hard to get to the bottom of the facts, a 1st statement from Chairman ISRO, was that they have identified the VIKRAM by IR-imager. There are dozens of anonymous opinions by ISRO scientists/engineers coming out to the public domain by media; few 10s by experts all around the globe and innumerable by every other soul; explaining if it had not happened this way, then could it not have happened the other way.

I was the team leader of CHACE payload in Moon Impact Probe of Chandrayaan I; spent 4+ years in VSSC-ISRO and have gone through the grill/drill of ISRO in transforming a commercial instrument into a smart, most sophisticated, highly rugged which sucks a very small amount of power from the main power bus with every nut and washer which has been used was argued quite a few times in its selection of weight, dimension. Having left ISRO post Chandrayaan-I, right now I head the central instruments facility here at the University of Hyderabad. The following discussion is purely based on what has been floating around in the media along with my own personal comments and has nothing to do with ISRO. As I have been doing; I will treat this to be a highly popular level; without compromising the value of message I intend to put across.

Vikram lander showing 4-engines firing; Courtesy : Digit

Vikram took a "power descend" from its intended 30X0 km orbit; basically starting from Perigee point of its earlier orbit and heading towards the intended 71-degree southwards journey. Power descend meaning, Vikram is using its forward orbital velocity of around 1.66 km/s (a whopping ~ 6,000 kmph) for its southward journey while the 4 - (throttelable) retro-engines will be keep on firing against the orbital velocity and hence the net effect of "breaking". As per the reports appearing in the media [WITHOUT ANY AUTHENTICATION]... these were major milestones along its 15-minutes of terror covering 30-km journey in a parabolic trajectory.

1. De-orbit operation : 30-18 km

2. Rough breaking : 18-7.4 km

3. Fine breaking : 7.4km - 400 m  [ Activate Central Retro-engine; Shut off 4-Engines]

4. Hover for 12-s : @ 400-m : [Activate Hazard Detection & Avoidance (HDA)]

5. Hover for 25-s : @ 100-m : Select the target A or B

6. Prepares for touch down: 10m-2m in 13-s

7. Shut down engine : @ 2-m

Free fall from 2-m: [Four wheels are equipped to take the shock of this order]

As the nation and entire world watched; Vikram's path veered during soft breaking [as can been seen on the display panel above] and at 2.1-km altitude the green signal on the display panel disappeared; the gloom prevailed all over the faces was very evident and after span of 20-minutes or so, Chairman, ISRO declared that the data link to Vikram has been lost. It was not only the ISTRAC control center of ISRO at Bylalu, outside Bangalore which dipped in ocean of sorrow, every other Indian who was waiting for that successful moment were completely devastated. On my personal behalf, I kept on reviving the possible scenarios which were possible; also got involved in discussions in my 3-4 Whattsapp groups; in a way taking away the gloom prevailing around. Waited for the following day to head to the TV discussion.

The following day; 2-leading news papers published completely opposite views (quoting anonymous ISRO scientists) on the probable causes of the Vikram incident. While one said that it is the over breaking during the soft landing which could have contributed to skidding effect [aka car] on the Vikram. While the other attributes it to under performance of retro-engines. Many other experts gave their views as widespread as possible.

By noon: ANI news broke the story for the first time, quoting chairman, ISRO that " Vikram has been spotted by IR imager of the Orbiter; later to CNN News18 that the health of the Vikram can not be confirmed."

On the 2nd day of incident; many more stories [speculative/anonymous] appeared....
1. Vikram might have crash landed [either on its side or upside down]
2. Vikram is in one-piece [suggesting no greater damage]
3. Orbiter ORHC camera can detect the damage
4. ISRO would persist contacting Vikram for all the 14-days
5. The chances of revival would fade faster as the time passes by


POSSIBILITIES:

Let's be clear that; when the contact was lost; Vikram, at 2.1-km above was guzzling with the speed of around 200-kmph. Again, as per the newspaper report; the soft breaking operation would involve switching from 4-corner based engines to a single central engine.

Scene-1 [status-1]: Could only be a tumble, due to malfunction of throttelable engine; or the 4-engines. However, the close loop guidance system [CLGS] working properly running through the remaining milestones of 4 - 7 as explained above. Vikram has survived the incident and has landed safely. Also supported by one of the reports that Vikram is in one piece

Scene-2 [status:0] : Lets face it, the 200-kmph is enormous speed. Signal loss means the Vikram has tumbled; so much so that it has not allowed the close loop guidance system [CLGS]  to tackle the situation. Let me just remind you all that CLGS will work only when there are aroun 20+ sensors feeding the input to the computer and then on the decisions were to be followed. Which means, a meager failure of one retro-engine, gyroscope could lead to failure in breaking system. Hence the CLGS not at all getting a chance to run thru the remaining milestones of 4 to 7.

Scene-3: Neither 1 nor 0: There is a very finite possibility that a combination both the above scenerios could lead to system surviving but with a BIG question mark... will it perform the oprations of letting the Pragyan slide out.

My take:
Since communication link snapped before event; believing that the Artificial Intelligence has done its job to its best trained scenario; finding the hardware in one piece (unconfirmed report)....
SCENE-3 APPEARS TO BE MOST PROBABLE....

Lets hope best out of the above three cases and we get to see some ray of hope... Tomorrow...

ALL THE BEST ISRO...... you have done all the humanly possible actions, to quote chairman ISRO.

Lunar water; Who dunit ??

As the world awakes to one more paper appearing at GRL [12th March, 2019] on lunar water finding by a UV instrument (LAMP) on NASA's LRO today; my memories takes me back to 14th November, 2008. The LAMP team has announced that by carefully analyzing the data they could find water molecule moving around during the day time on the moon. That day, at  ISRO's Bylalu station, our senior most team member, Prof. R.Sridharan was literally jumping around as he noticed peak number-18 (water) in our just arrived mass spectra relayed by CHACE instrument, my baby, as it took a suicidal journey on the Moon Impact Probe of Chandrayaan-I.

Credit: ESA

If I can make the story very short... it goes as follows...
A billion hearts were beating to the success of Chandrayaan-I reaching moon on 8th November, 2008. Then came the 14th November episode of Moon Impact Probe (MIP) being separated from the mother space craft and had an impact on southern pole of the moon; covering around 2,800 km with a descend journey lasting around 22-minutes. The story of CHACE (CHandra's Altitudinal Composition Explorer), the ONLY science experiment on MIP; it is best narrated in my blog here. 

CHACE has been built to sample that tiniest of tiny particle densities around 10^3 and above in the lunar ambiance. However; as the humanity had learned its lessons when Bob Hodges and his team members had built their LACE mass spectrometers and left by Apollo team members on the moon; all of those instruments were getting saturated as the sun started rising on the lunar horizon; it was later learned that the poor dynamic range as the cause. Thanks to the present day technology; the CHACE could withstand 10-orders of dynamic range; while the older versions of mass spectrometers could at best 4-5 orders. It is for this reason that CHACE came out as a WINNER. But our joy was very short lived. As we sent our manuscript both to Science and later to Nature; none of the experts were ready to believe on what CHACE had relayed by giving its own life; they called it contamination.

CHACE, a quadrupole mass spectrometer, riding on the front end of Moon Impact Probe (MIP) was over sampling the lunar ambiance as the MIP gushing though the tenuous atmosphere at the speeds of around 1.5 km/s. No one would ever believe that CHACE was actually sampling the first time ever day time lunar ambiance. It was ridiculed as outgassing  by the spacecraft inner components. By the time we realized that the "ram correction" was needed for this over sampling (10^4 higher); the other payloads on Chandrayaan-I from NASA had got their instruments (MMM and min-SAR) geared to look for reflectance signatures of water and had their work published in the same journal Science in October, 2009.   It was the same Science journal which published MMM data withing 4-5 months of rejection of CHACE observations.

Finally after an agonizing wait of one year and 2-months our work was published in February 2010. I always carry (will..... till I breath my last) this guilt of missing the bus. Today, as I read the GRL paper; I like to draw attention of each and every soul who had ridiculed our work when we were trying to bring to their notice that....  YES.... INDEED THERE IS A WATER ON THE MOON....


Chronological developments on Lunar water
1. Chandrayaan-1 Lunar orbit injection....          8th Nov. 2008

2. Moon Impact Probe mission ...                        14th Nov. 2008
(Successful CHACE observations of H2O)

3. CHACE Manuscript to Science journal..         Dec. 2008

4. Meeting of Ch-1 scientist at ISRO-HQ....        Feb. 2009
(PIs of Indian/Foreign payloads including 
MMM, mini-SAR;
CHACE plot of lunar water shown to all)

5. MMM operational .......                                    Mar. 2009

6. MMM publication in Science .....                     Oct 2009

7. CHACE Publication .....                                   Feb. 2010

8. LAMP /LRO Publication ....                            Feb 2019

Schiaparelli

The unrelenting European spirit of landing on Mars continues. Mars-3, the first earthling object from USSR, though, had landed on Mars in 1971; it's signals ceased within 14-seconds of soft landing. While USA is sitting pretty with nearly half a dozen rovers roaming Martian surface, the last probe from European Space Agency (ESA/UK), Beagle-2 (2003) while almost making it to the surface of Mars but failed to send the signals back home. It was only in 2015, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter finding it intact on the expected spot on Mars, indicating failure of solar panels to deploy. Here comes another daring attempt by ESA on soft landing Schiaparelli next week. The excitement is immense; a six minute long sequencing of commands have already been loaded into the mother craft (Trace Gas Orbiter, link) cum lander (Schiaparelli).

The famous Italian astronomer, Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835-1910) dedicated his life studying planet Mars. From the ground telescopes (in Europe), he observed a network of linear structures; calling them "canali", in Italian, meaning channels; but it was mis-interpreted as "canals" in the English speaking world; leading to huge speculation of existence of life there. Thanks to the later observations (Italian scientist) and the spacecraft era; the pattern was ascribed to meagre optical illusions.

Here is a wonderful sequence of Schiaparelli touchdown, created by folks at Science alert:

The European Space Agency, ESA in their respect to this gentleman has named their lander,... Schiaparelli, which is due to land on Mars on 19th October, 2:48 pm GMT. If everything goes as planned, ESA will be the next entity after NASA to reach Martian surface (though the past attempts both by ESA and Russia/USSR have failed). The sequence of events are self explanatory on this ESA leaflet (a click on the image would enlarge it; come back to the post by LEFT arrow) ...

At an altitude of 121 km, the Schiaparelli will be separated from its mom TGO (Trace Gas Observatory) descending with an enormous speed of 21 000 km/hr. While the atmospheric drag (on Mars, it is almost 100 times less as compared to earth) would slow down its speed to around 1 700 km/hr at 11 km above the surface. The parachute will open up around this time slowing down to speed to 250 km/hr... still beating most of the cars on the earth's highways. At an altitude of 1 km, three set of thrusters would burn and control the descent speeds down to 4 km/hr and stop just around 2 meters above the ground. The Schiaparelli would briefly hover above the ground just before cutting off the thrusters. This hair rising sequence would take 6 minutes; and the scientists and engineers at ESA have to spend another agonizing 9-minutes for the UHF signals to travel to the Indian site (from Mars) called Giant Meter wave Radio Telescope, GMRT (vow... the signals are passing by my motherland), then to ESOC, Darmstadt, Germany.

Now, lets see what all is in store once Schiaparelli makes it to the spot on Mars called "Meridiani plane" where NASA's Opportunity rover had landed on January 24th, 2004.

Credit: Mars fossil

Schiaparelli, apart from breaking the jinx of landing, after reaching the surface, it is planned to work for 2-8 sols on Mars; this would translate into couple of earth weeks.

During Descent:

A separate instrumentation package, COMARS+ will monitor the pressure, surface temperature and heat flux on the back cover of Schiaparelli as it passes through the atmosphere.

In addition, the descent camera (DECA) on Schiaparelli will image the landing site as it approaches the surface, as well as providing a measure of the atmosphere’s transparency. DECA is the re-named flight spare of the visual monitoring camera which flew on Herschel.

A compact array of laser retroreflectors, known as INRRI, is attached to the zenith-facing surface of Schiaparelli. This can be used as a target for future Mars orbiters to laser-locate the module.

On the Martian surface:

DREAMS:

The Schiaparelli surface payload, the DREAMS (Dust Characterisation, Risk Assessment, and Environment Analyser on the Martian Surface) package, consists of a suite of sensors to measure the wind speed and direction (MetWind), humidity (DREAMS-H), pressure (DREAMS-P), atmospheric temperature close to the surface (MarsTem), the transparency of the atmosphere (Solar Irradiance Sensor, SIS), and atmospheric electrification (Atmospheric Radiation and Electricity Sensor; MicroARES)

Artist impression of DREAMS, Credit: ESA

Lets hope for the smooth touch down of Schiaparelli ....
On my personal behalf... let the GMRT (in India) prove to be a good omen for ESA ... 

Inputs from ESA: ( link )



Postmortem: (25th Ocober, 2016)
The ESA team was shocked to learn that the signals from Schiaparelli stopped 1-minute before the expected landing. Then came a stunning reveleation fromNASA's Mars Reconnaincse Orbiter (a 12-year old veteran circling Mars) that it has indeed captured the grave of Schiaparelli exactly in the expected ellipse of size 100 km X 15 km.

Here is the proof of landing captured :

Credit: NASA; Picture showing "before" and after the crash of lander 

The ESA team came up with this explanation:

Though the first 4-minutes sail of Schiaparelli went as expected... that is.. both the parachute and heat shield deployed successfully in slowing down the free fall speed; however the slowing down thrusters seems to have shut down earlier than expected leading to the lander's free fall from 2-4 kms above the surface of Mars with a killing speeds of around 300-kms per hour. They also claimed that since the fuel tanks were not emptied, there could have been an explosion at the crash landing.

So, my heart goes out for this daring attempt by ESA... I can only say:   RIP .. Schiaparelli

EXOMARS, Trace Gas Orbiter & Schiaparelli

The objectives of ExoMars mission is to look for life beyond earth (exo-biology) and it is performed by sending an orbiter (Trace Gas Orbiter, TGO) and Lander (Schiaparelli) which is already on its way to the Red planet and preparing for a rover in the next available celestial window in 2018. It is a joint venture between ESA and Russian space agency Roscosmos. Instead of giving a routine information on this mission, I try to bring out the niche technologies utilized by the participating European countries in TGO, which are at the forefront of Planetary Exploration. Special emphasis is made to bring out those attractive aspects of the "suite of instruments" which are employed to hunt down the elusive secrets (methane) on Mars.

Courtesy: ESA 

Trace Gas Orbiter, as the name suggests is geared to look for trace gases, these are defined as the species which fall in "less than 1% composition" of a planet. Since the signature of life could be buried with methane, a trace gas, concentrations occurring at parts per billion (10^-9) by volume; TGO carries a suite of instruments to monitor this gas primarily and many other trace gases which have been contemplated but never have been recorded at all. There is also an un-resolved issue of how the Martian atmosphere is lost; this could be accomplished by measuring ratios of isotopic species of various gaseous compounds with respect to the normal; example: HDO/H₂O. By comparing the ratios with the one appearing earth; one can estimate the loss of lighter species as compared to heavy. In summary, the task of TGO is 1. to look for methane at ppb concentration levels (huge demand on sensitivity of the instruments) and 2. measure the ratios of isotopologus species (very high spectral resolution required) and 3. technology demonstration for landing in a thin Martian atmosphere (Schiaparelli).

A brief introduction on composition of Martian atmosphere:
Major gases [Martian atmospheric pressure ~ 10 torr (Earth's: 760 torr)]

CO₂:  95%  (0.95)

N₂ : 2.7%  (0.027)

Ar : 1.6% (0.016)

Trace gases

O₂:  0.13% or 1.3X10^-2

H₂O:  2.0X10^-4

CH₄:  ~ 1.0X10^-8 or parts per billion (10^-9), (ppb)

For a composition analysing scientist measuring methane at a ppb level concentration is a million dollar ??? (or higher) question. This is where the Trace Gas Orbiter, TGO's journey to the red planet is holding huge expectations from the planetary scientists across the globe (which includes me).

There are 4-gem of instruments gear to break the technology barriers primarily geared in nailing down the elusive gas - Methane.
1. NOMAD (Nadir and Occultation for MArs Discovery)
2. ACS ( Atmospheric Chemistry Suite)
3.CaSSIS (Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System)
4. FREND – Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector.

Each instrument's configuration and their scientific goals are nicely outlined here:

Courtesy, J.L. Vago, ESA

Both ACS and NOMAD are a set of spectrometers designed to measure a huge range of gaseous species (including isotopolagous), while CaSSIS is a color camera employed in imaging, FREND searches for H-atoms down to 1-meter looking for traces of buried water.

NOMAD:
I spent 2-days in reading the "suite of instruments" NOMAD (Nadir and Occultation for MArs Discovery) carries and almost went MAD in appreciating the abundance amount of technological prowess this suite possesses. After debating on what proportion of "technical-popular" combination; I chose to take a middle path and try to keep the information flow in perspective so that both the casual and serious reader will be interested in reading beyond this paragraph.

Courtesy : ESA
(NOMAD instrument: 1. SO, 2. LNO, 3. UVIS, 4. Electronics)

NOMAD basically covers 0.2 – 4.3µ  spectral region with a set of 3-instruments operating in 3-different modes: 
1. SO: 2.3-4.3µ (Solar Occultation)
2. LNO : in 2.3-3.8µ (Limb, Nadir and Occultation) 
3. UV-VIS channel : 200-650 nm 

The SO mode is to look at the Sun during sunrise and sunset, while Nadir is looking straight down at the planet, LNO is a combination of limb scan /nadir view/Solar occultation. The table below is taken from a very recent publication of Robert et al appearing in Planetary and Space Sciences, outlining the greater details of what all NOMAD can deliver in different modes of observations.

Robert et al., Planet.Sp.Sc., 2016

Another notable point is the ability of NOMAD in detecting methane signal is given in the above said reference. Interestingly the NOMAD in LNO mode is capable of detecting methane even at 0.018 ppb (18 ppt) concentrations; which carries much superior sensitivity than the present day instruments both on Martian surface (CURIOSITY) and in the orbit (MOM: MSM, MENCA).

ACS:
 Atmospheric Chemistry Suite is a kind of complementary, IR spectrometer again with a suite of 3- built-in instruments,covering a huge spectral region of 2.3 - 17µ  i.e. 1. NIR, 2. MIR and 3. TIRVIM.

Korablev, J.App. Remote Sensing, 2014

Just like NOMAD, ACS too has SO, Nadir and LNO observation modes explained in the above table.

The science goals of various sub-sytems are:

NIR instrument:
a. Monitoring and profiling of trace components, CO, H₂O, O₂
b. Vertical profiles of atmospheric density
c.  Sensitive search for new OH, O₂ and NO night glow

MIR instrument:
a. Vertical profiles of СО2 (atmospheric density and temp.) ; minor species like CH₄ , H₂O, СО
b. Profiling of isotopic ratios HDO/H₂O, 13CO2/CO2, CO18O/CO2

TIRVIM instrument:
a. Search/monitoring of minor constituents
b. Monitoring of atmospheric dust, and condensation clouds
c. Monitoring of the thermal state from the surface.

Most striking aspect of ACS is a huge spectral resolution (resolving power~ 50,000) it offers in the MIR region of 2.3-4.3µ. This would help in detecting the trace gas species first time ever: CH4, C2H2, H2S, HCl.  The TIRVIM region is helpful in:a. detecting trace gases, b. measurement of thermal profiles, c. aerosol properties and d. trace species: NO, N2O measurements.

CaSSIS:
The color camera's spatial coverage (swath) and resolution details are outlined here:

Courtesy: J.L. Vago, ESA

FREND:
Artist's concept of the instreumnt and similar kind of observation made are given here:

Courtesy: J.L. Vago, ESA

TGO has added huge expectations among the Planetary scientists who are looking forward to fix the jigsaw puzzle on life beyond earth and in particular signatures of life on our next neighbour.

India need Nano satellites; Future of Space Sciences

Sputnik 1 was the first human endeavour to leave mother earth (October, 1957) to be able to wander into Space. Though it was a small satellite ( ~ 83 kg), the later attempts by humans to explore space (Low Earth Orbit, LEO) were becoming increasingly bulky. The exploitation of geo-synchronous orbit (36,000 km) for beaming telecommunication and other signals could only add more burden on building huge work horses (Envisat ~ 8,000 kg). The present discussion is limited to Nano-Satellites, which fall in the 1-10 kg weight category; while Micro- satellites are in 100-10 kg and Pico satellites under 1-kg.

As the miniaturisation in electronic components (MEMS) started, so was the aerospace industry turning to COTS (Commercial, Off-the-Shelf) based small satellites. The idea was to try out newer technology riding on tiny satellites (Micro / Nano) even if the sub-components are not of very expensive MIL (military) grade, meaning radiation hardened class.  In came a "golden standard" called Cubesat, by a group of scientists lead by Bob Twiggs (Stanford Univ) and Jordi Puig-Suary (Calpoly University, California) in the year 1999. They called 1U (1-unit) which would measure 10 X 10 X 10 cm and weigh less than 1.33 kg. Same group also came up with a great idea of developing a P-POD (Poly-Pico satellite Orbiter Deployer) satellite dispenser. Their idea is to impart training for the undergrad students in the space technologies at affordable budget.

Credit : Skybox Imaging

The first Cubesat shot into space in 2003.. oh boy!! ... it transformed the land scape of how one reaches space.  The years 2014, 15 saw nearly 100-Cubesats launches each across the globe. In USA (and Europe) NASA, US-Air force ventured into Micro-satellite developmental programs. NASA's AMES centre had well laid program on Space biology, Lunar Sciences and Inter-planetary missions.  Similarly, JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) too has a vibrant Cubesat program to monitor the earth and also a curious MARCO (Mars Cube One). MARCO's are two data relaying Cubesats which will be part of NASA's  next journey to Mars. They call it a "Technology Demonstration".

Observations made by Michael Swatwout at Saint Louis University, highlights the point (shown below) that the task of Nano satellites has tilted towards Technology demonstration as compared to Educational purposes. A country like India can afford to skip the FIRST step and take advantage of easily availabile components to be able to develop newer technologies.

Credit: Michael Swatwout, SLU

Nano-Satellites: Easy to make
It is not the big players for whom the tiny cubes were like TOYS, even for a lazy engineering graduate there are almost a dozen shops opened up in USA, where a stroke of key board and a credit card can bring him "Power board to Communication board even a Cubesat camera. Here are a few to quote as examples:

Credit: Cubesatkit

http://cubesatshop.com/

http://www.cubesatkit.com/

https://www.planet.com/



INDIA and Nano-Satellites
India has started venturing into space from the SLV (Satellite Launch Vehicle, 1979) Program. The first flight under the leadership of very well known face from India Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam was a failure; within a year the next flight roared into the skies of Sriharikota in southern India; that was lesson#1 in the history of ISRO; they never seem to look back in repeating failures. The PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) too had to face the setback in its first flight but never ever looked back till date... the present SUCCESSFUL FLIGHT number is 31 and is still counting.

As dictated by the priorities, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has been having a very active, bright, successful program which has catapulted the country's name among the league of biggest players in world. ISRO has been successful in low earth orbit programs (IRS satellites), geo-synchronous orbit program and a very successful Lunar (Chandrayaan-I) and Martian (MOM) missions. Capturing the tag of FIRST nation to do so in its very FIRST attempt.

STUDSAT, Credit: ISAC, ISRO

However, the neglected aspect of Small Satellite activity can be gauged by noting that India could launch a meagre number of FIVE in the entire history. Among these, there are just 3-of them which are 10-kg or less. Notable is JUGNU, a 3-kg satellite, developed by Indian premier education center: Indian Institute of Kanpur (IITK). The real hero in my view is STUDSAT which was developed by a group of engineering colleges from the cities of Bangalore and Hyderabad. The reason for STUDSAT to stand out is: due to their limited resources and also a mammoth task of co-ordination among the youth... Hats - off guys...

So... as my title says.... Today, India is a vibrant country with huge potential of growing in cutting edge technologies. Nano Satellites will offer a first hand training to the youth of our nation; also as it has been noticed worldwide that these tiny toys can serve as work horses for testing the new technologies in space, before venturing with millions of investments. With ISRO as the back bone, we can do a lot better than what we have been on the Nano Satellite front..... Let's kick start this activity.... which would bolster the Make in India program as envisaged by the central government.

ASTROSAT vs The Giant Hubble

A TV program on the legendary Hubble Space Telescope, HST (Hubble's Cosmic Journey, National Geographic), prompted me to write this piece on the recently launched Indian space telescope called ASTROSAT.  The purpose of Hubble Space Telescope is to break the barrier of 1-arc second seeing limit (full moon is about 1,800 arc-seconds across) from the ground which arises due to the atmospheric disturbances. NASA had achieved this by a mammoth effort of grinding a 2.4-meter glass to the curvature accuracy of 1/800,000 th of an inch and placing the school bus size object weighing 11,110-kg in 550-km orbit. ASTROSAT is India's  multi-wavelength telescope geared to look at the stellar objects primarily in UV, X-ray regions of the EM spectrum. In that TV program, the sweet voice of John Grunsfeld conveying his strong bond he had created in repairing the Hubble more than one time. Hubble is the most sophisticated optical experiment of humans in the space which has been working for 25-years and is going great guns.

In the back drop of this legacy; enters here,  the young-aspiring Indian beauty, ASTROSAT. In a typical Indian style of small-simple but effective, this telescope carries the same heritage as that of the Indian Chandrayaan-I (moon  mission) and MOM (Mars mission).  The idea of Indian scientists is to perform front line research from the existing experience in the country (X-ray astronomy); and hence majority of the hardware which went into is in the X-ray regime of EM spectrum. Considered to be a small size (in comparison to others) space telescope, it weighs 1513-kg at the time of lift off; it is basically a multi-wavelength telescope in a near equator orbit of around 650-kms radius.

Credit: DNAINDIA 

Apart from performing the deep field survey of the Universe in the UV region; ASTROSAT's wish list covers a wide range of phenomenon which are taking place in the universe:
a. studying the high energy processes of binary star system (neutron star-black hole),
b. estimation of magnetic field of neutron stars,
c. look for star birth region beyond our galaxy,
d. detecting the new briefly appearing bright x-ray sources in the sky.

If I could drift a bit beyond the popular level flow of this presentation; here is the list of payloads, the instruments which are very well thought over and put together by the host of Indian research institutes: TIFR, IIA, IUCAA, PRL and RRI.

Credit: ISRO

The details given above emphasises that the Optical and UV region is covered by a single detector; great efforts have been put to cover a very wide range of X-ray based 4-instruments.

As they say, the proof of the pudding is in eating.... the ASTROSAT has come out with a flying colours as soon as its eyes were made to open.

On 17th November, when the Swift observatory of NASA made its 1000th observation of Gamma Ray Burst (GRB), the ASTROSAT's CTZI indeed picked the same object and hence the sweet news of success to the eagerly waiting Indian scientists. The observations are reported here .

COMPARISON: 

Comparing Hubble Telescope with the ASTROSAT would be like comparing the legend Carl Lewis to that of a young athlete or in Indian terms, comparing Sachin Tendulkar to a Ranji trophy player. Without offending anyone, I must also add that both of these sport legends have indeed followed the same nascent stages. Hubble is a huge optical telescope to peek deep into the dark patches as seen from the ground telescopes. This was possible due to the avoidance of atmospheric disturbances. Where as, ASTROSAT is a multi-wavelength observing telescope; may not be huge in size but carries a state-of-the art X-ray detectors and a combined UV-Visible detector in aiming the similar deepest in-accessible "dark regions". With the success of operation of most of the detectors, it is only the time which is going to unravel the worthiness of all the hard work of Indian scientists. Best of luck INIDA..... 

Hubble Space Telescope

As has been referred here, Hubble is a legend in opening the eyes of humanity into the darkest regions of skies. Hubble basically is an optical observatory with an viewing ability of better than 0.1-arc second, having the 3-different types of sensors: i. Camera, ii. Spectrograph and iii. Photometer. A daring 5-space walks had fixed the flaw in achieving the intended goals of Hubble imagery; a total of 4-repairing attempts have kept the instrument in its best abilities.

Here is the summary of few greatest achievements of Hubble:

• Identification of dark matter which is otherwise invisible and comprises around 23% of the entire universe could be modelled into 3-D from the observations of Hubble
• Hubble discovered 2-new moons of Pluto : Nix, Hydra
• Identification of star forming regions, e.g. Orion nebula
• Picking up gamma ray bursts (GRB) and resolving the mystery around them
• Capturing the famous collision of comet Shoemaker-Levy with planet Jupiter
• Helped to identify the dark energy which is responsible for expansion of universe
• Super massive black holes may be lurking in many galaxies that have bulge of stars at the centre
• Observing the atmosphere of exo-planet (in Visible)

The list goes on.... and is still counting.....

The humble : ASTROSAT

The unique capabilities of ASTROSAT lies in its multi-wavelength capabilities of observing stellar objects.

• The Large Area X-Ray Proportional Counter (LAXPC) stands out among all the available space telescopes (RXTE, HEXTE, SAX); by offering almost 3-times larger area at 40-keV energy x-rays.
• The LAXPC will also offer best timing studies; helping the observers to study the strong gravity regions around neutron stars and stellar mass black holes
• LAXPC will also serve  as a complimentary instrument for the present/upcoming spectroscopic observations (Chandra, XMM-Newton, NuSTAR, ASTRO-H)
• Sensitive hard X-ray spectroscopy
• Wide spectral coverage : UV, 0.3-150 keV

RXTE : The Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer
HEXTE : High Energy Timing Experiment
SAX: Beppo SAX, Italian Dutch Satellite for X-ray astronomy
MOM: Mars Orbiter Mission

Water on Mars

After the discovery of bone dry moon to be holding traces of water molecules... Water on Mars means a lot to the human race. It is not a meagre scientific result where a 9-year old space craft revolving around Mars and 4-years old results have shown liquid water to be flowing during the summer on Mars; rather, these results have re-kindled new hopes of finding life on Mars, as per Michael Meyer, NASA's Mars Exploration Program. Of course, the intelligent, eager and inquisitive human's quest of leaving earth has found astronomical levels of adrenaline pumping into their blood streams.

This is the picture released by NASA which speaks tonnes of words on how the newly appearing streaks, called the recurring slope lineae (RSL)... held the secrets under their belly for so long that it took a smart under graduate student, Lujendra Ojha from Georgia Tech to figure out that these are actually hydrated salts which appear only when the ambiance reaches -23 C and above. In a way, the salts are helping the ice (water) to melt at much much lower temperatures; just as salt on roads here on Earth causes ice and snow to melt more rapidly.

Credit : NASA

SECRETS unravelled..

The dark streaks seem to be appearing in the summer and would again vanish as the temperature dips. It is only due to the long lasting mission Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and the versatile instruments it is carrying; that the keen observations of this undergrad student along with his team members that they found a way to unravel the secret beneath these streaks.

Ojha and his team first created a 3-D model (digital terrain map) utilizing the stereo information from  High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera of MRO. The image is draped with the spectral information from Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer (CRISM) of MRO. The spectrometer component of the overlaid image shows information about the hydrated salts at the multiple RSLs.

Ojha and his co-authors interpret the spectral signatures as caused by hydrated minerals called perchlorates. The hydrated salts most consistent with the chemical signatures are likely a mixture of magnesium perchlorate, magnesium chlorate and sodium perchlorate. This study of RSL detected perchlorates, now in hydrated form. This also is the first time perchlorates have been identified from orbit.

Another example of Dark Streaks on Garni crater..

Credit: NASA

Breakthrough Listen - Search for Aliens

"Is there an intelligent life beyond Earth? " this question has been bothering the human race as far as 19th century. The Serbian-American Scientist Nikola Tesla proposed to send signals to Martians (1890); he claimed to have received unusual signals, calling them to be from "another world". The project, Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, SETI, 1960 by Frank Drake, USA was to look for radio signals sent out by intelligent life in the universe.

The declaration of 100-million dollars fund by the Russian investor Yuri Milner with a surprise addition of Stephen Hawking in his team, the project "Breakthrough Initiatives" would certainly change the fate of SETI search. Milner, a physics graduate turned investor is known for turning coal into gold, with his investments bringing a new tide into the businesses (e.g. facebook, twitter, alibaba, xiomi, flipkart....); lets hope the same for SETI.

Credit: www.effmeride.it 

How is it done??
First strategy: Search for the radio signals in the nearby 100 million stars hoping that civilization living in their planetary system may be intelligent enough to have a radio active utility in their routine works, e.g. air traffic control or any other communications.

Since the past studies of SETI have strongly suggested that the radio signals from extra-terrestrial signals could come only from the far away sources and they could be extremely strong, an alternative hunt would also be planned.

Second strategy: Here the entire plane of milky-way galaxy (where we live) and the central zone will be studied in detail to cover more than 100-billion stars in the shallow region (meaning far away). Apart from this, the survey would also stare at 100-galaxies  comprising of 10s of trillions (1000-billion or million-million) of stars, each star having its own planetary system.

To accomplish the above said goals; the plan is to spend one-third of the funding in buying 20% of the 100-meter diameter Green Bank radio telescope at West Virginia and a substantial amount of time on Parkes 64-meter telescope in Australia for 10-years.

100-meter Green Bank radio telescope

Another one-third amount of funds are planned to develop very high sensitive receivers to listen to billions of narrow frequency channels in 1-10 GHz, a  region which covers best of the radio signal regimes which passes through the earth's atmosphere and also clean from the cosmic background . 

Breakthrough Listen will also be taking up observations in visible light region on the 2.4-meter Lick observatory's  planetary finder telescope. This would serve as an additional tool to support and confirm the region from where one hopes to pick POSITIVE signs of civilization.

Example: As per a rough estimate, the present studies (at Green Park) can pick up signals: "If an alien civilization living on a planet orbiting around any of the 1000 stars closest to us from a common air traffic kind of communication signals". 2. The optical signals monitored at Licks observatory would be able to pick 100-watts of light from the planets of stars which are within 4-light years away from ours.

Prominent SETI attempts:
A British radio astronomer, Antony Hewish and his post doc Jocelyn Bell studying the inter planetary scintillations of compact radio sources came across a set of radio sources displaying very regular and fast packet of signals. Unable to identify the source they went on to name them "little green men". Later the team went on to discover a new set sources called Pulsars; Anotny Hewish getting a noble prize (1974) for this discovery.

The famous ISRO-Balloon experiment, where the Indian scientists lead by Dr. Jayant Narlikar have successfully found bacteria in the stratosphere of earth, at an altitude of 20-40 kms. The three group of bacteria to be identified after the gene sequencing technique have been found for the first time (Reference). Though the Indian experiment may not fall under the LISTEN category, it does stand out as an outstanding effort of humans to reach out extra terrestrial life. India can certainly play a big role in this project; Milner goes on record to say that the idea of pumping this money is to instigate young minds towards science... is any body listening????

Bottom line!!
Though the present initiative may increase the SETI search by 100-times in the form of more sensitive tools (a rough estimate); it may take even generations to get to listen to the super civilization living away from our world. But surely enough... Milner has certainly initiated a giant step towards SETI...


Credit: 
Like to give credit to few press reports appearing in the internet after the declaration of Breakthrough Initiatives project on 20th July at the Royal Society, London, particularly to a good piece of article appearing in the Sky and Telescope by Alan MacRobert.