Mars Curiosity – Australian Science

Science Weekly Picks

Kevin Orrman-Rossiter — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 00:01:05 +0000

Being responsible for picking the week’s most interesting science stories is a fun and fascinating challenge. It pushes to me to look beyond my own interests and explore what others find compelling. So I trust you find my ‘science making news’ selection of interest and delight; explore the quantum, human, off-world and mathematical highs of the week.

On the human scale an international team of scientists has been investigating the antibiotic properties of sweat. More precisely they discovered how a natural antibiotic called dermcidin, produced by our skin when we sweat, is a highly efficient tool to fight tuberculosis germs and other dangerous bugs.

Their results could contribute to the development of new antibiotics that control multi-resistant bacteria.

The benefits of a good nights sleep once again are news. Researchers have shown that the disruption in the body’s circadian rhythm can lead not only to obesity, but can also increase the risk of diabetes and heart disease.

Our study confirms that it is not only what you eat and how much you eat that is important for a healthy lifestyle, but when you eat is also very important.

Disruption of body’s circadian clock increases risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. (Credit: Daniel Dubois, Vanderbilt University)

At the quantum scale, the particle physicists are at it again. Not content with discovering the Higgs Boson they are shedding light (pardon the pun) on a possible 5th force in nature. In a breakthrough physicists have established new limits on what scientists call “long-range spin-spin interactions” between atomic particles. These interactions have been proposed by theoretical physicists but have not yet been seen. If a long-range spin-spin force is found, it not only would revolutionize particle physics but might eventually provide geophysicists with a new tool that would allow them to directly study the spin-polarized electrons within Earth.

The most rewarding and surprising thing about this project was realizing that particle physics could actually be used to study the deep Earth.

The latest news from Mars is that curiosity has relayed new images that confirm it has successfully obtained the first sample ever collected from the interior of a rock on another planet.

Many of us have been working toward this day for years. Getting final confirmation of successful drilling is incredibly gratifying. For the sampling team, this is the equivalent of the landing team going crazy after the successful touchdown.

To wrap up with one further piece of geek excitement. On January 25th at 23:30:26 UTC, the largest known prime number, 2^57,885,161-1, was discovered on Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) volunteer Curtis Cooper’s computer. The new prime number, 2 multiplied by itself 57,885,161 times, less one, has 17,425,170 digits. With 360,000 CPUs peaking at 150 trillion calculations per second, 17th-year GIMPS is the longest continuously-running global “grassroots supercomputing”project in Internet history.

Until next week’s Australian Science review, go geekily crazy and enjoy your weekend.

Cite this article:
Orrman-Rossiter K (2013-02-24 00:01:05). Science Weekly Picks. Australian Science. Retrieved: Apr 27, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/news/science-weekly-picks/

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Interview: Keri Bean—Mars meteorologist, Curiosity Rover team member

Alan Kerlin — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 00:24:25 +0000

Keri Bean in the NASA JPL Mars Yard, with the Curiosity test-bed twin ‘Maggie’

Keri Bean is a meteorologist specialising in the atmospherics of other planets. She is on the team operating the Curiosity Rover for NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission. Prior to MSL, Keri has had roles in the missions for other Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, a prototype Moon rover, the Phoenix Mars Lander, and the Hubble Space telescope. And she’s just 25 years old! That’s a pretty incredible CV to rack up already.

In this interview, Keri talks with me about her work on MSL and the other missions, plus how and why she got into space science. It all started when a tornado hit her pre-school.

Australian Science on SoundCloud.

Keri (centre) with many of the MSL team and ‘Scarecrow’, the other Curiosity test rover (Scarecrow is lighter than Curiosity so that it mirrors the lower Mars gravity).

A GIF of the partial solar eclipse by Mars moon Phobos, as captured by the Curiosity rover—an image capture task coordinated by Keri.

A photo of Phobos (highly zoomed it, and hence quite grainy) taken by Curiosity just after dusk on 21 September using one of its Mastcams, showing its ‘potato’ shape.

The ‘Chariot’ Lunar rover prototype for which Keri worked on camera design (and which James May managed to have a minor accident with when filming an episode of Top Gear!).

The Mars Phoenix Lander.

Cite this article:
Kerlin A (2012-11-12 00:24:25). Interview: Keri Bean—Mars meteorologist, Curiosity Rover team member. Australian Science. Retrieved: Apr 27, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/space/interview-keri-bean-mars-meteorologist-curiosity-rover-team-member/

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Does my Science look big in this? August 2012 in review

Kevin Orrman-Rossiter — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 07:29:25 +0000

August was a momentous month for science and technology. In my top five events are: NASA landed a car-sized rover on Mars; the first man to walk on the Moon, Neil Armstrong dies; Harvard scientist create a cyborg tissue; Swedish researchers detail how Parkinson’s disease spreads through the brain; and Voyager 2 turns 35.

Without a doubt the technology achievement of the month goes to NASA. They landed the rover, Curiosity, successfully on Mars at 1:31 a.m. EDT August 6, 2012. Ending a 36-week flight and beginning a two-year investigation. What makes this noteworthy? For one the coverage and access NASA provided in real time. From the launch to the daily updates to the ‘on the spot’ coverage of the entrance-descent-landing sequence live from the Pasadena control-room. Showing that engineers and scientists are human after all.

I was delighted to see the sky-crane landing working to perfection. As the system were all bought to life one-by-one the science exploration staff are eagerly anticipating zapping, sampling and analysing rocks, regolith and atmosphere.

Curiosity parachuting to the Martian surface. Photo credit NASA/JPL.

“Today, the wheels of Curiosity have begun to blaze the trail for human footprints on Mars. Curiosity, the most sophisticated rover ever built, is now on the surface of the Red Planet, where it will seek to answer age-old questions about whether life ever existed on Mars, or if the planet can sustain life in the future,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “This is an amazing achievement, made possible by a team of scientists and engineers from around the world and led by the extraordinary men and women of NASA and our Jet Propulsion Laboratory. President Obama has laid out a bold vision for sending humans to Mars in the mid-2030’s, and today’s landing marks a significant step toward achieving this goal.”

The bold vision for sending humans to Mars was poignant. Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, died, following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures. He was 82. Without a doubt Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins were childhood heroes to me. They along with the other astronauts of both the Apollo and Gemini missions were a key inspiration in firstly my interest in and secondly my career in science.

The only picture taken of Neil Armstrong on the Moon. Neil was carrying the camera (seen in his hands here) during the entire moon-walk so all images captures Buzz Aldrin. This image was captured by a stationary camera on the Lunar landing module. Image credit NASA.

“Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed,” Armstrong said, telling a tense and waiting Earth that men had finally reached the lunar surface. Neil Armstrong was also a reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job. A refreshing change from the current days of hyped useless celebrities and where the word awesome is applies to every mundane activity. Traveling to the Moon, that inspires a sense of awe.

Meanwhile researchers at Harvard have grown cyborg tissues with embedded nanoelectronics. They have reported how they developed a system for creating nanoscale “scaffolds” which could be seeded with cells which later grow into tissue.

Though a number of potential applications exist for the technology, the most near-term use may come from the pharmaceutical industry. Researchers could use it to more precisely study how newly developed drugs act in three-dimensional tissues, rather than thin layers of cultured cells. The system might also one day be used to monitor changes inside the body and react accordingly, whether through electrical stimulation or the release of a drug.

Parkinson’s researchers at Lund University for the first time were able to follow events in which misfolded proteins travel from sick to healthy cells. This model has never before been identified so clearly in a living organism. The experiments also show how the transferred proteins attract proteins in the host cell leading to abnormal folding or “clumping” inside the cells. This is a cellular process likely to lead to the disease process as Parkinson’s progresses, and it spreads to an increasing number of brain regions as the patient gets sicker.

The aim of the research is to better understand how Parkinson’s pathology progresses and thereby uncover novel molecular targets for disease-modifying treatments.

Voyager 1. Image credit NASA/JPL

Finally what an inspiring longevity story. Thirty-five years ago, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft, the first Voyager spacecraft to launch, departed on a journey that would make it the only spacecraft to visit Uranus and Neptune and the longest-operating NASA spacecraft ever. Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1, that launched 16 days later on Sept. 5, 1977, are still going strong, hurtling away from our sun. Mission managers are eagerly anticipating the day when they break on through to the other side – the space between stars.

I trust you have enjoyed my idiosyncratic “five best new science and technology” stories of this past calender month. These were in most cases, but not exclusively so, announced through peer reviewed journals. These were those that I found most interesting, or influential, or of possible future impact. No science applied to my choice, the choice was my responsibility alone!

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