StarDate

Two Mars-bound spacecraft have been just loitering about. They were launched a year ago. But the timing wasn’t right for them to reach Mars. So they were sent to a point in space where the gravity of Earth and the Sun are balanced – a place where they could “loiter.” But now, their time has come. They’ll leave that spot in a few days, beginning their trip to the Red Planet.

Escapade consists of two small spacecraft, called Blue and Gold. After they enter orbit around Mars, they’ll measure its magnetic field and its interactions with the solar wind – a flow of particles from the Sun. That will help scientists understand how Mars lost much of its atmosphere.

Escapade was supposed to launch several years ago. But there were problems with its potential rides to space, so it kept getting delayed. And if you miss a launch window, it’s a long time until the next one opens.

You can’t send a craft to Mars anytime you want. You have to wait for the proper alignment – when Earth and Mars are going to be close together. Otherwise, the distance between them is so great that you just can’t get there. That alignment comes about every 26 months.

NASA decided to go ahead and launch Escapade a year early and have the two craft wait in space. They’ll soon fire their engines to nudge them toward Earth. They’ll use Earth’s gravity to kick them toward Mars, with arrival at the Red Planet in September.

Script by Damond Benningfield

The solar system provides some handy “parking spots” for spacecraft. They’re steady locations for watching Earth, the Sun, or the rest of the universe.
They’re called Lagrange points. They’re small regions in space where the gravity of two bodies is balanced. An object can stay at a Lagrange point with little effort.
Space agencies take advantage of that gravitational quirk by placing probes there. For any two astronomical objects, such as Earth and the Sun, there are five Lagrange points. But some of them are more useful than others.
The point known as L2 has been especially popular. It’s a million miles on the opposite side of Earth from the Sun. Normally, a spacecraft at that distance would move a little slower than Earth and fall behind it. But at L2 it can stay in place – almost. Over time, the craft would slowly drift away. So instead, it orbits that point – keeping it locked in position.
From L2, a space telescope has a clear view of the universe, unobstructed by Earth itself. But it stays close enough to Earth to remain in easy contact. So more than a dozen space telescopes have settled in there, including the James Webb telescope. When a telescope’s job is done, it fires its thrusters to leave L2 so it won’t interfere with ongoing missions.
For the past year, L2 also served as a parking spot for a pair of probes bound for Mars. We’ll have more about that tomorrow.

Script by Damond Benningfield

The waning Moon anchors a beautiful lineup in tomorrow’s early-morning sky. At dawn, the star Regulus – the heart of the lion – is close above the Moon. The brilliant planet Jupiter is to the upper right of the Moon, with Mars a little farther along the same line.

Mars and Jupiter are the fourth and fifth planets from the Sun, with Jupiter about three times farther out. The gap between them is more than 300 million miles. But that space is far from empty. Instead, it’s home to the asteroid belt – a wide band of debris.

So far, astronomers have cataloged about one-and-a-half million objects in the belt. The largest is about 600 miles across. The smallest are about the size of a bus. But the suspected population is far larger. There could be more than a million that are at least one kilometer in diameter, and millions upon millions of smaller ones.

Current theories say the belt probably is debris from a planet that never was. Many of the solid chunks of material that came together to form the planets inhabited the region when the solar system was young. Left on their own, they might have come together to make a planet. But Jupiter’s gravity kept that from happening. It kicked many of the pieces out of the solar system. And it stirred up the others, preventing them from coalescing – filling the space between Mars and Jupiter with a bunch of leftovers from the birth of the planets.

Script by Damond Benningfield

There’s a spectacular lineup in the wee hours of the morning the next couple of days: the Moon, the planets Mars and Jupiter, and the star Regulus. The entire lineup climbs into good view by 1:30 or 2, and is high in the sky at first light.

Tomorrow, the Moon will be especially close to Mars. At their closest, they’ll be about one degree apart – the width of a pencil held at arm’s length. The planet looks like a bright star. But it might be tough to see its orange color through the moonlight.

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun – the next one out beyond Earth. It’s also the Sun’s fourth-smallest planet – a little more than half the diameter of Earth.

Jupiter stands below them as they climb skyward. It’s much brighter than Mars. In fact, it’s brighter than anything else in the night sky other than the Moon and Venus, which is pulling into view as the “morning star.”

Jupiter is the next planet out. And it’s the largest planet in the solar system – about 11 times Earth’s diameter. That’s one reason it looks so bright, even though it’s about three times farther than Mars.

Regulus is about the same distance below Jupiter. It’s the faintest member of the lineup. But it’s one of the brighter true stars in the night sky, so you won’t have any trouble picking it out. It represents the heart of Leo. The Moon will stand especially close to it on Tuesday, and we’ll have more about that tomorrow.

Script by Damond Benningfield

Ghosts and demons roam the Halloween night. Vampires and zombies are there, too. So are black widows and Gorgons, witches and snakes and dragons – enough scary creatures to fill a galaxy of haunted houses. You’ll see some of them wandering the streets in search of treats. And if you look up, they’re all there in the stars.

As night falls, the star Algol is in the northeast, in Perseus the hero. Its name means “the demon star.” It represents Medusa, a monster who turned anyone who looked at her to stone. Her sisters – the other Gorgons – are represented by some fainter stars around Algol.

The constellation Cetus is low in the east and southeast. It represents a sea monster that was defeated by Perseus – using the head of Medusa.

The Witch Head Nebula climbs into view in late evening. It’s a cloud of gas and dust that’s being both illuminated and sculpted by Rigel, the brightest star of Orion. Through a telescope, it really does look like the profile of a witch.

Many “ghosts” float through the sky as well. They’re star clusters or the last gasps of dying stars – named for their ghostly appearance.

The vampires and zombies and black widows are all “dead” stars that are sucking the life from their companion stars. They’re all invisible – none of them is bright enough to see with the eye alone. But they’re sprinkled through the galaxy, haunting the skies of Halloween night – and every other night as well.

Script by Damond Benningfield