Space week - from Curiosity landing on Mars to the meteor shower happening

Yesterday the Curiosity rover landed on Mars, on Sunday an astronomical event is expected - a meteor shower in the absence of a moon. A selection of planned events

The coming week is going to be very spacey. It began with the landing of the robotic space vehicle Curiosity on the soil of the planet Mars, will continue with photos and color film of the landing of Curiosity and will end with the Perseid meteor shower that we will be able to see between Sunday and Monday night.

On Monday, August 6.8.12, 14, the space vehicle Curiosity successfully landed on Mars. Landing astronauts on Mars is a difficult task that is still in the planning stages, the Curiosity robotic space vehicle is another huge step on the way to accomplishing this task. Curiosity is unmanned and controlled from Earth, a kind of interplanetary remote control. A signal sent between Curiosity and KDWA takes XNUMX minutes to reach its destination. But there was a problem, the landing time on Mars from entering the atmosphere to touching the ground is only seven minutes, because from the moment the spacecraft sends a message to NASA that it is entering the Martian atmosphere and until the message reaches us, the spacecraft will already crash on the surface of Mars. What to do?

There was no choice but to do all the landing steps completely automatically, without human intervention. The spacecraft is supposed to enter the Martian atmosphere, slow down enough to land, and land safely automatically. Only then will she send a signal that she has landed and after 14 minutes we will know here at KDWA that the landing was successful. This is a complicated and difficult engineering process, especially when it comes to Curiosity, a motorized geological laboratory that weighs almost a ton and contains delicate and heavy equipment and many cameras. It has everything from a laser gun that will break pieces of stone, through tools for collecting samples and devices for identifying materials to cameras and radiation sensors.

NASA scientists called these seven minutes of landing the seven minutes of horror in which they have no idea whether the automatic landing was successful or failed. They waited patiently until the signal came from Curiosity that the landing was successfully completed. The careful engineering planning was successful, the landing stages worked as they should and Curiosity is ready to go and explore the geology of Mars. One of its tasks will be to check if there are any evidences left in the soil for organic life forms that may have lived in the past on Mars (today it seems that there is no life on the surface of Mars). More details about Curiosity's mission can be found on Yoav Landsman's Critical Mass blog.

Here is a NASA video called the Seven Minutes of Horror about the various stages of the landing and dealing with various problems during the landing, as they successfully occurred today automatically -

But this is only the beginning of the space week!

Note that upon entering the atmosphere Curiosity is inside another spacecraft called MSL. After entering the atmosphere and opening the parachute, at an altitude of 8 km above the surface of Mars, the heat shield detached from the spacecraft and only then Curiosity was exposed to the reddish air. In the lower part of it there is a camera that points towards the ground and from the moment the shield came off it started filming the landing in color and in good quality. So in a few days, as soon as NASA releases this film, we will be able to see the film of Curiosity's landing on Mars. As in scenes from Hollywood science fiction movies, we see the landing of a robotic space vehicle on other planets, only this time it's reality!

After today's success there is good reason to celebrate, we are getting closer to the moment when the technology will be mature and we will know enough details to send the first manned spacecraft to Mars. Then the human race will take another step towards our expansion throughout the universe. It would be nice to see the video of the landing, it's amazing to think that while we live our lives here on earth, a spaceship of the human race lands on its own on a distant, alien and lifeless planet. How much progress we have made and how much further progress is expected of us in the future in order to go out into the vastness of infinity that is waiting for us beyond the blue dot we call Earth. This thought gives us perspective on things.

One of the best ways to experience this perspective, the connection to these almost infinite spaces and feel a part of them for a moment, is to watch a meteor shower. This is one of the most impressive shows out there and it is free and easy to watch. This coming Sunday, August 12.8.12, XNUMX, we will be able to observe, as every year, the impressive meteor shower, the Perseid shower. This is the icing on the cake, the highlight of Space Week.

Meteors are small grains of sand and rocks that have been caught in the gravitational field of space and entered the atmosphere. There they burn, usually completely, leaving a trail of light. The Perseid meteor shower occurs every year at this time when the Earth passes through the dust trail left by Comet Swift-Tuttle. The Perseids are so named because they look like they come from the constellation Perseus. This is a very strong meteor shower and this year at the height of the shower it will be possible to see about a hundred meteors per hour under optimal conditions. The peak will be between Sunday and Monday at three in the morning. What inconsideration! Couldn't the record be done on the weekend at a more convenient time?

It's worth making an effort and reaching the peak of the meter, the night before there are expected to be much fewer meteors. The experience is amazing and pulsating, everyone who experiences it feels that he has seen a spectacle that is not from this world, and he is right.. But in order to experience the meteor shower properly, it is necessary to leave urban and inter-urban areas to the desert. The many lights in the cities create light pollution and as a result it is impossible to see stars or meteors in the sky. We all know that in the city you hardly see stars, so it is easy to forget the perspective and the power that is waiting out there.

Even outside the city, the situation is not much better. It is true that you can see more stars in the sky, but even though you are no longer in the city, the light from the nearby cities spreads in the night sky and the light pollution is still great. The amount of stars and meteors that can be seen is still tiny compared to the real thing that is only revealed when you get far enough away from any city. Neither the mountains of Jerusalem, nor the fortress of Antipater, nor Moshavim in Sharon will provide the goods. The rule is that you have to see the Milky Way brightly in the dark sky, then you are in a dark enough place.

This is what our galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy looks like from Earth under optimal viewing conditions. Each point of light is a shining star like our sun. And here is the lone person who lives for a moment and passes by, looking in wonder at this tremendous power and wondering. Source: APOD.

In Israel, such conditions can be found in the Negev. There, even looking at the sky on a normal night is an experience. Suddenly we realize with full force how much the city cuts us off from nature and how spectacular our universe is. It is a very powerful experience to see the Milky Way shining from the lights of millions of suns, some of which are similar to our sun. Add to that a meteor shower where every few minutes you suddenly see a flash of light that appears out of nowhere and moves quickly across the sky until it disappears as suddenly as it appeared, and you will get a truly mystical experience. The wonder and magic of the starlight and the movement of meteorites that look like stars that decided to move and surprise are inspiring. Here suddenly we see things that usually don't happen and that don't seem like they should happen and yet we see it in front of our eyes!

Of course there is no mystery here, but the experience is still gripping and mesmerizing. It connects us back to nature and the universe around us, disconnects us from the normal and stressful everyday life and reminds us that there are things bigger than us both in size and in their eternity. The experience inspires us to think about ourselves and our private lives as another part of a bigger puzzle and our place in this cosmic puzzle. I think that this experience and these thoughts are very important, they develop us, challenge us and remind us what is really important to us. Shouldn't we give ourselves at least once a year this opportunity to disconnect from the incessant stream of the modern life we ​​have built for ourselves and connect to the bigger picture?

There are many observatories held in honor of the Perseid meteor shower such as the Astronomical Club observatory Astroclub Or of The Israeli Astronomical Society, but my friend Yoav Landsman and I decided to go all the way with this heavenly experience and try and build an entire happening around the meteor shower. The happening that aims to help us connect with the overall picture, experience the stars, the meteors and the universe, think and ask questions. We called this event Star Dust and it takes place in the Negev in a place called Ashram in the desert.

For more details about the event, visit the Desert Ashram website
Facebook event