Centauri Dreams
Imagining and Planning Interstellar Exploration
OSIRIS-REx: Long Approach to Bennu
With a robotic presence at Ryugu, JAXA’s Hayabusa2 mission is showing what can be done as we subject near-Earth asteroids to scrutiny. We’ll doubtless learn a lot about asteroid composition, all of which can factor into, among other things, the question of how we would approach changing the trajectory of any object that looked like it might come too close to Earth. The case for studying near-Earth asteroids likewise extends to learning more about the evolution of the Solar System.
NASA’s first near-Earth asteroid visit will take place on December 3, when the OSIRIS-REx mission arrives at asteroid Bennu, with a suite of instruments including the OCAMS camera suite (PolyCam, MapCam, and SamCam), the OTES thermal spectrometer, the OVIRS visible and infrared spectrometer, the OLA laser altimeter, and the REXIS x-ray spectrometer. Like Hayabusa2, this mission is designed to collect a surface sample and return it to Earth.
And while Hayabusa2 has commanded the asteroid headlines in recent days, OSIRIS-REx has been active in adjusting its course for the December arrival. The first of four asteroid approach maneuvers (AAM-1) took place on October 1, with the main engine thrusters braking the craft relative to Bennu, slowing the approach speed by 351.298 meters per second. The current speed is 140 m/sec after a burn that consumed on the order of 240 kilograms of fuel.
Science operations began on August 17, with PolyCam taking optical navigation images of Bennu on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday cadence until the AAM-1 burn, and then moving to daily ‘OpNavs’ afterwards. The MapCam camera is also taking images that measure changes in reflected light from Bennu’s surface as sunlight strikes it at a variety of angles, which helps to determine the asteroid’s albedo as we measure light reflection from various angles.
The AAM-1 maneuver is, as I mentioned above, the first in a series of four designed to slow the spacecraft to match Bennu’s orbit. Asteroid Approach Maneuver-2 is to occur on October 15. As the approach phase continues, OSIRIS-REx has three other high-priority tasks:
- To observe the area near the asteroid for dust plumes or natural satellites and continue the study of Bennu’s light and spectral properties
- To jettison the protective cover of the craft’s sampling arm and extend the arm in mid-October
- To use OCAMS to show the shape of the asteroid by late October. By mid-November, OSIRIS-REx should begin to detect surface features.
It was in August that the PolyCam camera obtained the first image from 2.2 million kilometers out. Subsequently, the MapCam image below was obtained.
Image: This MapCam image of the space surrounding asteroid Bennu was taken on Sept. 12, 2018, during the OSIRIS-REx mission’s Dust Plume Search observation campaign. Bennu, circled in green, is approximately 1 million km from the spacecraft. The image was created by co-adding 64 ten-second exposures. Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona.
Bennu shows up here as little more than a dot in an image that is part of OSIRIS-REx’s search for dust and gas plumes on Bennu’s surface. These could present problems during close operations around the object, and could also provide clues about possible cometary activity. The search did not turn up any dust plumes from Bennu, but a second search is planned once the spacecraft arrives.
The first month at the asteroid will be taken up with flybys of Bennu’s north pole, equator and south pole at distances between 19 and 7 kilometers, allowing for direct measurements of its mass as well as close observation of the surface. The surface surveys will allow controllers to identify two possible landing sites for the sample collection, which is scheduled for early July, 2020. OSIRIS-REx will then return to Earth, ejecting the Sample Return Capsule for landing in Utah in September of 2023.
The latest image offered up by the OSIRIS-REx team is an animation showing Bennu brightening during the approach from mid-August to the beginning of October.
Image: This processed and cropped set of images shows Bennu (in the center of the frame) from the perspective of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft as it approaches the asteroid. During the period between August 17 and October 1, the spacecraft’s PolyCam imager obtained this series of 20 four-second exposures every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday as part of the mission’s optical navigation campaign. From the first to the last image, the spacecraft’s range to Bennu decreased from 2.2 million km to 192,000 km, and Bennu brightened from approximately magnitude 13 to magnitude 8.8 from the spacecraft’s perspective. Date Taken: Aug. 17 – Oct. 1, 2018. Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona.
Of all the OSIRIS-REx images I’ve seen so far, I think the one below is the prize. But then, I always did like taking the long view.
Image: On July 16, 2018, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft obtained this image of the Milky Way near the star Gamma2 Sagittarii during a routine spacecraft systems check. The image is a 10 second exposure acquired using the panchromatic filter of the spacecraft’s MapCam camera. The bright star in the lower center of the image is Gamma2 Sagittarii, which marks the tip of the spout of Sagittarius’ teapot near the center of the galaxy. The image is roughly centered on Baade’s Window, one of the brightest patches of the Milky Way, which fills approximately one fourth of the field of view. Relatively low amounts of interstellar dust in this region make it possible to view a part of the galaxy that is usually obscured. By contrast, the dark region near the top of the image, the Ink Spot Nebula, is a dense cloud made up of small dust grains that block the light of stars in the background. MapCam is part of the OSIRIS-REx Camera Suite (OCAMS) operated by the University of Arizona. Date Taken: July 16, 2018. Credit: NASA/GSFC/University of Arizona.
We’re 53 days from arrival at Bennu. You can follow news of OSIRIS-REx at its NASA page or via Twitter at @OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta (Lunar and Planetary Laboratory) is principal investigator on the mission; the University of Arizona OSIRIS-REx page is here. And be sure to check Emily Lakdawalla’s excellent overview of operations at Bennu in the runup to arrival.
MASCOT Operations on Asteroid Ryugu
To me, the image below is emblematic of space exploration. We look out at vistas that have never before been seen by human eye, contextualized by the banks of equipment that connect us to our probes on distant worlds. The fact that we can then sling these images globally through the Internet, opening them up to anyone with a computer at hand, gives them additional weight. Through such technologies we may eventually recover what we used to take for granted in the days of the Moon race, a sense of global participation and engagement.
We’re looking at the MASCOT Control Centre at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) in Cologne, where the MASCOT lander was followed through its separation from the Japanese Hayabusa2 probe on October 3, its landing on asteroid Ryugu, and the end of the mission, some 17 hours later.
Image: In the foreground is MASCOT project manager Tra-Mi Ho from the DLR Institute of Space Systems in Bremen at the MASCOT Control Centre of the DLR Microgravity User Support Centre in Cologne. In the background is Ralf Jaumann, scientific director of MASCOT, presenting some of the 120 images taken with the DLR camera MASCAM. Credit: DLR.
As scientists from Japan, Germany and France looked on, MASCOT (Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout) successfully acquired data about the surface of the asteroid at several locations and safely returned its data to Hayabusa2 before its battery became depleted. A full 17 hours of battery life allowed an extra hour of operations, data collection, image acquisition and movement to various surface locations.
MASCOT is a mobile device, capable of using its swing-arm to reposition itself as needed. Attitude changes can keep the top antenna directed upward while the spectroscopic microscope faces downwards, a fact controllers put to good use. Says MASCOT operations manager Christian Krause (DLR):
“After a first automated reorientation hop, it ended up in an unfavourable position. With another manually commanded hopping manoeuvre, we were able to place MASCOT in another favourable position thanks to the very precisely controlled swing arm.”
MASCOT moved several meters to its early measuring points, with a longer move at the last as controllers took advantage of the remaining battery life. Three asteroid days and two asteroid nights, with a day-night cycle lasting 7 hours and 36 minutes, covered the lander’s operations.
Image: The images acquired with the MASCAM camera on the MASCOT lander during the descent show an extremely rugged surface covered with numerous angular rocks. Ryugu, a four-and-a-half billion year-old C-type asteroid has shown the scientists something they had not expected, even though more than a dozen asteroids have been explored up close by space probes. On this close-up, there are no areas covered with dust — the regolith that results from the fragmentation of rocks due to exposure to micrometeorite impacts and high-energy cosmic particles over billions of years. The image from the rotating MASCOT lander was taken at a height of about 10 to 20 meters. Credit: MASCOT/DLR/JAXA.
The dark surface of Ryugu reflects about 2.5 percent of incoming starlight, so that in the image below, the area shown is as dark as asphalt. According to DLR, the details of the terrain can be captured because of the photosensitive semiconductor elements of the 1000 by 1000 pixel CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) camera sensor, which can enhance low light signals and produce usable image data.
Image: DLR’s MASCAM camera took 20 images during MASCOT’s 20-minute fall to Ryugu, following its separation from Hayabusa2, which took place at 51 meters above the asteroid’s surface. This image shows the landscape near the first touchdown location on Ryugu from a height of about 25 to 10 meters. Light reflections on the frame structure of the camera body scatter into the field of vision of the MASCAM (bottom right) as a result of the backlit light of the Sun shining on Ryugu. Credit: MASCOT/DLR/JAXA.
We now collect data and go about evaluating the results of MASCOT’s foray. The small lander had a short life but it seems to have delivered on every expectation. As Hayabusa2 operations continue at Ryugu, we’ll learn a great deal about the early history of the Solar System and the composition of near-Earth asteroids like these, all of which we’ll be able to weigh against what we find at asteroid Bennu when the OSIRIS-REx mission reaches its target in December.
Image: MASCOT as photographed by the ONC-W2 immediately after separation. MASCOT was captured on three consecutively shot images, with image capture times between 10:57:54 JST – 10:58:14 JST on October 3. Since separation time itself was at 10:57:20 JST, this image was captured immediately after separation. The ONC-W2 is a camera attached to the side of the spacecraft and is shooting diagonally downward from Hayabusa2. This gives an image showing MASCOT descending with the surface of Ryugu in the background. Credit: JAXA, University of Tokyo, Kochi University, Rikkyo University, Nagoya University, Chiba Institute of Technology, Meiji University, University of Aizu, AIST.
Bear in mind that the the 50th annual meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) is coming up in Knoxville in late October. Among the press conferences scheduled are one covering Hayabusa2 developments and another the latest from New Horizons. The coming weeks will be a busy time for Solar System exploration.
Voyager 2’s Path to Interstellar Space
I want to talk about the Voyagers this morning and their continuing interstellar mission, but first, a quick correction. Yesterday in writing about New Horizons’ flyby of MU69, I made an inexplicable gaffe, referring to the event as occurring on the 19th rather than the 1st of January (without my morning coffee, I had evidently fixated on the ’19’ of 2019). Several readers quickly spotted this in the article’s penultimate paragraph and I fixed it, but unfortunately the email subscribers received the uncorrected version. So for the record, we can look forward to the New Horizons flyby of MU69 on January 1, 2019 at 0533 UTC. Sorry about the error.
Let’s turn now to the Voyagers, and the question of how long they will stay alive. I often see 2025 cited as a possible terminus, with each spacecraft capable of communication with Earth and the operation of at least one instrument until then. If we make it to 2025, then Voyager 1 would be 160 AU out, and Voyager 2 will have reached 135 AU or thereabouts. In his book The Interstellar Age, Jim Bell — who worked as an intern on the Voyager science support team at JPL starting in 1980, with Voyager at Saturn — notes that cycling off some of the remaining instruments after 2020 could push the date further, maybe to the late 2020s.
After that? With steadily decreasing power levels, some heaters and engineering subsystems will have to be shut down, and with them the science instruments, starting with the most power-hungry. Low-power instruments like the magnetometer could likely stay on longer.
And then there’s this possibility. Stretching out their lifetimes might demand reducing the Voyagers’ output to an engineering signal and nothing else. Bell quotes Voyager project scientist Ed Stone: “As long as we have a few watts left, we’ll try to measure something.”
Working with nothing more than this faint signal, some science could be done simply by monitoring it over the years as it recedes. Keep Voyager doing science until 2027 and we will have achieved fifty years of science returns. Reduced to that single engineering signal, the Voyagers might stay in radio contact until the 2030s.
Image: This graphic shows the position of the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes, relative to the heliosphere, a protective bubble created by the Sun that extends well past the orbit of Pluto. Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause, or the edge of the heliosphere, in 2012. Voyager 2 is still in the heliosheath, or the outermost part of the heliosphere. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
Bear in mind the conditions the Voyagers have to deal with even now. With more than 25 percent of their plutonium having decayed, power limitations are a real factor. If either Voyager passed by an interesting inner Oort object, the cameras could not be turned on because of the power drain, which would shut down their heaters. Continuing power demands from radio communications and the heaters create thorny problems for controllers.
Even so, we’re still doing good science. Today the focus is on a still active Voyager 2, which may be nearing interstellar space. Voyager 2 is now 17.7 billion kilometers from Earth, about 118 AU, and has been traveling through the outermost layers of the heliosphere since 2007. The solar wind dominates this malleable region, which changes during the Sun’s eleven year activity cycle. Solar flares and coronal mass ejections all factor into its size and shape. Ahead is the heliosphere’s outer boundary, the heliopause, beyond which lies interstellar space.
The Cosmic Ray Subsystem instrument on Voyager 2 is now picking up a 5 percent increase in the rate of cosmic rays hitting the spacecraft as compared with what we saw in early August. Moreover, the Low-Energy Charged Particle instrument is picking up an increase in higher-energy cosmic rays. The increases parallel what Voyager 1 found beginning in May, 2012, about three months before it exited the heliopause.
So we may be about to get another interstellar spacecraft. Says Ed Stone:
“We’re seeing a change in the environment around Voyager 2, there’s no doubt about that. We’re going to learn a lot in the coming months, but we still don’t know when we’ll reach the heliopause. We’re not there yet — that’s one thing I can say with confidence.”
We haven’t crossed the outer regions of the heliosphere with a functioning spacecraft more than once, so there is a lot to learn. Voyager 2 moves through a different part of the outer heliosphere — the heliosheath — than Voyager 1 did, so we can’t project too much into the timeline. We’ll simply have to keep monitoring the craft to see what happens.
What an extraordinary ride it has been, and here’s hoping we can keep both Voyagers alive as long as possible. Even when their power is definitively gone, they’ll still be inspiring our imaginations. We’re 300 years from the Inner Oort Cloud, and a whopping 30,000 years from the Oort Cloud’s outer edge. In 40,000 years, Voyager 2 will pass about 110,000 AU from the red dwarf Ross 248, which will at that time be the closest star to the Sun. Both spacecraft will eventually follow 250-million year orbits around the center of the Milky Way.
I return to Jim Bell, who waxes poetic at the thought. He envisions a far future when our remote descendants may be able to see the Voyagers again. Here is a breathtaking vision indeed:
Over time — enormous spans of time, as the gravity of passing stars and interacting galaxies jostles them as well as the stars in our galaxy — I imagine that the Voyagers will slowly rise out of the plane of our Milky Way, rising, rising ever higher above the surrounding disk of stars and gas and dust, as they once rose above the plane of their home stellar system. If our far-distant descendants remember them, then our patience, perseverance, and persistence could be rewarded with perspective when our species — whatever it has become — does, ultimately, follow them. The Voyagers will be long dormant when we catch them, but they will once again make our spirits soar as we gaze upon these most ancient of human artifacts, and then turn around and look back. I have no idea if they’ll still call it a selfie then, but regardless of what it’s called, the view of our home galaxy, from the outside, will be glorious to behold.
Fine-Tuning New Horizons’ Trajectory
I love the timing of New Horizons’ next encounter, just as we begin a new year in 2019. On the one hand, we’ll be able to look back to a mission that has proven successful in some ways beyond the dreams of its creators. On the other hand, we’ll have the first close-up brush past a Kuiper Belt Object, 2014 MU69 or, as it’s now nicknamed, Ultima Thule. This farthest Solar System object ever visited by a spacecraft may, in turn, be followed by yet another still farther, if all goes well and the mission is extended. This assumes, of course, another target in range.
We can’t rule out a healthy future for this spacecraft after Ultima Thule. Bear in mind that New Horizons seems to be approaching its current target along its rotational axis. That could reduce the need for additional maneuvers to improve visibility for the New Horizons cameras, saving fuel for later trajectory changes if indeed another target can be found. The current mission extension ends in 2021, but another extension would get a powerful boost if new facilities like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope become available, offering more capability at tracking down an appropriate KBO. Hubble and New Horizons itself will also keep looking.
But even lacking such a secondary target, an operational New Horizons could return useful data about conditions in the outer Solar System and the heliosphere, with the spacecraft’s radioisotope thermoelectric generator still producing sufficient power for some years. I’ve seen a worst-case 2026 as the cutoff point, but Alan Stern is on record as saying that the craft has enough hydrazine fuel and power from its plutonium generator to stay functional until 2035.
By way of comparison with Voyager, which we need to revisit tomorrow, New Horizons won’t reach 100 AU until 2038, nicely placed to explore the heliosphere if still operational.
But back to Ultima Thule, a destination now within 112 million kilometers of the spacecraft. New Horizons is closing at a rate of 14.4 kilometers per second, enroute to what the New Horizons team says will need to be a 120 by 320 kilometer ‘box’ in a flyby that needs to be predicted within 140 seconds. Based on what we saw at Pluto/Charon, these demands can be met.
Image: At left, a composite optical navigation image, produced by combining 20 images from the New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) acquired on Sept. 24. The center photo is a composite optical navigation image of Ultima Thule after subtracting the background star field; star field subtraction is an important component of optical navigation image processing since it isolates Ultima from nearby stars. At right is a magnified view of the star-subtracted image, showing the close proximity and relative agreement between the observed and predicted locations of Ultima. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/KinetX.
Above are the latest navigation images from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI). An engine burn on October 3 further tightened location and timing information for the New Year’s flyby, a 3 ½ minute maneuver that adjusted the spacecraft’s trajectory and increased its speed by 2.1 meters per second. Records fall every time New Horizons does this, with the October 3 correction marking the farthest course correction ever performed.
It’s interesting to learn, too, that this is the first time New Horizons has made a targeting maneuver for the Ultima Thule flyby that used pictures taken by New Horizons itself. The ‘aim point’ is 3,500 kilometers from Ultima at closest approach, and we’ve just learned that these navigation images confirm that Ultima is within 500 kilometers of its expected position.
“Since we are flying very fast and close to the surface of Ultima, approximately four times closer than the Pluto flyby in July 2015, the timing of the flyby must be very accurate,” said Derek Nelson, of KinetX Aerospace, Inc., New Horizons optical navigation lead. “The images help to determine the position and timing of the flyby, but we must also trust the prior estimate of Ultima’s position and velocity to ensure a successful flyby. These first images give us confidence that Ultima is where we expected it to be, and the timing of the flyby will be accurate.”
I’m already imagining New Year’s eve with Ultima Thule to look forward to. You can adjust your own plans depending on your time zone, but the projected flyby time is 0533 UTC on the 1st. As with Pluto/Charon, the excitement of the encounter continues to build. In the broader picture, the more good science we do in space, the more drama we produce as we open up new terrain. This week alone, we need to look at the Hayabusa2 operations at Ryugu, the upcoming OSIRIS-REx exploration of asteroid Bennu, and the continuing saga of Voyager 2.
But New Horizons also reminds us of an uncomfortable fact. When it comes to the outer system, this is the only spacecraft making studies of the Kuiper Belt from within it, and there is no other currently planned. Data from this mission will need to carry us for quite some time.
DE-STAR and Breakthrough Starshot: A Short History
Last Monday’s article on the Trillion Planet Survey led to an email conversation with Phil Lubin, its founder, in which the topic of Breakthrough Starshot invariably came up. When I’ve spoken to Dr. Lubin before, it’s been at meetings related to Starshot or presentations on his DE-STAR concept. Standing for Directed Energy System for Targeting of Asteroids and exploRation, DE-STAR is a phased laser array that could drive a small payload to high velocities. We’ve often looked in these pages at the rich history of beamed propulsion, but how did the DE-STAR concept evolve in Lubin’s work for NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts office, and what was the path that led it to the Breakthrough Starshot team?
The timeline below gives the answer, and it’s timely because a number of readers have asked me about this connection. Dr. Lubin is a professor of physics at UC-Santa Barbara whose primary research beyond DE-STAR has involved the early universe in millimeter wavelength bands, and a co-investigator on the Planck mission with more than 400 papers to his credit. He is co-recipient of the 2006 Gruber Prize in Cosmology along with the COBE science team for their groundbreaking work in cosmology. Below, he tells us how DE-STAR emerged.
By Philip Lubin
June 2009: Philip Lubin begins work on large scale directed energy systems at UC Santa Barbara. Baseline developed is laser phased array using MOPA [master oscillator power amplifier, a configuration consisting of a master laser (or seed laser) and an optical amplifier to boost the output power] topology. The DE system using this topology is named DE-STAR (Directed Energy System for Targeting Asteroids and exploRation). Initial focus is on planetary defense and relativistic propulsion. Development program begins. More than 250 students involved in DE R&D at UCSB since.
February 14, 2013: UCSB group has press release about DE-STAR program to generate public discussion about applications of DE to planetary defense in anticipation of February 15 asteroid 2012 DA14, which was to come within geosync orbit. On February 15 Chelyabinsk meteor/asteroid hit. This singular coincidence of press release and hit the next day generated a significant change in interest in possible use of large scale DE for space applications. This “pushed the DE ball over the hill”.
August 2013: Philip Lubin and group begin publication of detailed technical papers in multiple journals. DE-STAR program is introduced at invited SPIE [Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers] plenary talk in San Diego at Annual Photonics meeting. More than 50 technical papers and nearly 100 colloquia from his group have emerged since then. List of DE-STAR papers can be found here.
August 2013: 1st Interstellar Congress held in Dallas, Texas by Icarus Interstellar. Eric Malroy introduces concepts for the use of nanomaterials in sails.
August 2013: First proposal submitted to NASA for DE-STAR system from UC Santa Barbara.
January 2014: Work begins on extending previous UCSB paper to much longer “roadmap” paper which becomes “A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight” (see below).
February 11, 2014 – Lubin gives colloquium on DE-STAR at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, CA. Summarizes UCSB DE program for planetary defense, relativistic propulsion and implications for SETI. SETI Institute researchers suggest Lubin speak with NASA Ames director Pete Worden as he was not at the talk. Worden eventually leaves Ames a year later on March 31, 2015 to go to the Breakthrough Foundation. Lubin and Worden do not meet until 18 months later at the Santa Clara 100YSS meeting (see below).
August 2014: Second proposal submitted to NASA for DE-STAR driven relativistic spacecraft. Known as DEEP-IN (Directed Energy Propulsion for Interstellar Exploration). Accepted and funded by NASA NIAC program as Phase I program. Program includes directed energy phased array driving wafer scale spacecraft as one option [Phase 1 report “A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight” available here].
April 2015: Lubin submits the “roadmap” paper to the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society.
June 2015: Lubin presents DE driven relativistic flight at Caltech Keck Institute meeting. Meets with Emmett and Glady W Technology Fund.
August 31, 2015: August 31, 2015: Lubin and Pete Worden attend 100YSS (100 Year Star Ship) conference in Santa Clara, CA [Worden is now executive director, Breakthrough Starshot, and former director of NASA Ames Research Center]. Lubin is invited by Mae Jemison (director of 100YSS) to give a talk about the UCSB NASA DE program as a viable path to interstellar flight. Worden has to leave before Lubin’s talk, but in a hallway meeting Lubin informs Worden of the UCSB NASA Phase I NASA program for DE driven relativistic flight. This meeting takes places as Lubin recalls Feb 2014 SETI meeting where a discussion with Worden is suggested. Worden asks for further information about the NASA program and Lubin sends Worden the paper “A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight” summarizing the NASA DEEP-IN program. Worden subsequently forwards paper to Yuri Milner.
December 16, 2015: Lubin, Worden and Pete Klupar [chief engineer at Breakthrough Prize Foundation] meet at NASA Ames to discuss DEEP-IN program and “roadmap” paper.
December 2015: Milner calls for meeting with Lubin to discuss DEEP-IN program, “roadmap” paper and the prospects for relativistic flight.
January 2016: Private sector funding of UCSB DE for relativistic flight effort by Emmett and Glady W Technology Fund begins. Unknown to public – anonymous investor greatly enhances UCSB DE effort.
January 2016: First meeting with Milner in Palo Alto. Present are Lubin, Milner, Avi Loeb (Harvard University), Worden and Klupar. Milner sends “roadmap” paper to be reviewed by other physicists. A long series of calls and meetings ensue. This begins the birth of Breakthrough Starshot program.
March 2016 – NASA Phase II proposal for DEEP-IN submitted. Renamed Starlight subsequently. Accepted and funded by NASA.
March 2016: After multiple reviews of Lubin “roadmap” paper by independent scientists, Breakthrough Initiatives endorses idea of DE driven relativistic flight.
April 12, 2016: Public release of Breakthrough Starshot. Hawking endorses idea at NY public announcement.
To keep up with developments, the following websites are useful:
NASA Starlight (DE-STAR for interstellar relativistic flight):
http://www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/projects/starlight
Planetary Defense Application of DE-STAR:
http://www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/projects/directed-energy-planetary-defense
Implications for SETI:
http://www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/projects/implications-of-directed-energy-for-seti
2015 TG387: A New Inner Oort Object & Its Implications
Whether or not there is an undiscovered planet lurking in the farthest reaches of the Solar System, the search for unknown dwarf planets and other objects continues. Extreme Trans-Neptunian objects (ETNOs) are of particular interest. The closest they come to the Sun is well beyond the orbit of Neptune, with the result that they have little gravitational interaction with the giant planets. Consider them as gravitational probes of what lies beyond the Kuiper Belt.
Among the population of ETNOs are the most distant subclass, known as Inner Oort Cloud objects (IOCs), of which we now have three. Added to Sedna and 2012 VP113 comes 2015 TG387, discovered by Scott Sheppard (Carnegie Institution for Science), Chad Trujillo (Northern Arizona University) and David Tholen (University of Hawai?i). The object was first observed in 2015, leading to several years of follow-up observations necessary to obtain a good orbital fit.
For 2015 TG387 is a challenging catch, discovered at about 80 AU from the Sun but normally at far greater distance:
“We think there could be thousands of small bodies like 2015 TG387 out on the Solar System’s fringes, but their distance makes finding them very difficult,” Tholen said. “Currently we would only detect 2015 TG387 when it is near its closest approach to the sun. For some 99 percent of its 40,000-year orbit, it would be too faint to see, even with today’s largest telescopes.”
Image: The orbits of the new extreme dwarf planet 2015 TG387 and its fellow Inner Oort Cloud objects 2012 VP113 and Sedna, as compared with the rest of the Solar System. 2015 TG387 was nicknamed “The Goblin” by its discoverers, since its provisional designation contains “TG”, and the object was first seen around Halloween. Its orbit has a larger semi-major axis than both 2012 VP11 and Sedna, so it travels much farther from the Sun, out to 2300 AU. Credit: Roberto Molar Candanosa and Scott Sheppard / Carnegie Institution for Science.
Perihelion, the closest distance this object gets to the Sun, is now calculated at roughly 65 AU, so we are dealing with an extremely elongated orbit. 2015 TG387 has, after VP113 and Sedna (80 and 76 AU respectively), the third most distant perihelion known, but it has a larger orbital semi-major axis, so its orbit carries it much further from the Sun than either, out to about 2,300 AU. At these distances, Inner Oort Cloud objects are all but isolated from the bulk of the Solar System’s mass.
You may recall that it was Sheppard and Trujillo who discovered 2012 VP113 as well, triggering a flurry of investigation into the orbits of such worlds. The gravitational story is made clear by the fact that Sedna, 2012 VP113 and 2015 TG387 all approach perihelion in the same part of the sky, as do most known Extreme Trans-Neptunian objects, an indication that their orbits are being shaped by something in the outer system. Thus the continuing interest in so-called Planet X, a hypothetical world whose possible orbits were recently modeled by Trujillo and Nathan Kaib (University of Oklahoma).
The simulations show the effect of different Planet X orbits on Extreme Trans-Neptunian objects. In 2016, drawing on previous work from Sheppard and Trujillo, Konstantin Batygin and Michael Brown examined the orbital constraints for a super-Earth at several hundred AU from the Sun in an elliptical orbit. Including such a world in their simulations, the latter duo were able to show that several presumed planetary orbits could result in stable orbits for other Extreme Trans-Neptunian objects. Let’s go to the paper to see how 2015 TG387 fits into the picture:
…Trujillo (2018) ran thousands of simulations of a possible distant planet using the orbital constraints put on this planet by Batygin and Brown (2016a). The simulations varied the orbital parameters of the planet to identify orbits where known ETNOs were most stable. Trujillo (2018) found several planet orbits that would keep most of the ETNOs stable for the age of the solar system.
So we’ve fit the simulated orbit with Sedna, 2012 VP113 and other ETNOs. The next step was obvious:
To see if 2015 TG387 would also be stable to a distant planet when the other ETNOs are stable, we used several of the best planet parameters found by Trujillo (2018). In most simulations involving a distant planet, we found 2015 TG387 is stable for the age of the solar system when the other ETNOs are stable. This is further evidence the planet exists, as 2015 TG387 was not used in the original Trujillo (2018) analysis, but appears to behave similarly as the other ETNOs to a possible very distant massive planet on an eccentric orbit.
Image: Movie of the discovery images of 2015 TG387. Two images were taken about 3 hours apart on October 13, 2015 at the Subaru Telescope on Maunakea, Hawai?i. 2015 TG387 can be seen moving between the images near the center, while the more distant background stars and galaxies remain stationary. Credits: Dave Tholen, Chad Trujillo, Scott Sheppard.
We know very little about 2015 TG387 itself, though the paper, assuming a moderate albedo, finds a likely diameter in the range of 300 kilometers. The stability of this small object’s orbit, keeping it aligned and stable in relation to the eccentric orbit of the hypothesized Planet X, supports the existence of the planet, especially since the derived orbit of 2015 TG387 was determined after the Planet X orbital simulations. Despite this, notes the paper in conclusion, “…2015 TG387 reacts with the planet very similarly to the other known IOCs and ETNOs.”
Another interesting bit: There is a suggestion that ETNOs in retrograde orbit are stable. Given this, the authors do not rule out the idea that the planet itself might be on a retrograde orbit.
The paper is Sheppard et al., “A New High Perihelion Inner Oort Cloud Object,” submitted to The Astronomical Journal (preprint).
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