June 07, 2023
20 Years of Mars Express Images Helped Build This Mosaic of the Red Planet
The Mars Express orbiter, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) first interplanetary mission, entered orbit around Mars on June 2 nd , 2003. Since then, the probe has mapped the Martian surface using its High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC), an instrument built by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) with commercial partners. In honor of the mission’s 20th anniversary, a celebration occurred last Friday (June 2 nd ) at the ESA’s European Space Operations Center (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany. During the festivities, a series of global color mosaic images were live-streamed from the Mars Express orbiter to Earth. The mosaic is the result of a high-altitude campaign conducted by the HRSC science team and state-of-the-art image processing. The result is a mosaic unparalleled in detail, spatial resolution, and diversity of color that provides valuable insight into the Martian environment. This includes revealing the surface composition, demonstrating how water once flowed there in the past, and modern meteorological phenomena. For almost twenty years, the HRSC mapped close to the entire surface of Mars in color and three dimensions with unprecedented resolution. This is possible thanks to the camera’s four color channels (red, green, blue, and infrared) and five panchromatic nadir, stereo, and photometric channels. The camera, operated by DLR Institute of Planetary Research , was originally to last only one Martian year (about 687 Earth days). But the mission’s success prompted the ESA to extend the mission repeatedly, most recently until the end of 2026. Remove All Ads on Universe Today Join our Patreon for as little as $3! Get the ad-free experience for life The high-altitude images were planned and acquired by the HRSC team at the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) – the German Aerospace Center – in Berlin. The development of the color model and the processing of the mosaic were performed by Dr. Greg Michael , an astrophysicist and radioastronomer at Freie Universität Berlin and the Co-Investigator of the HRSC. A scientific paper from the HRSC team will be published in the near future, along with the georeferenced dataset provided through the ESA guest storage facility . Since it was commissioned in January 2004, the HRSC has imaged almost the entire planet at resolutions of 50 to 20 m (164 to 65.6 ft) per pixel. Normally, the mission would photograph Mars from an altitude of about 300 km (186 mi) when the spacecraft is closest in its orbit to the planet. However, for the mosaic, 90 individual images taken from altitudes of 4,000 to 10,000 km (2485.5 to 6215 mi) were used, covering an area roughly 2500 km (1550 mi) in diameter and with a spatial resolution of 2 km (1.2 mi) per pixel. Many areas in the mosaic appear at the instrument’s highest possible resolution of 12.5 m per pixel. Another impressive feature is the level of color captured in the images. Ordinarily, it is very difficult to take pictures of Mars that accurately capture its surface color because of the ever-changing transparency of its atmosphere. This is caused by the varying degrees of dust in the atmosphere, which causes light to be scattered and reflected, leading to color shifts between images. To suppress this effect, space agencies often employ image processing that causes color variations to diminish over greater distances. This time, a new high-altitude observation campaign was used to construct a global color model, which the HRSC team used to color-reference each image in the mosaic. This allowed for long-range color variations and resulted in a picture of Mars with a level of color diversity never seen before. The color variations also reveal information about its composition, which includes the high amount of oxidized iron in its surface regolith. This is what earned Mars the moniker, the “Red Planet,” but observations have also shown that it has dark areas that appear blue, grey, and black. These regions correspond to volcanic sands that have formed large, dark sand layers that astronomers have observed for centuries. These sands were primarily piled up by the wind to form fields of barchan dunes, which consist of unweathered basaltic minerals (similar to volcanic sands and wind-blown dunes found on Earth). There are also patches of lighter volcanic sands that were weathered over time by water, which once flowed on the surface of Mars (ca. 3 to 2 billion years ago). This has been studied by the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers in the form of clay deposits in the Gale and Jezero craters (respectively). Clays and sulfate minerals, the two most common-found minerals on Mars, are relatively easy to spot in color composite images because they are particularly bright. For example, large deposits of calcium sulfate (gypsum) and magnesium sulfate (kieserite) can be seen within the Valles Marineris canyon system along the equator (see below). These minerals are covered by a thin veneer of darker sand but are visible thanks to the color variations revealed by the HRSC. The clays and sulfates on the surface are one of many lines of evidence attesting to the planet’s watery past. The depths of Valles Marineris are overlaid with atmospheric phenomena, such as the faint clouds indicated by the bright white patch on the lower left-hand side. There’s also the hazy fog layer within Valles Marineris, which typically forms within the canyon during certain times of the day and year. Similar fog layers have been observed in depressions and other low-lying areas, like Argyre and Hellas Basin in the Southern Highlands, and in cratered areas across the Northern Lowlands (like the Isidis and Utopia Basin). The success of the HRSC was a major factor in the decision to prolong the Mars Express mission, which has remained in operation around Mars for 19 years, five months, and 12 days (as of this article’s publication). As of October 19th, 2023, the mission will have completed 25,000 elliptical orbits of Mars, making it the second longest continually active spacecraft, behind NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey – also still active around the Red Planet. Further Reading: DLR
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'Trump tax': MSNBC host Chris Hayes shows how Trump winning would increase costs
Mar 28, 2024
How much would former President Donald Trump's proposed 10 percent tariff plan actually cost the average American household?The wave of tariffs Trump enacted when he was last president caused chaos, but there are many complexities that muddy this somewhat. However, MSNBC's Chris Hayes took an educated and simple guess at just how badly the country would be hit in the pocketbook under Trump's second-term plans."We don't know exactly how much everything would cost," said Hayes, but "just add 10 percent on the back of the napkin. Here's the cost of living under the Trump Tax."ALSO READ: ‘Don't have enough’: Wealthy Trump allies balk at helping Donald pay legal bills"Start with groceries," he said. "A dozen eggs cost about $3. Once you apply the Trump Tax, that is up to $3.30, with the U.S. importing over 4 million eggs a year, but cost consumers over $1.2 million. If you like oranges, they currently go for about $1.53 per pound. With the Trump Tax, that would be $1.68 per pound, which would cost American consumers almost $71 million for the nearly half a billion pounds of the import. Bananas. We don't really grow them in the U.S., do we? They average about $.63 per pound and going up to $.69 per pound with the Trump Tax, thanks to the U.S. importing more than 10 million pounds per year, that could cost Americans at $609 million and that's a $609 million tax on American consumers. Then there's tomatoes. They go for about $2.13 per pound. Apply the 10 percent Trump Tax. They would be $2.34 per pound, potentially costing Americans $3.5 million thanks to the 6.8 million pounds we import per year. If you are spending $1,200 on groceries, add another $120 to the bill. That's more than the peak of inflation in 2022, which topped off at 9 percent. This is 10 percent."Groceries are just the start, he continued."How about the refrigerator?" said Hayes. "You need to keep the groceries fresh. The average cost of a new fridge is about $1,300. With the Trump Tax, that could go up to $1,430, costing Americans $1.95 billion for the 15 million refrigerators that we import. Again, $1.95 billion of new taxes. What about the car that you need to drive to the grocery store? On average, a new car costs about $48,808 today. With Trump Tax, it costs $53,684, with Americans potentially taking a $66.3 billion hit across the board on the 13 million cars we import. That's not including the 50 percent tariff which would make it another $25,000. Even the smartphone in your pocket cost on average about $940 right now. With Trump Tax, it can go up to $1,034, with Americans potentially paying an extra $13.2 billion for the nearly 141 million smartphones that we import per year.""Everyone hates when you have to pay more for things," he added. "Inflation is one of the biggest liabilities for a sitting president. Yet here is Donald Trump, in the Year of our Lord 2024, running against President Biden, promising to make things more expensive for every American."Watch the video below or click here. Chris Hayes breaks down "Trump Tax" www.youtube.com
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Trump-endorsed candidate says Beyoncé is teaching women 'how to be hyper-sexual'
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'Some prosecutor should be looking into' Trump's latest legal defense scam: expert
Mar 28, 2024
Former President Donald Trump's sprawling network of ostensibly independent political groups raising money for him, much of it in service of paying legal expenses, seems to walk right up to the line of breaking the law, former prosecutor Kristy Greenberg told MSNBC's Alex Wagner — and may in fact cross it."Kristy, how is this legal?" asked Wagner. "How can he keep saying this one thing and doing another?""Well, I think the big question here will be looking behind all of this as to who is coordinating it," said Greenberg. "If Donald Trump is coordinating between his campaign and these PACs that are supposed to be third parties and independent — the Save America PAC is independent, even though he directs it, independent third-party — if there is sufficient coordination, you could prove that, then maybe you would have something to say these expenditures are not purely personal, these are really campaign contributions. And therefore they should be subject to the limits of $5,000 that campaign contributions are subject to."ALSO READ: ‘Don't have enough’: Wealthy Trump allies balk at helping Donald pay legal billsWhat it looks like, Greenberg went on, is that Trump and his allies are "just trying to do an end-run around these various regulations, and it seems so transparent.""[Special counsel] Jack Smith ... had served some subpoenas in connection with that nonexistent, as it turns out, election defense fund," Greenberg said. "He served some subpoenas and then he withdrew them and it was unclear why, because that seemed like such a clear-cut fraud. I questioned why that happened. Perhaps it was optics. Perhaps he thought like he had such strong cases, the January 6 case and the national security case, that he didn't want to seem as though he was trying to drain Trump of the ability to legally defend against those cases. Hard to say. But I questioned it at that time because that seemed like such a clear wire fraud case that it seemed like it should be looked into, but maybe they just had limited resources and didn't like the optics of it.""But I agree with you, this raises a lot of questions," she added. "Someone, somewhere, even if not the special counsel's office, because they are pretty busy — some prosecutors should be looking into this."Watch the video below or at the link. Kristy Greenberg on the legality of Trump's PACs www.youtube.com
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