A Martian Landscape

The Martian landscape at Gale Crater. Part of Curiosity is visible at the bottom of the image. Click on the image for the full version. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Here's an astonishing image from the Curiosity rover of the eerie Martian Landscape that it has landed in.

The image was taken using one of the rover's navigation cameras (Navcam Left) on 'sol 2' of the mission. A 'sol' is a martian day - about 24 hours and 40 minutes long.

The landscape you can see in the image is that of NASA's chosen landing site for Curiosity, Gale Crater. It's 96 miles in diameter and has a 'layered' mountain rising about 3 miles from the crater floor (see image below). This means that the rover will be able to assess the geology of Mars through analysing the layers forming the mountain.

The part of Gale Crater that Curiosity has landed in has shown (from satellite imagery) to be a location where water would have settled. This is key to Curiosity's task of determining whether microbial life is part of Mars' history.

An image of Gale Crater on Mars. The circled area at the top left of the crater indicates the planned landing site for Curiosity. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

Curiosity lands on Mars

The Nasa rover Curiosity has successfully landed on Mars after what appeared to be a textbook landing on the red planet.

The first images have been beamed back from the planet showing grainy thumbnail images of the Martian landscape and the wheel of Curiosity. The images will increase in quality and quantity over the next hours and days.

President Obama's science and technology advisor John Holdren has described it as "a great day".

Read the background to the mission and landing here.

The first images from the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), Curiosity

The Race to Mars

Curiosity at work on Mars (Image: Nasa artist's impression)

At 6:31 am GMT on Monday, man will return to Mars in the form of Nasa's Curiosity Rover. The car-sized rover has been designed to assess whether Mars ever had an environment which was able to support microscopic lifeforms.

Once landed, the culmination of a 36-week flight from Earth, the rover will use its onboard kit to gather information about the geology, atmosphere, environmental conditions and potential 'biosignatures' on Mars. Carrying three cameras, four spectrometers, two radiation detectors, an environmental sensor and an atmospheric sensor, Nasa say the mission will also be a step towards human exploration of the red planet.

However, one of the most impressive feats may be Nasa's capability to land Curiosity on the planet without damaging any of the expensive kit on board. Nasa say the mission will serve as "an entrée" to a further decade of Mars exploration because it will: "demonstrate the ability to land a very large, heavy rover to the surface of Mars; demonstrate the ability to land more precisely in a 20 km landing circle; and demonstrate long-range mobility on the surface of the red planet (5-20 km) for the collection of more diverse samples and studies".

Curiosity during testing on Earth (Image: Nasa)

The landing itself will be accomplished via a "soft-landing" technique employed for the first time on Mars. Instead of using the air bags typically used for such landings, the heavier Curiosity will use a sky-crane to deposit the rover on the surface of Mars. After a parachute slows the vehicle to nearly zero velocity, the rover will be released from the sky-crane and lowered to the ground via an "umbilical cord". As it is lowered, the mobility system will be deployed so that as soon as it hits the ground, Curiosity will be ready to roll. When the on-board computer recognises that touchdown has been successful, it will cut the umbilical cord and the sky-crane will "power away at full throttle" to crash land some distance away. You can see how this landing will work in Nasa's 7 minutes of Terror video.



In a Nasa statement, issued hours before touchdown the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL ) team said that the spacecraft was "healthy and right on course for a landing in several hours that will be one of the most difficult feats of robotic exploration ever attempted".

"Excitement is building while the team is diligently monitoring the spacecraft," said Mission Manager Brian Portock of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "It's natural to get anxious before a big event, but we believe we are very well prepared."

You'll be able to watch coverage of the landing live on Nasa TV.
Follow the action on twitter by following the @MarsCuriosity.

London Calling: The Science of Shuttlecocks

Well, who would have thought Olympic Badminton would get so interesting?

If you're reading this in Ireland, you'll recall the short-lived 'controversy' over the religion of badminton and today we've seen eight female players disqualified over match-fixing scandal. We really should have taken our eyes off the action in the pool and on the beach volleyball arena and kept an eye on the court.

Any badminton I've played myself has been the back-garden or windy-beach variety so I've had the distinct handicap of playing with sub-standard, plastic shuttlecocks (that's the odd device that the players are knocking back and forth). Not good enough to coax out the limited skills even I possess. Perhaps I should have been using the top-of-the-line variety?

The Olympic shuttlecocks are made from 16 goose feathers. Middle of the road shuttlecocks will try and get away with using duck feathers but they generally dry out and crack much more quickly.

According to the laws of the game, controlled by the Badminton World Federation (BWF), the shuttle can be of natural and/or synthetic materials as long as their "flight characteristics generally shall be similar to those produced by a natural feathered shuttle with a cork base covered by a thin layer of leather". Amongst the guidelines are that the feathers should be of uniform length (62-70 mm) and that the device should weigh between 4.74-5.50 grams.

A comparitive study of synthetic versus natural (pdf) shuttlecocks has shown that the natural shuttle had a lower drag coefficient at low speeds compared to a higher drag coefficient at high speed. The synthetic shuttle showed the opposite trend - lower drag at higher speed.

The laws of the game even allow you to test a shuttlecock for speed, in order to ensure that you're dealing with the real thing - slight imperfections in either direction can have significant effects on the flight and behaviour of the shuttlecock in the air.

To test a shuttlecock, one should use "a full underhand stroke which makes contact with the shuttle over the back boundary line". If the shuttle lands between 530 and 990 mm short of the other back boundary line, you can rest easy.

However, a recent study of the trajectory of a shuttlecock in badminton (pdf) has suggested that a more scientific approach can be used to measure shuttlecock speed and that this could be used to "replace the traditional subjective method of the Badminton World Federation based on players’ striking shuttlecocks, as well as applying research findings to improve professional knowledge of badminton player training".

The authors of the study found that the "special structure" of the shuttlecock makes its trajectory "perform unsymmetrical motion when playing". Due to its large surface area, shuttlecocks fall more slowly than expected due to increased drag. Despite this, they showed that the air force drag on the shuttle was proportional to the square of the shuttlecock velocity. This seems to fit in perfectly with what we would expect - the harder you hit the shuttle, the more opposite drag the shuttle experiences.

Enjoy the badminton!

GM trial gets go-ahead

A genetically modified potato variety will be planted in Ireland as part of a Teagasc-led experimental trial, which has today got the 'green-light' from Ireland's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

This post also appears on the Cork Independent Blog.

The field trials were allowed to proceed after an assessment of the experimental plans and designs by the EPA and a broad-ranging consultation process. The EPA also received 83 representations from interested parties - all objecting to the proposed trials. I've previously written about why, I think, this trial is needed.

Teagasc applied for a liscence to plant the potatoes back in January. These plants contain a gene which makes them resistant to late blight (Phytophthora infestans) - the organism which caused the Irish potato famine. This gene has been taken from a wild, related potato variety and inserted into the cultivated potato using GM technology.

The EPA have given their consent to the trials subject to eight conditions, saying in their decision: "The agency believes that the risk to human health and the environment from the deliberate release of these GM potatoes is negligible".

The conditions include a requirement of Teagasc to monitor the experimental site for at least four years after planting. They also require Teagasc to report to the EPA every two months on the progress of the experiments and to set up a 40m exclusion zone around the site where no commercial potato planting can take place.

This trial will ensure that we can have real experimental data, based on Irish conditions, so that we can sensibly assess the impact of GM potato planting on the environment under closely monitored and controlled conditions. From reading through the large number of submissions, it is clear that a large number of those objecting are calling for "more information" before such planting takes place. They seemingly fail to see that this trial is specifically design to provide that information they crave; and to do so in a safe, controlled and carefully-monitored fashion.

There will be a large amount of hyperbole written and spoken about this decision in the next few days. Already, the Organic Trust has warned of "grave ramifications" and a Green party spokesman has suggested it will do "untold damage to Irish farming". On the other hand, those welcoming the decision may talk of feeding the world and food security. In reality, the product of this decision will be far less clear-cut. We will hopefully learn more about how GM plants work in the Irish environment and those who support or oppose GM will continue to argue their own side of the debate.

I believe this is a positive step forward however. This experiment will provide real results which can only add to, enrich and enlighten what is an already heated debate. I look forward to seeing the results of this experiment.

Imagine Science

Here's a promotional video for the Imagine Science Film Festival 2012. Shot by Rory Gavin over two days around Dublin, we think it's pretty cool. Producers of It's a Girl Thing: please take note.

The festival takes place from November 9-16 and you can find further information on their website.

London Calling: Performing under pressure

When Olympians line out for their countries next week they will have years, even decades of training and preparation behind them. Despite this, they will be under immense pressure to perform at a world-class level. The ability to handle that pressure - the competitors 'mental toughness' may well provide lessons for those of us in other walks of life and how we deal with pressure.

>>This is the first in the London Calling series of Olympic-themed posts in the run-up to the start of London 2012. <<

Serryth Colbert, himself a Commonwealth gold medalist rower, and colleagues found that members of the Great Britain Olympic Rowing Team were 12% more "mentally tough" than a group of surgeons surveyed.

This "mental toughness" describes the psychological attributes to perform at the highest level and was measured by a number of broad themes. These included "having an insatiable desire and internalised motives to succeed" and "thriving on the pressure of competition". A total of six themes were measured by a survey of the rowers and the surgeons.

The results of the survey, published in the  British Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery show that the average scoring for positive responses when asked about 'comeback mentality' - the ability to overcome previous failure ranged from 53% for rowers to 40% for surgeons.

When queried about the the ability to thrive under the heat of competition, 74% of rowers responded positively compared to just 58% of surgeons.

Olympic flame at Kew Gardens (Image: LOCOG)

The whole area of sports psychology will have a huge impact on athletes at this years games. Writing for the Association for Applied Sport Psychology, Dr. Daniel Gould, who has conducted a series of research projects for the US Olympic Commission (USOC), has said that a whole range of "behind-the-scenes" factors can influence performance.

"These can range from athletes from less popular sports meeting some of the most visible athletes in the world in the Olympic village dining hall to traffic problems that disrupt an athlete’s normal training time" said Gould.

"Other distractions include having a roommate that snores or having an event scheduled towards the end of the Games but living in a village where most athletes are finished competing and are in celebration mode".

Training at the Olympic rowing venue (Image: LOCOG)

With all eyes now on the spectacular opening ceremony on Friday night, produced and directed by Oscar-winner Danny Boyle, Gould had some advice for athletes making the decision to attend or not.

“Deciding whether to attend Opening Ceremonies can be very a difficult decision for Olympic athletes if they are going to perform within 24 to 48 hours of those ceremonies. Our research revealed that it could be a wonderful, exhilarating experience and worked to motivate some athletes. Others, however, found all the standing around zapped their energy and resulted in lack luster performance. It should be discussed with the athletes, taking care to examine the potential positive versus negative consequences,” said Gould.

As one of the Olympic rowers noted: "Mental toughness is not being affected by anything but what’s going on in the race. It’s being able to block out what’s not important".


Reference: 
Colbert et al., 2012. Performing to a world class standard under pressure—Can we learn lessons from the Olympians? British Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery 50(4): 291-297. Link.