Of the 38 Mars mission launched from Earth so far, exactly half of them arrived at Mars in operating condition.

A case in point is the Russian “Fobos/Grunt” (in English we would call it “Phobos/Soil”) mission launched last November that was intended to land on one of Mars’ moons, Phobos, scoop up some surface material, and then rocket the sample back to Earth. Total round-trip time: three years.

Sadly, just a couple of hours after launch the rocket motor that was supposed to send Fobos/Grunt from low Earth orbit to Mars failed to fire and ground controllers lost contact with the spacecraft.

Fobos/Grunt is now a derelict fourteen-ton spacecraft in a deteriorating orbit, destined to burn up in the atmosphere sometime between now and Monday.

The Fobos/Grunt Spacecraft - now just so much junk.

Most of the spacecraft’s mass is its eleven tons of fuel. True, that’s a lot of toxic chemicals, but the fuel will most likely vaporize quickly very high in the atmosphere upon reentry.

Only about three tons of actual hard metal will survive the initial 18,000 mph encounter with our atmosphere, and only about 400-500 pounds of the spacecraft is expected to survive the fiery reentry and make it all the way to Earth’s surface.

There is almost zero chance that Fobos/Grunt falling from the sky will injure anyone or cause damage. After all, three-quarters of the world is covered by oceans, so right there you see there’s only a one-in-four chance of the spacecraft even hitting land.

Earth is a big place, and humans represent a teensy-tiny portion of the surface area. The chances of a piece of Fobos/Grunt hitting a human being are on the order of one in a thousand, and the chances of you being hit are something like one in million-million.

Update: Fobos/Grunt fell harmlessly into the southern Pacific Ocean at about 10:45 MST on Sunday, January 15, about 600 miles west of Chile. See? Told ya.

This phenomenon of dead satellites in low-Earth orbit creating problems for us is the subject of Clark Planetarium’s next ATK IMAX theatre documentary film. It’s titled, appropriately enough, “Space Junk 3D.” We’ll have more information about this film later in the month.

June 1st: The New Moon is on June 1st, occurring at 3:03 pm, MDT. With no moon in the sky in the evenings, stargazing and deep sky observing with binoculars is a great activity on these warmer late-spring nights.
June 1st: There is a partial solar eclipse on June 1st, but it is only visible from the extreme northern parts of Canada and Alaska.
June 8th: 1st Quarter Moon occurs at 8:11 pm, MDT. The 1st Quarter Moon is basically due south at sunset. This may wash out some early evening observing, but the moon will be gone around midnight.
June 15th: Full Moon occurs at 2:14 pm, MDT. June’s full moon is the Strawberry Moon. From the Old Farmer’s Almanac, the Strawberry Moon is named for short season where strawberries ripen. A full moon rises as the Sun sets and doesn’t set until sunrise the next morning, making night sky observations difficult.
June 15th: There is a total lunar eclipse associated with this full moon, but, alas, it is an eastern hemisphere event.
June 21st: The summer solstice (in the northern hemisphere) occurs at 11:16 am, MDT. On this day the Sun is at its highest point in the sky as it crosses the meridian of the sky. The Sun also rises its furthest north of east and sets its furthest north of west on this day. The longest day and shortest night also occur with the solstice. In the southern hemisphere seasons are reversed. This is the shortest day of the year and winter is beginning.
June 23rd: 3rd Quarter Moon occurs at 5:48 am, MDT. Nighttime observing is good as the moon doesn’t rise until midnight. Note that the moon is due south at sunrise during 3rd quarter.
July 1st: The lunar cycle begins anew, with New Moon at 2:54 am, MDT on July 1st.

The Planets-
Saturn is visible throughout the month in the nighttime sky. It is in the constellation Virgo, and at 1st magnitude should be easy to spot. Don’t confuse Saturn, slightly yellow in color, with the bright blue star Spica, 15 degrees to the east. Saturn is very close (a quarter of a degree) to  Porrima, the third brightest star in Virgo, at magnitude 3.

Saturn in June, visible throughout the night

Early morning viewers can catch Jupiter, in Aries, and Venus, in Taurus, before sunrise over in the east.

Jupiter & Venus, June 15th early morning

Be sure to come back and read additional blog posts later in the month for more details and night sky observing projects.

Soon Logan will be headed to Alabama to see what it’s like to train like a real astronaut. When I asked him if I could take his picture to share with our audience he responded, “Yes, but I want to take it on Mars…I want to be the first person to walk on Mars.”

Sometimes big inspiration comes in small packages. I’m glad I got to shake Logan’s hand and think he’d make a fantastic astronaut.

Logan and his family pose for a photo on the Marsscape exhibit. Soon he will fulfill his wish to go to Space Camp.

Mars reaches opposition on January 29th. At that time, Mars will be on the opposite side of the Earth as the Sun (or, alternatively, Earth will be exactly between Sun and Mars). This happens once every 26 months, simply because of the different orbital speeds of the two planets. Earth takes 365.25 days to orbit the Sun; Mars takes 687 days (1.88 Earth years). Mars will also be at its closest approach to Earth: 99.33 million kilometers (61.5 million miles) on the 27th. A natural result of this is that Mars is very bright in our current night time sky, at magnitude -1, brightening to -1.2 at opposition.

NOTE: to prepare you for my comments below, we measure how far apart objects in the sky appear to be from each other by using angular separation, a measurement in degrees. A simple way to visualize this measurement is to make a fist and extend your arm fully out in front of you (don’t hit anybody!). Your fist covers about 10 degrees of angular separation.

Mars, Regulus, M44 Jan. 11

Mars is leaving Leo and moving into Cancer, with the bright star of Leo, Regulus, 14 degrees eastward, and the Beehive Cluster in Cancer, M44, 9 degrees westward. This week (1/11 – 1/17), Mars is due south between 2:00 and 2:30 am, MST, so it’s easy to spot rising in the east after sunset, or high in the southwest before sunrise. As Mars moves along its orbit, it is approaching the Beehive Cluster. By month’s end, Mars will be within 5 degrees of the Beehive.

Mars, Regulus, M44, Jan. 29th

The Beehive Cluster is a bright open cluster (mag. +4) that is visible to the unaided eye under clear, dark skies. The cluster of a couple hundred stars is best seen with binoculars or a telescope under low power. A waxing Moon the last week of the month will wash out the view of the Beehive, and Full Moon on the night of the 29th will only be 5 degrees away.

New Moon is on January 15th, and there is an annular solar eclipse associated with this new moon, though visible only in the eastern hemisphere. The next solar eclipse visible from Utah and the southwestern US will be on May 20th, 2012.

So goes our yearly battle with the Great Mars Hoax that started in 2003. Each year, several emails make their rounds, promising that Mars will amaze and delight, appearing as large as the Full Moon.

We originally posted the article below in August 2009, but wanted to help educate our new readers this year, so we’re posting it again…

This often begins in May or June and continues until early September. We’re sorry, we wish we could get them to stop, we really do!

The History

In August 2003, Earth and Mars were closer together than they had been or would be again for thousands of years…and Mars looked really good through a decent sized telescope. You could even see a little surface detail! (light and dark regions). But to the casual observer, it was just a bright red dot in the night sky. Usually, though, Mars is far from spectacular, not exceptionally bright or even interesting in a small amateur telescope– and that’s the case here. Let me explain.

The Science

These hoax emails use many astronomical terms in order to sound credible, but often incorrectly. They talk of azimuth, altitude, opposition etc but ignore Mars’ actual position in our sky, its orbit, or physics in general (Why be bothered by reality?).

When Mars is at opposition, which means that it is opposite the sun in our sky, they say that it will be as large as the full moon.  From now until about 2014, we are about as far away (at opposition) as we can get from Mars, which makes it appear smaller and dimmer in our sky than normal at that time. Mars will still look like a decently bright star, but that’s about it.

In 2003 Mars was in opposition in August.  In 2009, Mars is NOT in opposition at all, but will reach opposition at the end of January 2010. It’s magnitude in August is not -2.9 as claimed, but about +1, which is MUCH dimmer. The reality is that nothing amazing is happening with Mars, except for our  NASA and ESA space missions there.

What would it take for the hoax to be true???

Hypothetically, if it were possible for Mars to be as large as the full moon, either Mars would have to be made bigger ….

Or it would have to move MUCH closer…

A very reputable link with an enormous amount of info on Mars is here.

The Clark Planetarium solar system fact sheet can be downloaded here.