Russians To Ride A Nuclear-Powered Spacecraft To Mars

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, center, visits a space communications facility Wednesday in Medvezhye Ozera with Minister of Telecommunications Igor Shchyogolev at left. Medvedev urged his government to find resources for building a prospective nuclear-powered spaceship. (Vladimir Rodionov, RIA Novosti, Presidential Press Service/AP)

From Christian Science Monitor:

President Dmitry Medvedev says Russia will spend $600 million on a nuclear-powered spacecraft to take men to Mars, and beyond. Is it safe?

MOSCOW – A nuclear-powered spaceship that can carry passengers to Mars and beyond may sound like science fiction.

But Russian engineers say they have a breakthrough design for such a craft, which could leapfrog them way ahead in the international race to build a manned spacecraft that can cover vast interplanetary distances.

They claim they’ll be ready to build one as early as 2012.

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Mars May Have Caves, Scientists Say

Mars colonists could use caves for protection from potentially deadly cosmic rays streaming down from space. (NASA / October 24, 2009)

From The L.A. Times:

Images of ancient lava flows from the Arsia Mons volcano suggest an extensive system near the Red Planet's equator. Caves could one day aid space explorers.

Caves were some of the earliest refuges for human beings on Earth. Could the same be true for future pioneers on Mars?

Glen Cushing, a space scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, thinks so. He said he has found evidence of an extensive cave system among ancient volcanoes at Mars' equator.

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What's The Point Of A Fake 500-Day Mars Mission?

Mars

From New Scientist:

The European Space Agency is seeking six volunteers to spend 520 days inside a sealed isolation facility to study the psychological effects of a journey to Mars.

The 2010 Mars-500 "mission" at the Russian Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow will simulate a round trip to the Red Planet – albeit shorter than the real thing – and follows a similar 105-day study that ended in July.

But does spending a year and a half locked inside a tin can on Earth tell us anything about how humans might behave on a high-risk interplanetary odyssey? New Scientist investigates.

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Fancy Going To Mars? Space Agency Seeks Volunteers For 520-Day Trip... But It's Only A Simulation

A warm-up 105-day mission took place in 2009, with participants from Germany and France and four Russians living together in cramped conditions

From The Daily Mail:

Could you spend 18months with five strangers inside a small confined space? It may sound like a hellish endurance test, but The European Space Agency is calling for volunteers to do just that.

Starting in 2010, an international crew of six will simulate a 520-day round-trip to Mars, including a 30-day stay on the 'Martian surface'.

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Mars Missions Boosted By Communication Breakthrough

From the Telegraph:

Engineers have found a way to communicate continuously with Mars in a research project to help manned space missions.

Communication with Mars had not been possible for several weeks at a time when the Sun obscured the Earth's view of the planet.

But the University of Strathclyde researchers found a way to allow continuous communication with just one spacecraft.

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Viking 2 Came Close To Finding H2O

Photo: Just a little bit more: New evidence suggests Viking 2 just missed digging into Martian ice (Source: NASA)

From ABC News (Australia):

The NASA Viking 2 probe, which landed on Mars in 1976, may have come within centimetres of finding water three decades before it was eventually found.

The finding could result in scientists re-evaluating data collected by the spacecraft, which was sent to look for signs of life on the red planet.

"Oh my, oh my," says retired Viking scientist Dr Patricia Straat.

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Mars Probe Watches Water-Ice Fade

Water-ice is seen to fade over time in this 12m crater within Arcadia Planitia

From The BBC:

Large deposits of nearly pure water-ice may lurk just below the Martian surface, much nearer the equator than previously thought, suggest new images.

The pictures acquired by a Nasa orbiter show white material exposed by fresh meteorite impacts fading over time - behaviour expected of ice on Mars.

An onboard instrument also detected the tell-tale chemical signature of water.

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NASA Finds Water Ice In Mars Craters

An image by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera on the NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows Sawtooth Pattern in Carbon Dioxide Ice on Mars recorded during the month of April through early August 2009. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been studying Mars with an advanced set of instruments since 2006. (University of Arizona/JPL/NASA/Reuters)

From The Christian Science Monitor:

NASA's Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter spotted ice just below the surface that was exposed by fresh meteor crashes, not far from where the Viking 2 Lander looked in 1976.

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has found water ice much closer to the planet’s equator than scientists believed possible.

And it’s far purer than they expected, suggesting that in the recent past, the planet’s climate was far more humid than models of Mars’s climate history suggested.

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Wind, Not Water, May Explain Red Planet's Hue

Mars is red now (left), but it may have looked charcoal (right) in the past
(Image: NASA/ESA/Hubble Team)

From New Scientist:

Mars's distinctive red hue may be the result of thousands of years of wind-borne sand particles colliding with one another – and not rust, a new study argues.

Scientists generally agree that Mars's red colour is caused when a dark form of iron called magnetite oxidises into a reddish-orange form called haematite.

Just how the transformation came about is a matter of debate. Many researchers say water caused the oxidation. But some argue that hydrogen peroxide and ozone, which might be created when ultraviolet light breaks down carbon dioxide and oxygen in the Martian atmosphere, could be to blame.

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Patterns In Mars Crater Floors Give Picture Of Drying Lakes

Detailed image of large-scale crater floor polygons, caused by desiccation process, with smaller polygons caused by thermal contraction inside. The central polygon is 160 metres in diameter, smaller ones range 10 to 15 metres in width and the cracks are 5-10 metres across. (Credit: NASA/JPL)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 16, 2009) — Networks of giant polygonal troughs etched across crater basins on Mars have been identified as desiccation cracks caused by evaporating lakes, providing further evidence of a warmer, wetter martian past.

The findings were presented at the European Planetary Science Congress by PhD student Mr M Ramy El Maarry of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research.

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Too Much Radiation For Astronauts To Make It To Mars

A trip to Phobos comes with extras (Image: NASA/JPL)

From New Scientist:

FORGET the risk of exploding rockets or getting sideswiped by a wayward bit of space junk. Radiation may be the biggest hurdle to human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit and could put a damper on a recently proposed mission to Mars orbit.

A panel tasked by the White House with reviewing NASA's human space flight activities (New Scientist, 22 August, p 8) suggests sending astronauts to one of Mars's moons, Phobos or Deimos, among other possibilities raised in its report released last week (http://tinyurl.com/mbajav).

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Predicting Extraterrestrial Weather

Two Hubble Space Telescope storm watch images from late June and early September offer dramatically contrasting views of the martian surface. At left, the onset of smaller "seed" storms can be seen near the Hellas basin (lower right edge of Mars) and the northern polar cap. A similar surface view at right, taken over two months later, shows the fully developed extent of the obscuring global dust storm. Credit: J. Bell (Cornell), M. Wolff (Space Science Inst.), Hubble Heritage Team (STScI / AURA), NASA

From Live Science:

Maybe even more than average citizens, the world's space agencies rely on daily and seasonal reports to better understand weather on Earth and other planets. Space-mission success ties directly to effective anticipation and navigation of inclement surface and atmospheric conditions.

Mission-design engineers at NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and similar organizations need to know what environmental issues a Mars Lander or Rover might face to ensure that heat shields, parachutes and other on-board mechanisms survive the trip through the atmosphere to the surface.

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Junk Cost Estimates Supplied to Augustine Committee Threaten to Sink NASA's Human Spaceflight Program

From The Mars Society:

The Mars Society has examined copies of the cost projections being used by the Augustine Committee in currently considering the future of NASA's human spaceflight program. These estimates, generated by the Aerospace Corporation, a US Air Force funded policy oracle, have no scientific basis and have clearly been composed to make the case that human space exploration is unaffordable.

A copy of the Aerospace Corporation's bizarre cost estimates being used by the Augustine Committee is available here.

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Glitch Sends NASA's Mars Orbiter Into Safe Mode

This image is an artist's concept of a view looking down
on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. NASA.gov

From FOX News:

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will be kept in its safe mode — suspending its science observations of the red planet for several weeks — while engineers try to investigate what is plaguing the spacecraft.

The 4-year-old orbiter has mysteriously rebooted its main computer three times this year, most recently on Aug. 26. It also inexplicably switched to a backup computer last month in a different malfunction.

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A Giant Fingerprint On Mars: High Res Camera Reveals Details Just 3ft Across On Red Planet

(Click Image To Enlarge)
Planet print: This picture was taken in a crater near Fan in the Coprates Region of Mars. The giant fingerprint-like shape was created by possible evaporites - sediments formed by the evaporation of water

From The Daily Mail:

This striking range of dunes and craters appears to form a giant cosmic fingerprint on the surface of the Red Planet.

Scientists believe the undulating ground reveals global climate changes that took place on Mars over the past few million years.

The area is in the Coprates region, a large trough that forms part of the Valles Marineris - a system of canyons stretching thousands of miles along Mars' equator.

The whitish areas could be evaporites - mineral sediments left behind when salt water evaporates. Such deposits would be of great interest as they indicate potential habitats for past martian life.

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Look Out Mars, India's Gonna Get Ya!

The Red Planet Beckons: India's next target beyond the moon. NASA

From Popular Science:

India terminates its lunar probe and plans to launch its first Mars mission as early as 2013.

India has officially given up on its lunar probe Chandrayaan-1, which launched in 2008 and stayed alive for ten months before mission controllers lost radio contact. But officials are already looking forward to sending a robotic explorer to the red planet.

The nation's state-run space agency announced today a mission to Mars between 2013 and 2015. Xinhua reports that the planning will become reality after India launches its Chandrayaan-2 lunar rover in 2011.

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Second Robot Deployed To Help Free Stuck Mars Rover

Engineers are deploying a lightweight version of a test rover (foreground) that will better simulate Mars's gravity, which is 38% that of Earth's (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

From New Scientist:

In the struggle to free the Mars rover Spirit from a sand trap, NASA engineers are bringing out the reserve troops. A second, lighter duplicate rover slid into a sandbox for testing this week, delaying any attempt to free Spirit by as much as three weeks, to mid-September.

Spirit has been stuck in a sandpit for nearly four months. Since late June, engineers have been trying to determine the best moves to extricate it by driving a test rover around a sandbox at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California.

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Why Is Human Mars Exploration So Surprisingly Hard?

Mars as seen near opposition late August 2003, by the Hubble Space Telescope
Credit: NASA/STSci/Hubble; Captioning credit MSSS/ ASU Themis/ NASA/ JPL

From The Space Review:

As space policy experts mull over alternative strategies for astronaut exploration of the solar system, possibly including human flight to Mars, the recently-concluded fortieth anniversary celebrations of the Apollo 11 moon landing inspire one specific question: what’s taken so long?

In the heady days of the Apollo triumphs, even the “pessimistic” forecasts imagined it might take as long as twenty years to get astronauts to Mars. Optimistic schedules put the first footsteps on the Red Planet—another “giant leap for mankind”—as early as 1982.

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Pictured: Stunning New Image Of Mars Show Half-Mile Wide Crater Complete With Sand Dunes

This image of the Victoria Crater in the Meridiani Planum region of Mars was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

From The Daily Mail:

It is one of the most dramatic images to ever emerge from Mars.

In fact, this extraordinary photograph is so clear that even the sand dunes at the base of the half-mile wide canyon are visible.

Experts even believe that they can see the tracks of a Mars lander on the left-hand corner of the Victoria Crater.

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Mars, Methane And Mysteries

From Scientific American:

Mars may not be as dormant as scientists once thought. The 2004 discovery of methane means that either there is life on Mars, or that volcanic activity continues to generate heat below the martian surface. ESA plans to find out which it is. Either outcome is big news for a planet once thought to be biologically and geologically inactive.

The methane mystery started soon after December 2003, when ESA's Mars Express arrived in orbit around the red planet. As the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) began taking data, Vittorio Formisano, Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario CNR, Rome, and the rest of the instrument team saw a puzzling signal. As well as the atmospheric gases they were anticipating, such as carbon monoxide and water vapour, they also saw methane. "Methane was a surprise, we were not expecting that," says Agustin Chicarro, ESA Mars Lead Scientist. The reason is that on Earth much of the methane in our atmosphere is released by evolved life forms, such as cattle digesting food. While there are ways to produce methane without life, such as by volcanic activity, it is the possible biological route that has focused attention on the discovery.

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