Showing posts with label mars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mars. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Mars Moon Phobos Likely Forged By Catastrophic Blast

From Space.com:

One of the two moons of Mars most likely formed from rubble catapulted into space after a comet or meteorite slammed into the Red Planet, a new study finds.

The moon, Phobos, looks a lot like an asteroid: It's lumpy, potato-shaped and very small. It has an average radius of just 11 kilometers (6.8 miles).

Scientists have long wondered about the origin of Phobos — is it merely a captured asteroid, the leftovers from Mars' formation or evidence of a cosmic Martian hit-and-run with another object?

Read more ....

Friday, September 24, 2010

Mars Methane Mystery: What's Making The Gas?

This image shows concentrations of Methane discovered on Mars. Click to enlarge this image. NASA

From Discovery News:

Methane in Mars' atmosphere lasts less than a year meaning something -- either geologic or biological -- keeps belching it out.

A six-year study of methane in Mars' atmosphere shows the planet is far from dead, though whether it is merely geologically active or host to microbial life is unknown.

An Italy-based team of researchers combed through billions of measurements taken by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor to compile seasonal maps of the gas, a simple chemical compound that appears in minute quantities in Mars' carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere.

Read more ....

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Mars Lander May Have Detected, Then Destroyed Organics

This is the first photograph ever taken on the surface of the planet Mars. It was obtained by Viking 1 just minutes after the spacecraft landed successfully on July 20, 1976. Click to enlarge this image. NASA

From Discovery News:


The Viking mission on Mars may have destroyed compounds that make biology possible while trying to detect them.

Martian soil could contain the building blocks of carbon-based life after all, a new study suggests, despite the negative results of an analysis performed by the Viking missions 34 years ago.

When the Viking landers touched down on Mars in 1976 and scooped up soil samples, scientists were surprised that the two craft failed to unearth evidence that the Red Planet contained any organic compounds. The apparent lack of organic molecules -- a basic requirement for carbon-based organisms -- helped to cement the notion of Mars as an entity that would not easily support life.

Read more
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Thursday, September 9, 2010

Mars Shows Signs Of Recent Activity

MARS PHOENIX LANDERA new analysis of carbon dioxide gas sampled in 2008 by NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander, shown in this self-portrait taken by a camera on the lander, suggests that the Red Planet may have been an active place with volcanoes and liquid water during the past 100 million years.JPL/NASA, University of Arizona, Texas A&M University

From Science News:

Carbon dioxide measurements suggest liquid water and volcanoes in past 100 million years.

New evidence suggests that Mars was much more active in the relatively recent past, with volcanoes erupting and water flowing on its surface within the past 100 million years.

Read more ....

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Mars Contains Organic Material

New research has concluded that organic material was found on Mars, although NASA's Viking spacecraft, which took theis photograph, sent results in 1976 that were interpreted otherwise.

Not 'Life,' But Maybe 'Organics' On Mars -- Washington Post

Thirty-four years after NASA's Viking missions to Mars sent back results interpreted to mean there was no organic material - and consequently no life - on the planet, new research has concluded that organic material was found after all.

The finding does not bring scientists closer to discovering life on Mars, researchers say, but it does open the door to a greater likelihood that life exists, or once existed, on the planet.

Read more ....

Saturday, September 4, 2010

What Created This Smooth, 200-Mile-Long Trench On Mars?

Orcus Patera ESA

From Popular Science:

The European Space Agency has released a series of new images of Orcus Patera, a long crater near Mars's Mons Olympus whose rim rises some 6,000 feet. But the images, taken by the Mars Express craft, only deepen the mystery of the crater's origin.

The ESA says "the most likely explanation is that it was made in an oblique impact, when a small body struck the surface at a very shallow angle." Sounds almost definitely like aliens.

Read more ....

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Conduct Virtual Explorations of Mars with New WorldWide Telescope Feature

Screenshot showing Olympus Mons in 3-D using the World Wide Telescope.

From Universe Today:

Love 3-D imagery of Mars? There's now a firehose just for you! The WorldWide Telescope has teamed up with NASA to use images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera to provide a high-resolution 3-D map of the Red Planet. Included are fully-interactive images and the latest and greatest NASA data, which will allow for a virtual way to explore Mars and perhaps to even make your own scientific discoveries. This is the highest-resolution fully interactive map of Mars ever created, and includes guided video tours with two NASA scientists, James Garvin of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and Carol Stoker of Ames.

Read more ....

My Comment: So much for my telescope.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Widening Gullies On Mars Point To Liquid Water

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows gullies near the
edge of Hale crater on southern Mars. Credit: NASA


From Cosmos:

WASHINGTON, D.C.: Changes in gullies on Mars suggest that there is flowing water on the red planet, scientists said.

Martian gullies carved into hill slopes and the walls of impact craters were discovered several years ago. On Earth, gullies usually form through the action of liquid water – long thought to be absent on the Martian surface because the temperature and atmospheric pressure were believed to be too low.

Read more ....

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Opportunity Mars Rover Gets Artificial Intelligence Upgrade, Decides For Itself What to Explore Next

Opportunity Target Selection Opportunity scans the Martian terrain for rocks meeting specific criteria – shape, size, coloration – set by scientists on the ground. When it finds what it's looking for, it sets a course for the point of interest. NASA/JPL-Caltech

From Popular Science:

NASA's Opportunity Rover, now in its seventh year of roaming the Martian surface, just got a little smarter. Like parents giving their growing child a little more autonomy, engineers updated Opportunity with artificial intelligence software this past winter that allows the rover to make its own decisions about where to stop and which rocks to analyze during its travels. Now the first images of Opportunity picking and choosing where to investigate have been released.

Read more ....

Monday, March 22, 2010

Mars As You've Never Seen It Before

Colossal: This ice formation is a portion of the wall terraces of the Mojave Crater on Mars. It has barely suffered any erosion so offers scientists a tantalising glimpse of what a very large complex crater looks like

From The Daily Mail:

It looks like a filmmaker's apocalyptic vision of Earth following a devastating natural disaster.

But this colossal ice formation is actually a portion of the wall terraces of a huge crater on Mars.

Approximately 37 miles in diameter, a section of the Mojave Crater in the planet's Xanthe Terra region has been digitally mapped by Nasa scientists.

The result is this digital terrain model that was generated from a stereo pair of images and offers a synthesized, oblique view of a 2.5-mile portion of the crater's wall terraces.

Read more ....

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Periodic Bursts Of Solar Radiation Destroy The Martian Atmosphere

Come on, Cohaagen! You got what you want.
Give those people air!
Total Recall, via The Warehouse

From Popular Science:

Unfortunately for anyone looking to terraform Mars, a new study shows that powerful waves of solar wind periodically strip the Red Planet of its atmosphere. Scientists had known for years that Mars has atmosphere troubles, but only by analyzing new data from he Mars Express spacecraft were they able to identify the special double solar waves as the specific cause.

Read more ....

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Rolling Martian Avalanche Greets The Spring

Martian Avalanche Keep those red rocks rolling NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

From Popular Science:

Springtime on Mars means the thaw of carbon dioxide ice in the northern hemisphere. And when the dry ice goes, the party's over for any trapped debris that then goes tumbling down Martian cliffs in spectacular images such as this.

Read more ....

Evidence For Life On Mars May Be Staring Us In The Face

Sulphur in silence (Image: NASA/SPL)

From New Scientist:

THE footprint of life on Mars may have been plain to see all along in the sulphurous minerals that litter the planet's surface. What's more, the next Mars lander should be able to detect the evidence.

No mission to Mars has ever found complex carbon-based molecules, from which life as we know it is built. But sulphur is everywhere on Mars - it is more abundant there than on Earth - and it could contain one of the signatures of life. On Earth, the activity of some microbes converts one class of sulphur-containing compounds, the sulphates, into another, the sulphides. The microbes prefer to work with the lighter sulphur-32 isotope, so the sulphides they produce are relatively deficient in the heavier isotope, sulphur-34. Planetary scientists have long wondered whether we could use this pattern to discern signs of life on Mars. Now the prospects for this technique look better than ever.

Read more ....

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Mars Spacecraft Breaks Through Data Download Milestone As It Beams 12,000 Amazing Pictures Back To Earth

This image shows dark sand dunes and inverted craters in the Arabia Terra region of Mars. The sand is dark because it was probably derived from basalt. The 'inverted' shape is found on Mars and Earth where erosion has stripped away surrounding topography

From The Daily Mail:


There crystal clear views of alien rock formations are just a few of the impressive images sent back from Nasa's Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter.

Captured by the onboard HiRise camera, they show dramatic landscapes including inverted craters, deep water-forged gullies and frost covered dunes. To date, scientists have released 11,762 such images to the public.

They were sent back to Earth from the spacecraft, which is circling the Red Planet 72million miles away.

Read more ....

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

To Mars In 39 Days

An artist's impression of VASIMR - a rocket that may cut down the
travel time to Mars to just 39 days. Credit: NASA


From Cosmos/AFP:

WASHINGTON: A journey from Earth to Mars could eventually take just 39 days - cutting current travel time nearly six times - according to a rocket scientist who has the ear of U.S. space agency NASA.

Franklin Chang-Diaz, a former astronaut and a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, says reaching the Red Planet could be dramatically quicker using his high-tech VASIMR rocket, now on track for liftoff after decades of development.

Read more ....

Mars Rover Spirit Could Rise Again

NASA's Spirit rover

From New Scientist:

NASA's Spirit rover should be able to wriggle free of its sandy trap on Mars after all, says a scientist for the mission. But the plucky robotic explorer will need to survive the bitter Martian winter first.

In April 2009, Spirit's wheels broke through a thin surface crust and got mired in the loose sand below. After months of trying unsuccessfully to free the rover, NASA declared on 26 January that Spirit would henceforth be a stationary lander mission rather than a rover.

Read more ....

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Nasa Rides 'Bucking Bronco' To Mars

From The BBC:

It weighs almost a tonne, has cost more than $2bn and, in 2013, it will be lowered on to the surface of Mars with a landing system that has never been tried before.


The Mars Science Laboratory will "revolutionise investigations in science on other planets", says Doug McCuistion, director of Nasa's Mars exploration programme.

It will, he says, lay the foundations for future missions that will eventually bring pieces of the Red Planet back home to Earth.

Read more ....

Friday, January 29, 2010

Mars And The Moon To Line Up For Celestial Spectacle

Mars

From The Telegraph:

Mars and the full Moon are expected to pair up and provide a grand celestial spectacle tonight.

The Red Planet, now 62 million miles from Earth, will be at its brightest this year as it lines up opposite the Sun on Friday.

At around 9pm, Mars will be above and to the left of the Moon, about the length of an outstretched fist away.

Read more ....

Thursday, January 28, 2010

New Animations Take You Flying Over Mars



From Wired Science:

A space-loving animator has created stunning flyovers of Mars from data captured by NASA’s HiRISE imager, which is mounted on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite.

HiRISE creates detailed digital-elevation models. Crunch that data, add perspective and some cinematic effects, and you have the movies that Doug Ellison, founder of UnmannedSpaceflight.com, posted to YouTube this morning.

The video at the top shows the Mojave Crater. The one below takes you flying through Athabasca Valles. Ellison said that both animations are rendered accurately from the data with no exaggerated scaling.

Read more ....

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Engineers Plot The Future Of A Hobbled Mars Rover

European Pressphoto Agency

From The New York Times:

PASADENA, Calif. — As they have on many days during the past six years, about 10 engineers at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory gathered in a conference room here last Tuesday to plan the schedule of the Mars rover Spirit.

From Cornell University in upstate New York, Steven W. Squyres, the mission’s principal investigator, appeared on a screen in the room as he presided over the “surface operations working group” meeting that day — a SOWG meeting for short, pronounced “sog.”

Read more ....