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Welcome to Humans on Mars - Humankind's next great adventure...
The future is here; just wait a moment…
“Humans on Mars” (the website) has been around in one form or another for eight years or so. This incarnation embodies a large range of features and is squarely aimed at promoting the quest for space exploration and all things related. Here you will read of humanities endeavors, past, present and into the future.
Look around and you will find current news, articles, fiction, humor, art and more; opportunities abound for members of this site, so please register and join us in this wondrous adventure.
May we rise to the occasion and walk among the stars.
Ron Gully
25th April 2007 |
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Mars lander uncovers signs of ice
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| Posted by admin on Tuesday, June 03 @ 21:04:48 EST (291 reads) |
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 The descent engine blew away soil on landing, possibly revealing ice
Nasa's new robotic craft on Mars may be resting on a large patch of ice.
The latest images sent to Earth reveal tantalising glimpses of what looks like frozen water.
Scientists think the Phoenix Mars lander's descent engine may have blown away a layer of dirt, exposing the ice.
The craft's robotic arm reached out and touched the soil for the first time, leaving behind a striking, footprint-like impression, they said on Sunday.
The robotic arm was making a test run, just one week after the landing.
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NASA space probe digs for life on Mars
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| Posted by admin on Tuesday, May 27 @ 04:19:45 EST (321 reads) |
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A NASA space probe has started to investigate whether Mars has the conditions necessary to support life.
The Phoenix has been sending back photos from the planet's north pole that show signs of there being ice under the surface. The probe is equipped with a robotic arm, which is designed to dig below the frozen surface for samples of ice and water.
The director of NASA's jet propulsion laboratory, Dr Charles Elachi, has praised the efforts of the scientists behind the mission. "Many people thought that this will not be possible that we will not be able to succeed," he said.
"All of us knew this is very risky mission, but this thing made history and they will be remembered forever that they are the first people to explore the polar region of Mars. "There is no telling what discoveries we'll be seeing over the next 90 days."
NASA's Mars exploration program manager, Fuk Li, has told ABC local radio the first photos show signs of there being ice under the surface. "It's a very, very flat surface. There are small rocks, pebbles lying around," he said.
"It is like a permafrost region of the earth and the area is has polygonal kind of patterns on it, and we can see those with the images that we have obtained so far." |
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| Posted by admin on Tuesday, May 27 @ 04:17:26 EST (303 reads) |
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Touch down: An artist's impression of the Phoenix lander on the surface of Mars (NASA) A probe set to make the first studies of another planet's water has landed on the surface of Mars, NASA officials said this morning. The spacecraft, known as Phoenix, landed at 9:53am (AEST) after a do-or-die plunge through the planet's thin atmosphere. It marked the first time that a spacecraft had successfully landed at one of the planet's polar regions. Pulled by Mars' gravity, Phoenix was tearing along at 20,400 kilometres per hour before it entered the atmosphere, which slowed the craft so it could pop out a parachute and fire thruster rockets to gently float to the ground and land on fold-out legs. "It's down, baby, it's down!" yelled a NASA flight controller, looking at signals from Mars showing that Phoenix had landed. |
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Avalanche Photographed on Mars
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Once habitable Lake Found on Mars
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2007 WD5 Mars Collision Effectively Ruled Out As Impact Odds Widen To 1 In 10000
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| Posted by admin on Saturday, January 12 @ 19:06:28 EST (703 reads) |
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We have received numerous tracking measurements of asteroid 2007 WD5 from four different observatories. These new data have led to a significant reduction in the position uncertainties during the asteroid's close approach to Mars on Jan. 30, 2008. As a result, the impact probability has dropped dramatically, to approximately 0.01% or 1 in 10,000 odds, effectively ruling out the possible collision with Mars. Our best estimate now is that 2007 WD5 will pass about 26,000 km from the planet's center (about 7 Mars radii from the surface) at around 12:00 UTC (4:00 am PST) on Jan. 30th. With 99.7% confidence, the pass should be no closer than 4000 km from the surface.
The sequence of updates over the last few weeks has been typical of past potential impact scenarios, with the odds of impact initially surging and later plummeting towards zero. Early on, the uncertainty region is very large and the probability of impact is rather low.
As the uncertainty narrows, but still includes the planet, the probability initially increases. But eventually, as in this case, the uncertainty region shrinks to the point that it no longer overlaps the planet, and the probability of impact begins a precipitous decline.
This rise and fall of the computed hazard was most notably seen in Dec. 2004 when asteroid 99942 Apophis briefly reached a 2.7% chance of impact with Earth in April 2029. In every case, the height and the timing of the peak probability - and the subsequent decline - cannot be known until the uncertainty region has shrunk to the point where it no longer intersects the planet.
NASA's Spaceguard Survey continues searching for Near-Earth Asteroids such as 2007 WD5, endeavoring to discover 90% of those larger than 1 km in size, a goal that should be met within the next few years. Each discovered asteroid is continually monitored for the possibility of impact. For 2007 WD5, these analyses show there is no possibility of impact with either Mars or Earth in the next century. |
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Sunshine to Petrol Project Seeks Fuel from Thin Air
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| Posted by admin on Saturday, January 12 @ 19:03:34 EST (743 reads) |
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Using concentrated solar energy to reverse combustion, a research team from Sandia National Laboratories is building a prototype device intended to chemically "reenergize" carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide using concentrated solar power. The carbon monoxide could then be used to make hydrogen or serve as a building block to synthesize a liquid combustible fuel, such as methanol or even gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.
Miller says that while the first step would be to capture the carbon dioxide from sources where it is concentrated, the ultimate goal would be to snatch it out of the air. A S2P system that includes atmospheric carbon dioxide capture could produce carbon-neutral liquid fuels.
The prototype device, called the Counter Rotating Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator (CR5, for short), will break a carbon-oxygen bond in the carbon dioxide to form carbon monoxide and oxygen in two distinct steps. It is a major piece of an approach to converting carbon dioxide into fuel from sunlight. The Sandia research team calls this approach "Sunshine to Petrol" (S2P). "Liquid Solar Fuel" is the end product — the methanol, gasoline or other liquid fuel made from water and the carbon monoxide produced using solar energy. CR5 inventor Rich Diver says the original idea for the device was to break down water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen could then fuel a potential hydrogen economy. The Sandia researchers came up with the idea to use the CR5 to break down carbon dioxide, just as it would water. Over the past year they have shown proof of concept and are completing a prototype device that will use concentrated solar energy to reenergize carbon dioxide or water, the products of combustion. This will form carbon monoxide, hydrogen, and oxygen, which ultimately could be used to synthesize liquid fuels in an integrated S2P system. Coresearchers on the project are Jim E. Miller and Nathan Siegel. Project champion is Ellen B. Stechel, manager of Sandia's Fuels and Energy Transitions Department. Stechel says that researchers have known for a long time that theoretically it might be possible to recycle carbon dioxide, but many thought it could not be made practical, either technically or economically and therefore not much effort has been put toward the research until now. "Not only did we think it was possible, the team has developed a prototype that they fully anticipate will successfully break down carbon dioxide in a clever and viable two-step process," she says. Stechel notes that one driver for the invention is the need to reduce greenhouse gases. "This invention, though probably a good 15 to 20 years away from being on the market, holds a real promise of being able to reduce carbon dioxide emissions while preserving options to keep using fuels we know and love," she says. "Recycling carbon dioxide into fuels provides an attractive alternative to burying it." |
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Mars Orbiter Examines Lace And Lizard Skin Terrain
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| Posted by admin on Friday, December 14 @ 02:23:51 EST (761 reads) |
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 Right: This is a perspective view of a scene within Mars' Candor Chasma based on stereo imaging by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It shows how the surface would appear to a person standing on top of one of the many hills in the region and facing southeast. The hills in the foreground are several tens of meters to about 100 meters (tens of yards to about 100 yards) wide and several tens of meters or yards tall. The light-toned layers of rock likely consist of material laid down by the wind or under water.
The dark-toned material is a layer of windblown sand on the surface. The orientations of these layers were measured in three dimensions in order to understand the region's geologic history. The particular patterns in which these rocks are oriented to the surrounding Candor Chasma are most consistent with the idea that the layers formed as basin-filling sediment, analogous to the sedimentary rocks of the Paradox Basin in southeastern Utah. This implies that these sediments are younger than the formation of the chasm, providing important constraints on the maximum age of groundwater (about 3.7 billion years) within the region. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
Scrutiny by NASA's newest Mars orbiter is helping scientists learn the stories of some of the weirdest landscapes on Mars, as well as more familiar-looking parts of the Red Planet. One type of landscape near Mars' south pole is called "cryptic terrain" because it once defied explanation, but new observations bolster and refine recent interpretations of how springtime outbursts of carbon-dioxide gas there sculpt intricate patterns and paint seasonal splotches.
"A lot of Mars looks like Utah, but this is an area that looks nothing like Planet Earth," said Candice Hansen of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., deputy principal investigator for the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. |
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Conference to Discuss Exploration of the two Moons of Mars
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| Posted by admin on Friday, November 30 @ 08:10:27 EST (1253 reads) |
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The Mars Institute is co-convening this week a unique scientific meeting titled "First International Conference on the Exploration of Phobos and Deimos: The Science, Robotic Reconnaissance, and Human Exploration of the Two Moons of Mars." The conference is being held at NASAÕs Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.
The meeting is bringing together scientists, engineers, space exploration professionals, and students from around the world to discuss over three intense days (5-7 Nov 2007) the exploration of Mars's two mysterious satellites and how their exploration relates to that of the Moon, Mars, small bodies, and the solar system beyond.
The conference is being convened at a time of renewed interest in the exploration of Phobos and Deimos, with several international spacecraft missions and concept studies underway. Says Dr. Pascal Lee, chairman of the Mars Institute and a co-convener of the conference: "Phobos and Deimos are two fascinating small worlds that have been somewhat overlooked. We are here to realize their full scientific and human exploration potential".
Meeting participants will examine key scientific questions pertaining to Mars's dark, asteroid-like moons, such as: Are Phobos and Deimos captured asteroids or remnants from the formation of Mars itself?; Are Phobos and Deimos related to each other?; How much resources, in particular H2O, do they contain?
The meeting will be an opportunity to review and coordinate upcoming robotic reconnaissance missions to these moons, and begin discussing how such missions could help pave the way to more ambitious Mars sample return missions in the future. |
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Old Rover(s) refuses to be put down
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| Posted by admin on Friday, November 30 @ 08:04:11 EST (771 reads) |
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NASA's Opportunity rover is showing its age. Problems have forced the agency to suspend work involving the rover's rock grinding tool and its infrared spectrometer while engineers try to work out a fix.
The problems are the latest in a long line of failures that have begun to plague both rovers as they age.
Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, were designed to last just 90 days. But they have been driving around the Red Planet for nearly 4 years, having landed in January 2004.
The rovers' lifetimes were originally expected to be limited by dust accumulating on the panels. If dust reduced harvestable solar power too much, the rovers would have trouble keeping their electronic innards warm enough to survive the cold Martian nights, especially in the winter.
But gusts of wind have cleaned off both rovers' solar panels from time to time, allowing them to weather the coldest nights, says project manager John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US.
Because of these helpful winds, Callas says he thinks the rovers will be limited more by how long their components can last against wear and tear. |
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Ice Water at mars Equator
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| Posted by admin on Sunday, November 11 @ 07:51:21 EST (819 reads) |
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Odd materials recently found on Mars have planetary scientists scratching their heads. That's because the materials were spotted at the red planet's equator—but they appear to contain a large amount of water like that previously seen only at the Martian poles.
The finding is based on new high-resolution radar data from the Martian subsurface, which show similarities between the properties of deposits on a hilly equatorial formation called Medusae Fossae and the sediments at the ice-rich poles.
Lead researcher Thomas Watters, of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, said that the new data suggest two possible scenarios.
"We can't exclude the possibility that these deposits are dry, low-density materials," Watters said.
But the observed properties of the materials could also mean that the Martian equator is rich in ice.
Kenneth Tanaka, an astrogeologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Flagstaff, Arizona, said that the idea of ice on Mars's equator is somewhat shocking.
"It would be like finding evidence of ice caps on Earth at the Equator," Tanaka said. "It's kind of very strange."
Watters and colleagues describe the find in this week's issue of the online advance journal Science Express.
Icy Middle?
Watters' team examined the Martian surface using a radar instrument called MARSIS aboard the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter.
One of the team's areas of study was the Medusae Fossae Formation—a series of large, oddly textured plateaus at the equator that are covered with materials easily eroded by wind. |
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Salt Deposits in a Ancient Martian Crater
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The Steamy Martian Underground
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| Posted by admin on Sunday, October 21 @ 18:19:25 EST (927 reads) |
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 Is Mars dead, or is it only sleeping? The surface of Mars is completely hostile to life as we know it. Martian deserts are blasted by radiation from the sun and space. The air is so thin, cold, and dry, if liquid water were present on the surface, it would freeze and boil at the same time. But there is evidence, like vast, dried up riverbeds, that Mars once was a warm and wet world that could have supported life. Are the best times over, at least for life, on Mars? New research raises the possibility that Mars could awaken from within -- three large Martian volcanoes may only be dormant, not extinct. Volcanic eruptions release lots of greenhouse gasses, like carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere. If the eruptions are not complete, and future eruptions are large enough, they could warm the Martian climate from its present extremely cold and dry state.
NASA-funded researchers traced the flow of molten rock (magma) beneath the three large Martian volcanoes by comparing their surface features to those found on Hawaiian volcanoes. "On Earth, the Hawaiian islands were built from volcanoes that erupted as the Earth's crust slid over a hot spot -- a plume of rising magma," said Dr. Jacob Bleacher of Arizona State University and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Our research raises the possibility that the opposite happens on Mars - a plume might move beneath stationary crust." The observations could also indicate that the three Martian volcanoes might not be extinct. Bleacher is lead author of a paper on these results that appeared in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Planets, September 19. The three volcanoes are in the Tharsis region of Mars. They are huge compared to terrestrial volcanoes, with each about 300 kilometers (186 miles) across. They form a chain heading northeast called the Tharsis Montes, from Arsia Mons just south of the Martian equator, to Pavonis Mons at the equator, to Ascraeus Mons slightly more then ten degrees north of the equator. No volcanic activity has been observed at the Tharsis Montes, but the scarcity of large impact craters in the region indicates that they erupted relatively recently in Martian history. Features in lava flows around the Tharsis Montes reveal that later eruptions from large cracks, or rift zones, on the sides of these volcanoes might have started at Arsia Mons and moved northeast up the chain, according to the new research. |
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Self-sufficient space habitat designed - in Australia
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| Posted by admin on Monday, October 15 @ 07:21:20 EST (873 reads) |
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SYDNEY: Australian-led scientists have designed a new space habitat that might one day allow astronauts on the Moon or Mars to be 90 to 95 per cent self-sufficient.
The development of such as system could save billions of dollars in shuttle trips to re-supply lunar or space colonies and brings closer the vision of a human habitat on Mars.
The technology could also have applications on Earth to develop more sustainable farming techniques and improve recycling processes.
Luna Gaia
Some systems to recycle water and air have already been developed and rudimentary versions are presently used in the International Space Station (ISS). However, the proposed new lunar habitat "combines our existing knowledge" of physical, chemical and biological processes to provide an "overall picture of how a minibiosphere would work," said James Chartres aerospace engineer at the University of Adelaide in South Australia. He gave a talk detailing the design at the Australian Space Science Conference held in Sydney last month.
Space living: The Luna Gaia design would reduce the need for costly supply missions to ferry food, air and water backwards and forwards from colonies on the Moon and Mars.
The project is in some ways similar to the failed Biosphere 2 experiment, built in Arizona, U.S., in the late 1980s. Over an area of 12,000 m2, Biosphere housed a closed ecological system, incorporating a mini 'ocean' with coral reefs, as well as a grassland, desert, mangrove, rainforest and agricultural areas. Eight people survived in the habitat for two years, but a lack of food and low levels of oxygen hampered the experiment. Chartres detailed plans for a smaller, space-bound concept, dubbed Luna Gaia.
Devised by an international team of 30 space scientists, Luna Gaia would be a 'closed-loop' environment, meaning that almost all material within the system is recycled with very little need for input from outside sources. The current design caters for a team of 12 astronauts under isolation for up to three years.
Currently, recycling that occurs on the ISS is driven by chemical reactions. A big challenge to developing a totally integrated system is developing a biological recycling system said Chartres. He argues that for efficient recycling, microorganisms are required. |
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Mars Landing Spots Photographed
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| Posted by admin on Monday, October 15 @ 07:14:49 EST (814 reads) |
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NASA Orbiter Provides Color Views of Mars Landing Site Candidates
PASADENA, CALIF. -- Less than a year since beginning the prime science phase of its mission, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has passed a mission-success milestone for the amount of data returned.
The data-volume target of 26 terabytes, which was surpassed this week, is equivalent to about 5,000 CD-ROMs full and exceeds the total from all other current and past Mars missions combined.
The biggest shares of the data come from two of the orbiter's six science instruments: the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment and the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars. The high-resolution camera's team of investigators, based at the University of Arizona, Tucson, today released 143 color images. The images reveal features as small as a desk. They are valuable to researchers studying possible landing sites for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, a mission launching in 2009 to deploy a long-distance rover carrying sophisticated science instruments on Mars.
The camera team is also releasing a color movie, scrolling over one candidate Mars Science Laboratory landing site in Nili Fossae, at 21 degrees north latitude and 74 degrees east latitude. The animation shows a range of enhanced colors that correspond to what Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's imaging spectrometer has determined to be hydrated clay minerals and unaltered volcanic rocks.
"The clay minerals are especially promising in the search for ancient life on Mars," UA Professor Alfred S. McEwen, principal investigator for the high resolution camera, said.
The color images released today were taken at or near about 30 proposed landing sites for the 2009 mission. That mission's deputy project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., said, "Scientists planning the Mars Science Laboratory must soon choose the one site on Mars where we can best investigate the extent to which Mars' environment is or was capable of supporting life -- no easy task. We've intentionally waited for the reconnaissance from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to help us zero in on those places."
The orbiter's high-resolution camera has taken more than 3,500 huge, sharp images released in black-and-white since it began science operations in November 2006. The camera carries 10 red filter detectors, two blue-green filter detectors and 10 infrared detectors.
Beginning this week, images will be released in color as well as black-and-white on the camera team's Web site. The colors are false color, not the way Mars would look to human eyes. The images are processed to maximize color differences, a technique useful for analyzing landscapes. |
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| Posted by admin on Monday, October 15 @ 07:08:50 EST (885 reads) |
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CONCORD, New Hampshire -- It's barely 8 a.m. as Chris Carberry stands in the middle of a field in the early morning sunlight, shivering slightly. He's waiting for Barack Obama, who is due to speak in about two hours. Obama volunteers are wary. Could Carberry be a researcher from the Clinton campaign? Or a dangerous nut? No, Carberry is a motivated man determined to see through his mission: to find out where each of the presidential candidates stands on Mars.
Carberry is the political director of the Mars Society, a nonprofit group that pushes relentlessly for human exploration and settlement of the red planet. He's the point man for Operation President 2008, in which Mars Society members lie in wait for presidential candidates at campaign stops in the early primary states, then leap out to pop the question: As president, would you send a man to Mars? With a day job in Boston, Carberry is well positioned for jaunts up to New Hampshire. In the last two presidential election cycles, he says he met every major candidate. He took a short stroll with John McCain, and got kicked out of an event by Al Gore's secret service contingent. He got a surprisingly eager response from Alan Keyes, a blank stare from Bill Bradley, and a vague thumbs-up from Dick Gephardt. Now, with the 2008 primary campaign well under way, he's on the trail again.
"This is an exceptional situation that happens every four years," says Robert Zubrin, founder and president of the Mars Society. "The one time the presidential candidates are actually in contact with the American people is in the primary season. As the fields narrow, it becomes harder and harder to get close to them." As the sun crept across the field, Carberry joined the line forming at the gate. He has made good progress already this year, he says, and rattles off candidates' responses to his overtures. "I know McCain is very enthusiastic about space -- he is a fan of space, of exploration," Carberry says. "Romney and Giuliani both said they're not sure, they haven't fully investigated the issue." Such answers may seem like meager dividends. But advocates say that asking the candidates about the red planet can at least convey "that this is a topic about which a non-zero percentage of the voters care about," as Mars Society member Armin Ellis wrote in a blog entry. In other words, Mars enthusiasts may not be a crucial voting block, but at least the candidates know they exist. |
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Manned missions needed to explore Mars and beyond
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| Posted by admin on Thursday, October 04 @ 06:01:30 EST (833 reads) |
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The United States has pledged to colonize the Moon by 2020 and send astronauts to Mars, but many scientists say dangerous and costly manned space missions should be a thing of the past, not the future. Intelligent robots and satellites such as those already exploring the Red Planet, they say, do a good job and are a lot less fragile than human organisms too easily stranded millions of miles from home.
The scientific tug of war over the merits of sending humans into deep space is at least as old as Sputnik, the 83.5 kilo (184 pound) sphere of aluminum crammed with two radio transmitters -- the world's first satellite -- that Russia lobbed into orbit 50 years ago on October 4.
Russian leaders did not foresee the frenzied response Sputnik would provoke, especially in the United States.
But when Washington declared victory in the ensuing space race a dozen years later with the far more impressive feat of putting two men on the moon, no one expected that Apollo 11 would remain the fulcrum of human space exploration for nearly four decades and counting.
"Apollo gave us a false sense of security, it showed us what could be done," commented Doug Millard, space curator of the Science Museum in London. "But all we have managed to do since then -- no matter how magnificent it might be -- is to send humans round and round in orbit around Earth."
Delving deeper into the final frontier, however, is coming back into vogue.
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Space summit looks to the future from India
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| Posted by admin on Monday, September 24 @ 23:32:36 EST (934 reads) |
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 Delegates met under tight security, with hundreds of police deployed at the Hyderabad International Conference Centre following twin blasts in the city last month that left 43 people dead. The event is taking place 50 years after the start of the space age, which was ushered in by the launch of the Sputnik 1 satellite on October 4, 1957 by the then Soviet Union.Global space scientists gathered here Monday heard a call from India to join forces to push the boundaries of technology further and tap the resources of the universe.
New Delhi plans to undertake 60 outer-space missions, including one to the moon, over the next five years, said Prithviraj Chavan, a junior minister in the prime minister's office, at the opening of the meeting.
India is seeking advances in satellite navigation, communications, space transportation and earth observation, Chavan told the 2,000 delegates in this southern Indian city.
"All this will provide increased opportunities for commercial and scientific cooperation with India," said Chavan, standing in for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is recovering from prostate surgery.
The delegates, including scientists, astronauts, satellite manufacturers and launchers, are to discuss how to profit from the expected strong growth in the space industry over the next decade.
Paris-based market research firm Euroconsult estimates the sector will grow to 145 billion dollars over the next 10 years, from 116 billion dollars in 1997-2006, as space-faring nations launch more satellites and deep-space probes.
Advances in space exploration can be expensive and risky, said Chavan, adding: "In the face of many pressing priorities, we can ill-afford the duplication of efforts and resources.
"The question today is not whether we should cooperate but rather, can we afford not to cooperate?"
India has already launched satellites to map natural resources, predict the weather and to boost telecommunications in rural areas, and is looking to put its almost five-decade-old space programme to commercial use.
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Mars Gully: No Mineral Trace Of Liquid Water yet
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| Posted by admin on Monday, September 24 @ 23:27:15 EST (766 reads) |
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 This image of the Centauri-Hellas Montes region was taken by the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) at 2107 UTC (4:07 p.m. EST) on Jan. 9, 2007, near 38.41 degrees south latitude, 96.81 degrees east longitude. CRISM's image was taken in 544 colors covering 0.36-3.92 micrometers, and shows features as small as 20 meters (66 feet) across. The region covered is slightly wider than 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) at its narrowest point.
Narrow gullies found on hills and crater walls in many mid-latitude regions of Mars have been interpreted previously as cut by geologically "recent" running water, meaning water that flowed on Mars long after impact cratering, tectonic forces, volcanism or other processes created the underlying landforms. Some gullies even eroded into sand dunes, which would date their formation at thousands to millions of years ago, or less. In fact, Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) images showed two of the gullies have bright deposits near their downslope ends - but those deposits were absent in images taken just a few years earlier. The bright deposits must have formed within the period 1999-2004.
Has there been running water on Mars so recently? To address that question, CRISM and MRO's other instruments observed the bright gully deposits. CRISM's objective was to determine if the bright deposits contained salts left behind from water evaporating into Mars' thin air. The high-resolution imager's (HiRISE's) objective was to determine if the small-scale morphology was consistent with formation by running water.
This CRISM image of a bright gully deposit was constructed by showing 2.53, 1.50, and 1.08 micrometer light in the red, green, and blue image planes. CRISM can just resolve the deposits (highlighted by arrows in the inset), which are only a few tens of meters (about 150 feet) across. The spectrum of the deposits barely differs from that of the surrounding material, and is just a little brighter. This difference could simply be explained by a slightly greater content of dust than in the surrounding soil. In contrast, older deposits elsewhere on Mars ( such as Valles Marineris) that do contain hydrated salts have distinctive spectral features near 1.9 and 3.0 microns. The gully deposits lack these features, and exhibit no evidence for water-deposited salts. Just-published HiRISE images of this and other bright gully deposits do not rule out water, but they do suggest that the bright deposits could also have formed by dust that slid downslope and accumulated in the gullies. |
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Humans on Mars on Mars by 2037
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| Posted by admin on Monday, September 24 @ 23:23:14 EST (916 reads) |
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 Missions to the moon and Mars, amid a renewal of global interest in space exploration, are at the top of the agenda for the 2,000 space scientists, astronauts, satellite manufacturers and launchers who gathered in Hyderabad.NASA aims to put a man on Mars by 2037, the administrator of the US space agency indicated here Monday.
This year marks the half-century of the space age ushered in by the October 1957 launch of the Sputnik-1 by the then Soviet Union, NASA administrator Michael Griffin noted.
In 2057, the centenary of the space era, "we should be celebrating 20 years of man on Mars," Griffin told an international astronautics congress in this southern Indian city where he outlined NASA's future goals.
The international space station being built in orbit and targeted for completion by 2010 would provide a "toehold in space" from where humanity can travel first to the moon and then to Mars, Griffin said.
"We are looking at the moon and Mars to build a civilisation for tomorrow and after that," Griffin added in his remarks at a conference session attended by heads of the world's space agencies.
President George W. Bush in 2004 announced an ambitious plan for the US to return to the moon by 2020 and use it as a stepping stone for manned missions to Mars and beyond.
NASA's Phoenix spacecraft is scheduled to land on the northern plains of Mars next year to determine if the Red Planet could support life.
The agency's Mars rovers Opportunity and Spirit resumed their three-year-old mission this month after surviving giant dust storms that nearly destroyed the twin robots. |
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After Dust Storms, Mars Rover Set to Enter Giant Crater
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Thruster May Shorten Mars Trip
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| Posted by admin on Sunday, September 16 @ 08:00:50 EST (936 reads) |
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TUSTIN, Calif., Sept. 7, 2007 -- An amplified photon thruster that could potentially shorten the trip to Mars from six months to a week has reportedly attracted the attention of aerospace agencies and contractors.
Young Bae, founder of the Bae Institute in Tustin, Calif., first demonstrated his photonic laser thruster (PLT), which he built with off-the-shelf components, in December.
The demonstration produced a photon thrust of 35 µN and is scalable to achieve much greater thrust for future space missions, the institute said. Applications include highly precise satellite formation flying configurations for building large synthetic apertures in space for earth or space observation, precision contaminant-free spacecraft docking operations, and propelling spacecraft to unprecedented speeds -- faster than 100 km/sec.
“This is the tip of the iceberg," Bae said in a statement from the institute. "PLT has immense potential for the aerospace industry. For example, PLT-powered spacecraft could transit the 100 million km to Mars in less than a week.” |
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Mars Astrobiology Field Laboratory and the Search for Signs of Life
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| Posted by admin on Thursday, September 06 @ 08:36:20 EST (793 reads) |
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New Rochelle, NY, September 4, 2007 - A conceptual payload and mission scenario for the proposed NASA Mars mission known as the Astrobiology Field Laboratory (AFL), which will be equipped to perform state-of-the-art tests on samples collected from the martian surface to answer fundamental questions about life in the Universe, is described in a report in the August 2007 issue (Volume 7, Number 4) of Astrobiology, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. The paper is available free online at www.liebertpub.com/ast. The report, titled, " A Concept for NASA's Mars 2016 Astrobiology Field Laboratory," by coauthors Luther Beegle, Michael Wilson, Fernando Abilleira, James Jordan, and Gregory Wilson, from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, presents the group's analysis of candidate payload elements for the mission that were identified from a set of recommendations put forth by the AFL Science Steering Group (SSG). The AFL mission strategy will be to search for habitable zones and evidence of current or previous life forms by "following the water" and "finding the carbon." NASA's AFL mission, which could launch as early as 2016, would follow a series of planned missions to Mars (scheduled for 2007, 2009, 2011, and 2013) that will lay the groundwork for implementation of the laboratory and begin the process of collecting samples from the planet for future analysis and sample return. "Instruments designed for the AFL mission will enable real time analysis of possible biosignatures on Mars and reveal whether there were (or are) habitable zones and life," says journal Editor, Sherry L. Cady, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Department of Geology at Portland State University. "The conceptual Precision Sample Processing and Handling System proposed by Beegle and coauthors for AFL is a significant step toward development of the technology and cutting-edge instrumentation needed to succeed on Mars." |
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Spirit Slowly Emerges from Blanket of Dust
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| Posted by admin on Thursday, September 06 @ 08:28:44 EST (620 reads) |
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 sol 1295-1302, August 30, 2007:
Spirit remains healthy as the rover slowly picks up more solar energy. The dust storms appear to be over, at least for now, and the skies are slowly clearing. Unfortunately, what energy Spirit has gained from cleaner skies has been offset by losses to dustier solar arrays. Still, Spirit has the energy, about 325 watt-hours, to finally be roving again.
Tau, a measure of atmospheric dustiness, declined slightly. As of Sol 1299 (Aug. 29, 2007), the Sun was at about 8 percent of its full brightness, an increase of a little more than 2 percent compared with five sols earlier. Dust on the rover's solar arrays increased by about 3 percent and only about 59 percent of the sunlight hitting the arrays gets through to make electricity.
But rather than getting a 1-percent boost in solar power, the rover has been just about breaking even. The reason is that Tau measures direct sunlight but there's also scattered sunlight and it, too, increased by about 1 percent. Much of the dust previously seen on the turret has blown or fallen off.
Dust contamination remains a concern, particularly for the microscopic imager, where some of the dust clumps visible in earlier images have fallen out or moved out of the line of sight. |
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By Jeremy Hsu
