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Mars lander uncovers signs of ice
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| Posted by admin on Tuesday, June 03 @ 22:04:48 SGT (1448 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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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 SGT (1861 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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Mars Orbiter Examines Lace And Lizard Skin Terrain
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| Posted by admin on Friday, December 14 @ 02:23:51 SGT (1968 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 SGT (2629 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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Ice Water at mars Equator
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| Posted by admin on Sunday, November 11 @ 07:51:21 SGT (2098 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 @ 19:19:25 SGT (1949 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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Mars Landing Spots Photographed
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| Posted by admin on Monday, October 15 @ 08:14:49 SGT (1381 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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Manned missions needed to explore Mars and beyond
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| Posted by admin on Thursday, October 04 @ 07:01:30 SGT (1475 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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Mars Gully: No Mineral Trace Of Liquid Water yet
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| Posted by admin on Tuesday, September 25 @ 00:27:15 SGT (1439 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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After Dust Storms, Mars Rover Set to Enter Giant Crater
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Spirit Slowly Emerges from Blanket of Dust
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| Posted by admin on Thursday, September 06 @ 09:28:44 SGT (1205 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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Reborn Phoenix lander wings its way to Mars
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| Posted by admin on Saturday, August 25 @ 23:39:40 SGT (1266 reads) |
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 The Phoenix spacecraft lifts off successfully from Kennedy Space Center as viewed from Jetty Park in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Saturday.
By Marcia Dunn
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - A robotic dirt and ice digger rocketed toward Mars on Saturday, beginning a 422 million-mile journey that NASA hopes will culminate next spring in the first-ever landing within the Red Planet's Arctic Circle. The Phoenix Mars Lander blasted off before dawn, precisely on time, hurtling through the clear moonlit sky aboard an unmanned Delta rocket. The rocket looked as though it was heading straight for Mars, a bright reddish dot in the eastern sky. Peter Smith, the mission's principal scientist from the University of Arizona, ran out of the control center just before liftoff to watch from outside and took Mars' visibility as an auspicious sign for the spacecraft. "It seemed to kind of get the scent there, you know, it was on its way," Smith said with a laugh. "Sort of like a bloodhound, it's going to find Mars." |
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| Posted by admin on Saturday, August 11 @ 07:26:35 SGT (1620 reads) |
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 This artist's concept depicts NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander a moment before its 2008 touchdown on the arctic plains of Mars. Pulsed rocket engines control the spacecraft's speed during the final seconds of descent. Credit: NASA/JPL-Calech/University of ArizonaCreditThe Phoenix Mars Lander launched on Saturday, August 4, beginning a journey to never-explored regions of the Red Planet to search for frozen water beneath the Martian surface. What it discovers will help scientists determine if Mars could support life. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. and Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. are working together with the University of Arizona and Lockheed Martin Space Systems on Phoenix, the first project in NASA's Mars Scout Missions program.
The University of Arizona is leading the mission, JPL is managing the project and Lockheed Martin built the spacecraft. Langley is serving a supportive, although equally important, role. "Langley's contributions are in a number of areas," said Prasun Desai, senior engineer and Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) lead engineer. "Our role is to help with the development of the EDL system. We're supporting JPL and Lockheed Martin by defining the requirements for Phoenix's design so that it can meet what it needs to do when it gets to Mars to land safely."
To fulfill its role, Langley performs analyses in a range of disciplines -- from flight dynamics and mission design to aerodynamics to EDL systems engineering. Phoenix will land on the northern polar regions of Mars, comparable in latitude to central Greenland or northern Alaska, and claw into the Martian soil using its 7.7-foot-long robotic arm. The lander will then retrieve samples of soil and water ice and analyze those samples by using an "oven" and a "portable laboratory" to heat the soil and water ice and examine their characteristics. According to Desai, NASA wants Phoenix to gather clues and answer critical questions -- Can the Martian arctic support life? What is the history of water at the landing site? How is the Martian climate affected by polar dynamics? |
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Crystals On Meteorite Reveal Clues To Early Solar System Evolution
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Red Planet Rising: NASA's Phoenix Probe Launches Towards Mars
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| Posted by admin on Tuesday, August 07 @ 10:42:03 SGT (1848 reads) |
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander lit up the predawn Florida sky Saturday, launching spaceward on a mission to determine whether the planet could have once supported primitive life. A United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket launched Phoenix towards Mars at 5:26:34 a.m. EDT (0926:34 GMT) from Pad 17A at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The three-stage booster is bound for the flat northern plains of Vastitas Borealis near the martian north pole, where it is expected to dig into and sample the region's icy soil with its eight-foot (2.4-meter) robotic arm.
"It's a wonderful morning to go to Mars," NASA's Phoenix project manager Barry Goldstein, of the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), just before liftoff. As predicted, weather conditions were pristine for the early morning space shot. The launch was delayed 24 hours earlier this week due to bad weather during rocket fueling. Just after the supersonic crackle of the launch, Phoenix officials let out gasps of excitement as the rocket careened toward Mars.
"This is just about the coolest thing you could imagine," said Tim Gasparrini, deputy program manager for the Phoenix mission at Lockheed-Martin. "Phoenix has been a long time coming, and this is really, really exciting." Ray Arvidson, co-chairman of the Phoenix Landing Site Working Group at Washington University in St. Louis, said the successful launch was an enormous relief. "It was a great launch, so it means we're going to reach a high northern latitude site on Mars and actually sample ice for the first time," Arvidson said. "Now we can get on with the business of doing great science on mars." |
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| Posted by admin on Tuesday, July 31 @ 06:23:51 SGT (1728 reads) |
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 by Henry Bortman for Astrobiology Magazine
Interview with ESA's Jorge Vago, Part II
Moffett Field CA (ARC) Jul 31, 2007
To date, only NASA has succeeded in sending a rover to explore our neighboring planet Mars. That is about to change. In 2011, the European Space Agency will send ExoMars to the Red Planet in search of signs that Mars is, or was, a living world. Astrobiology Field Research Editor Henry Bortman recently interviewed the ExoMars project scientist, Jorge Vago. In this, the second part of a two-part interview, Vago explains why ExoMars will focus on looking for fossil evidence of ancient life and why such evidence may be easier to find on Mars than it is on Earth.
Astrobiology Magazine: It's my understanding that the instruments on ExoMars will be looking for biomolecules typical of terrestrial life. You don't plan to look for indicators or patterns that could be caused by biology with a different chemical basis than that of terrestrial life. Is it true that ExoMars will focus on looking for Earth-like life, and if so, why?
Jorge Vago: Well, there are two answers to that. One is that, in reality, what we're looking for is organic molecules, carbon-based. And that is of course based on what we know about life on Earth. The other thing we do know for sure is that there has been a very large exchange of meteoritic material between the two planets. So we can be pretty sure that Mars was in some way seeded with organic matter that came from Earth in the early period of the planet. Would this give rise to life on Mars as we know it or not? - well, I don't know.
On the other hand, we know that carbon is a very able atom when it comes to producing complex molecules, under the thermodynamic conditions that we know to prevail on Earth and on other terrestrial planets, including Mars. We have no evidence that point to more exotic chemistry being active on Mars. And when you have to design a mission, you have to be practical. So we go for the things we know. If we don't find any organics - we should at least be able to find the organics that we know are delivered to Mars daily by cometary and meteoritic dust - if we don't find that, even in the subsurface, then at that point we will have moved the bar for trying to find life on Mars much, much higher. The next mission that will try this will have to probably go much, much deeper.
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Mars Winds Could Pose Stiff Challenge For NASA's Phoenix Lander Team
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| Posted by admin on Saturday, July 28 @ 04:53:33 SGT (1673 reads) |
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 by Ann Arbor
Martian winds probably won't cause serious problems for NASA's upcoming Phoenix Mars Lander mission but could complicate efforts to collect soil and ice at the landing site, according to University of Michigan atmospheric scientist Nilton Renno. New results from U-M wind tunnel tests suggest that winds could blow away some of the laboriously collected soil and ice, but probably not enough to affect onboard laboratory experiments, said Renno, a member of the Phoenix science team.
"Basically, my conclusion is that if you do the delivery properly and plan it well, you can guarantee that a large fraction of the sample is going to fall inside the instrument intake," said Renno, an associate professor in the U-M College of Engineering's Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences. Set for launch from Florida as early as Aug. 3, the Phoenix spacecraft will land on the planet's northern arctic plains, analyzing soil and ice to see if it could support microbial life. An 8-foot robotic arm will scoop up the soil and dump it into onboard science instruments.
With funding from NASA, Renno and his graduate students have been studying the possibility that Martian winds could blow away bits of falling soil and ice as the samples are dropped.
Winds of up to 11 mph are expected much of the time at the Phoenix landing site during the three-month main mission, which begins with arrival on May 25, 2008. Renno calculated that if the soil samples were dropped from a height of 10 centimeters (4 inches) -- as called for in the original mission plan -- the vast majority of the particles wouldn't make it into the instrument intakes under windy conditions.
Based in part on Renno's work, the Phoenix team decided to move the Phoenix scoop closer to the science-instrument intakes before dropping the soil, he said. |
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| Posted by admin on Sunday, July 22 @ 08:39:24 SGT (1385 reads) |
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Up to one third of Mars was once covered by oceans, reports a study published in this week's issue of the journal Nature.
While observers have long noted what looks like a dry ocean basin on the surface of Mars, images from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor suggested otherwise, showing a shoreline that varied in elevation by several kilometers. On Earth, shoreline elevations are typically constant relative to sea levels.
Now geophysicists from the University of California, Berkeley, have found new evidence that Mars may well have had vast oceans: the planet's undulating shorelines can be explained by the movement of Mars' spin axis, and thus its poles.
A view of Mars as it might have appeared more than 2 billion years ago, with a low-latitude ocean filling the lowland basin that now occupies the north polar region. Topographic deformation of features that ring the basin, which are hypothesized to be shorelines formed by an ancient ocean, suggests that Mars experienced significant true polar wander--reorientation of the planet relative to its rotation axis--that brought the planet into its present rotational state. The margins of the ocean shown here account for the topographic deformation that would have resulted from this reorientation. Sinuous features near the top of the image are valleys carved by large floods that may have supplied the ocean water. The image was generated using Viking Orbiter images and topographic data from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter on board the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. Credit: Taylor Perron/UC Berkeley |
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The Origin Of Perennial Water-Ice At The South Pole Of Mars
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| Posted by admin on Monday, July 16 @ 06:47:18 SGT (1507 reads) |
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 The OMEGA instrument on board ESA's Mars Express has characterised the types of ice deposits present in the South polar cap of Mars as the arrows, superimposed on an image taken by the HRSC instrument, indicate. Credits: ESA - DLR - FU Berlin (G. Neukum)Thanks to data from ESA's Mars Express mission, combined with models of the Martian climate, scientists can now suggest how the orbit of Mars around the Sun affects the deposition of water ice at the Martian South Pole. Early during the mission, the OMEGA instrument (Visible and Infrared Mineralogical Mapping Spectrometer) on board Mars Express had already found previously undetected perennial deposits of water-ice. They are sitting on top of million-year old layered terrains and provide strong evidence for a recent glacial activity.
However, only now a realistic explanation for the age of the deposits and the mechanism of their formation could finally be suggested. This was achieved thanks to the OMEGA mapping and characterisation of these ice deposits, combined with the computer-generated Martian Global Climate Models (GCMs). The mapping and spectral analysis by OMEGA has shown that the perennial deposits on the Martian South Pole are of essentially three types: water-ice mixed with carbon dioxide (CO2) ice, tens-of-kilometres-wide patches of water-ice, and deposits covered by a thin layer of CO2 ice. The discovery of the ice deposits of the first type confirms the long-standing hypothesis that CO2 acts as a cold-trap for water-ice. But how were the other two types of deposits, not 'trapped' by CO2, accumulated and preserved over time? Franck Montmessin, from the Service d'Aeronomie du CNRS/IPSL (France) and lead author of the findings, explains how the deposits of water ice at the Martian's poles 'behave'. "We believe that the deposits of water-ice are juggled between Mars' North and South Poles over a cycle that spans 51 000 years, corresponding to the time span in which the planet's precession is inverted." Precession is the phenomenon by which the rotation axis of a planet wobbles. Montmessin and colleagues came to the conclusion by turning back time in their Mars climate computer model. This was done by changing the precession together with other orbital information. |
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NASA Readies Mars Lander For August Launch To Icy Site
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| Posted by admin on Tuesday, July 10 @ 07:19:10 SGT (1629 reads) |
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 File image of Phoenix engineering test model undergoing testing in Death Valley California.NASA's next Mars mission will look beneath a frigid arctic landscape for conditions favorable to past or present life. Instead of roving to hills or craters, NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander will claw down into the icy soil of the Red Planet's northern plains. The robot will investigate whether frozen water near the Martian surface might periodically melt enough to sustain a livable environment for microbes. To accomplish that and other key goals, Phoenix will carry a set of advanced research tools never before used on Mars.
First, however, it must launch from Florida during a three-week period beginning Aug. 3, then survive a risky descent and landing on Mars next spring.
"Our 'follow the water' strategy for exploring Mars has yielded a string of dramatic discoveries in recent years about the history of water on a planet where similarities with Earth were much greater in the past than they are today," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters, Washington. "Phoenix will complement our strategic exploration of Mars by being our first attempt to actually touch and analyze Martian water -- water in the form of buried ice."
NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter found evidence in 2002 to support theories that large areas of Mars, including the arctic plains, have water ice within an arm's reach of the surface. |
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'Scary Storm' on Mars Could Doom Rovers
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| Posted by admin on Friday, July 06 @ 14:25:44 SGT (1527 reads) |
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 By Dave Mosher
A giant dust storm that now covers nearly the entire southern hemisphere of Mars could permanently jeopardize the future of the Mars Exploration Rovers mission, officials told us today.
The new and potentially bleak outlook is a stark shift from the prognosis earlier this week. Further compounding the threat to the rovers, a second large dust storm has recently appeared on the Red Planet. The first and largest dusty squall has reduced direct sunlight to Mars' surface by nearly 99 percent, an unprecedented threat for the solar-powered rovers. If the storm keeps up and thickens with even more dust, officials fear the rovers' batteries may empty and silence the robotic explorers forever. "This is a scary storm," said Mark Lemmon, a planetary scientist at Texas A&M University and member of the rover team. "If it gets any worse, we'll enter into some uncharted territory. There's been a lot of discussion about what we're going to do if (the rovers) don't have enough power to run during the day." The storm, first reported by SPACE.com, hasn't yet reached global proportions, but the dust levels are the thickest the rovers have ever experienced. Lemmon said the conditions rival Mars' global storm of 2001 and another in 1971.
"This thing has been breaking records the past few days. The sun is 100 times fainter than normal," he said. "We're hoping for a big break in the storm soon, but that's just a hope."
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NASA Mars Rover Ready For Descent Into Crater
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| Posted by admin on Tuesday, July 03 @ 10:00:41 SGT (1681 reads) |
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 Mars rover Opportunity is scheduled to begin a descent down a rock-paved slope into the Red Planet's massive Victoria Crater. This latest trek carries real risk for the long-lived robotic explorer, but NASA and the Mars Rover science team expect it to provide valuable science. Opportunity already has been exploring layered rocks in cliffs around Victoria Crater.
The team has planned the descent carefully to enable an eventual exit, but Opportunity could become trapped inside the crater or lose some capabilities. The rover has operated more than 12 times longer than its originally intended 90 days.
The route followed by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity during its exploration partway around the rim of Victoria Crater is marked on this map. The rover first reached the edge of the crater on it's 951st Martian day, or sol (Sept. 26, 2006). This map shows travels through sol 1,215 (June 24, 2007). The underlying image is from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/University of Arizona/Ohio State UniversityNASA's
The scientific allure is the chance to examine and investigate the compositions and textures of exposed materials in the crater's depths for clues about ancient, wet environments. As the rover travels farther down the slope, it will be able to examine increasingly older rocks in the exposed walls of the crater.
"While we take seriously the uncertainty about whether Opportunity will climb back out, the potential value of investigations that appear possible inside the crater convinced me to authorize the team to move forward into Victoria Crater," said Alan Stern, NASA associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters, Washington.
"It is a calculated risk worth taking, particularly because this mission has far exceeded its original goals."
The robotic geologist will enter Victoria Crater through an alcove named Duck Bay. The eroding crater has a scalloped rim of cliff-like promontories, or capes, alternating with more gently sloped alcoves, or bays. A meteor impact millions of years ago excavated Victoria, which lies approximately 4 miles (6 kilometers) south of where Opportunity landed in January 2004. The impact-created bowl is half a mile (800 meters) across and about five times as wide as Endurance Crater, where Opportunity spent more than six months exploring in 2004. |
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| There isn't a Biggest Story for Today, yet. |
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| Saturday, June 30 | | · | Scientist Calls Mars a Terraforming Target for the 21st Century |
| · | Huge Dust Storm Breaks Out on Mars |
| · | NASA to send Mars rover on risky mission |
| Monday, June 18 | | · | Mystery Solved: Mars Had Large Oceans |
| Thursday, June 14 | | · | Wandering Poles May Explain Ups And Downs Of Ancient Mars Shoreline |
| Wednesday, June 13 | | · | Success for Mars rover bag test |
| Wednesday, June 06 | | · | The Spirit of Mars |
| · | Mars experiment might help Earthling insomniacs |
| · | HiRISE Releases Thouands Of New Images Of Mars Via New Website Viewer |
| Saturday, June 02 | | · | Mars's Liquid Center Cooling in Unusual Manner, Study Suggests |
| Tuesday, May 29 | | · | Spirit Continues Soil Analysis |
| · | Opportunity Turns Up The Amps |
| Monday, May 28 | | · | NASA’s Road to Moon, Mars Paved With Budget Woes |
| Saturday, May 26 | | · | Breathtaking views of Deuteronilus Mensae on Mars |
| Sunday, May 20 | | · | NASA's Phoenix to Seek Organics in Mars' Ice to Unravel Red Planet |
| Thursday, May 17 | | · | Seeking Mars Survival Secrets |
| Wednesday, May 16 | | · | Spirit Studies Dust Devils In Concert With The MRO |
| Saturday, May 12 | | · | Mars Colonies Coming Soon? |
| Wednesday, May 09 | | · | Phoenix Mars Mission Spacecraft Lands At Kennedy Space Center |
| Tuesday, May 08 | | · | Mars rover finds volcanic explosion |
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By Jeremy Hsu
