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"Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler", Albert Einstein
Browsing All posts tagged under »mars«
Why is Curiosity Looking for Organics?
What are organic molecules, and what can they tell us about the history of Mars? Learn more in this 60-second video. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA Rover Confirms First Drilled Mars Rock Sample
February 21, 2013
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has relayed new images that confirm it has successfully obtained the first sample ever collected from the interior of a rock on another planet. No rover has ever drilled into a rock beyond Earth and collected a sample from its interior. Transfer of the powdered-rock sample into an open scoop was […]
Curiosity Mars rover hammers into rock
February 4, 2013
The Mars rover Curiosity has used its drill system for the first time… Read more: www.bbc.co.uk
There’s new evidence of a wet underground environment on Mars!
January 20, 2013
Layers with Carbonate Content Inside McLaughlin Crater on Mars This view of layered rocks on the floor of McLaughlin Crater shows sedimentary rocks that contain spectroscopic evidence for minerals formed through interaction with water. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recorded the image. A combination of clues suggests […]
First Use of Mars Rover Curiosity’s Dust Removal Tool
January 8, 2013
This image from the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity shows the patch of rock cleaned by the first use of the rover’s Dust Removal Tool (DRT). The tool is a motorized, wire-bristle brush on the turret at the end of the rover’s arm. Its first use was on the 150th […]
Curiosity rover nearing Yellowknife Bay
December 12, 2012
he NASA Mars rover Curiosity drove 63 feet (19 meters) northeastward early Monday, Dec. 10, approaching a step down into a slightly lower area called “Yellowknife Bay,” where researchers intend to choose a rock to drill. The drive was Curiosity’s fourth consecutive driving day since leaving a site near an outcrop called “Point Lake,” where […]
SAM: Sample Analysis at Mars
December 3, 2012
NASA’s Curiosity rover analyzed its first solid sample of Mars with a variety of instruments, including the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite. Developed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., SAM is a portable chemistry lab tucked inside the Curiosity rover. SAM examines the chemistry of samples it ingests, checking particularly […]
Mariner 4 Snaps First TV Image of Mars
November 29, 2012
A ‘real-time data translator’ machine converted a Mariner 4 digital image data into numbers printed on strips of paper. Too anxious to wait for the official processed image, employees from the Voyager Telecommunications Section at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, attached these strips side by side to a display panel and hand colored the numbers like […]
Mars in a Minute: Is Mars Red Hot?
November 1, 2012
What would it feel like if you could stand on Mars — toasty warm, or downright chilly? Find out more about the temperature on Mars in this 60-second video from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. www.youtube.com
Alien hunting: how to find DNA on Mars
October 24, 2012
by Lisa Grossman -newscientist.com No one has looked for life on Mars for more than 30 years, ever since NASA’s Viking missions sent back inconclusive results. Genomics maverick Craig Venter wants to change that. Cracker of the human genome and builder of synthetic life, Venter announced at the Wired Health Conference in New York last week that he wants to send a DNA sequencer […]
Mars Soil Sample Delivered for Analysis Inside Rover
October 18, 2012
Mission Status Report NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has ingested its first solid sample into an analytical instrument inside the rover, a capability at the core of the two-year mission. The rover’s Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument is analyzing this sample to determine what minerals it contains. “We are crossing a significant threshold for this mission […]
Mars Rock Touched by NASA Curiosity has Surprises
October 12, 2012
Target: Jake Matijevic Rock This image shows where NASA’s Curiosity rover aimed two different instruments to study a rock known as “Jake Matijevic.” The red dots are where the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument zapped it with its laser on Sept. 21, 2012, and Sept. 24, 2012, which were the 45th and 48th sol, or […]
Nasa’s Curiosity Mars rover to scoop sand sample
October 6, 2012
By Jonathan Amos The Curiosity rover is preparing to scoop its first sample of Martian soil. The vehicle, which landed on the Red Planet in August, has driven up to a pile of sandy material that mission scientists have dubbed “Rocknest”. This weekend, the robot will dig into the ground with its clamshell-shaped trowel, with […]
When will we send humans to Mars?
September 21, 2012
In the first instalment of a two-part feature, Dr Alexander Kumar – who has been overwintering at Concordia Station, Antarctica – examines what it would take to send humans to Mars, and what lessons we can learn from similar environments on Earth. Just how far are we from mounting a crewed mission to the Red […]
Puzzling Little Martian Spheres …
September 14, 2012
… That Don’t Taste Like ‘Blueberries’ Small spherical objects fill the field in this mosaic combining four images from the Microscopic Imager on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. The view covers an area about 2.4 inches (6 centimeters) across, at an outcrop called “Kirkwood” in the Cape York segment of the western rim of Endeavour […]
Curiosity Rover Takes Self Portrait
September 8, 2012
On Sol 32 (Sept. 7, 2012) the Curiosity rover used a camera located on its arm to obtain this self portrait. The image of the top of Curiosity’s Remote Sensing Mast, showing the Mastcam and Chemcam cameras, was acquired by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI). The angle of the frame reflects the position of […]
InSight: Digging Deep with NASA’s Next Mars Lander
August 21, 2012
Mission team members for InSight, the new Mars lander mission selected by NASA to launch in 2016, explain how the spacecraft will advance our knowledge of Mars’ history and rocky planet evolution. http://youtu.be/E993SKBCZ-g
Heat Shield, Meet Mars
August 18, 2012
This sequence of images shows the heat shield from NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory hitting the ground on Mars and raising a cloud of dust. The images were taken by the Mars Descent Imager on the mission’s Curiosity rover while the rover was still suspended on a parachute, after the spacecraft had jettisoned the heat shield. […]
Curiosity Gets Ready to Rove Red Planet
August 14, 2012
NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover team member Jessica Samuels updates you on developments and status of the mission now that it’s preparing to explore Gale Crater. Curiosity carries 10 science instruments with a total mass 15 times as large as the science payloads on NASA’s Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Some of the tools, such as […]
UCLA scientist discovers plate tectonics on Mars
August 10, 2012
For years, many scientists had thought that plate tectonics existed nowhere in our solar system but on Earth. Now, a UCLA scientist has discovered that the geological phenomenon, which involves the movement of huge crustal plates beneath a planet’s surface, also exists on Mars. “Mars is at a primitive stage of plate tectonics. It gives […]
NASA Lands Car-Size Rover Beside Martian Mountain
August 6, 2012
PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s most advanced Mars rover Curiosity has landed on the Red Planet. The one-ton rover, hanging by ropes from a rocket backpack, touched down onto Mars Sunday to end a 36-week flight and begin a two-year investigation. The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft that carried Curiosity succeeded in every step of the […]
Nasa’s Curiosity Mars rover set for high risk landing
August 5, 2012
By Jonathan Amos One of the most daring space missions ever undertaken is nearing Mars. In the next few hours Nasa will attempt to land its one-tonne Curiosity rover on the Red Planet to study the possibility that this world may once have hosted microbial life. The vehicle is packed with scientific instruments, including a laser that […]
Evidence of Life On Mars Could Come from Martian Moon Phobos
June 29, 2012
A mission to a Martian moon could return with alien life, according to experts at Purdue University, but don’t expect the invasion scenario presented by summer blockbusters like “Men in Black 3″ or “Prometheus.” “We are talking little green microbes, not little green men,” said Jay Melosh, a distinguished professor of earth, atmospheric and planetary […]
Curiosity’s Seven Minutes of Terror
June 26, 2012
Team members share the challenges of Curiosity’s final minutes to landing on the surface of Mars. http://youtu.be/pzqdoXwLBT8
Revised Landing Target for Mars Rover Curiosity
June 12, 2012
This image shows changes in the target landing area for Curiosity, the rover of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory project. The larger ellipse was the target area prior to early June 2012, when the project revised it to the smaller ellipse centered nearer to the foot of Mount Sharp, inside Gale Crater. This oblique view of […]
NASA Spacecraft Detects Changes in Martian Sand Dunes
May 9, 2012
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed that movement in sand dune fields on the Red Planet occurs on a surprisingly large scale, about the same as in dune fields on Earth. This is unexpected because Mars has a much thinner atmosphere than Earth, is only about one percent as dense, and its high-speed winds are […]
100 Days and Counting to NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover Landing
April 28, 2012
The Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft, launched Nov. 26, 2011, will deliver Curiosity to the surface of Mars on the evening of Aug. 5, 2012, PDT (early on Aug. 6, Universal Time and EDT) to begin a two-year prime mission. Curiosity’s landing site is near the base of a mountain inside Gale Crater, near the Martian […]
How Do You Land on Mars?
April 13, 2012
Getting a spacecraft to Mars is one thing; getting it safely to the ground is a whole other challenge! This 60-second video from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory explains three ways to land on the surface of the Red Planet http://youtu.be/8-X8acD_r38
Is This Proof of Life on Mars?
April 12, 2012
Researchers from universities in Los Angeles, California, Tempe, Arizona and Siena, Italy have published a paper in the International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences (IJASS) citing the results of their work with data obtained by NASA’s Viking mission. The twin Viking 1 and 2 landers, which launched in August and September of 1975, successfully […]
Mars is too dry to support life on its surface…
February 5, 2012
… but it could be lurking in the depths Scientists have virtually ruled out the possibility of life on Mars having revealed the planet experienced a 600 year water drought. Samples of soil found that the surface had been starved of any moisture that might enhance the view that there are living organisms on the […]
Opportunity’s Eighth Anniversary View From ‘Greeley Haven’
January 25, 2012
(False Color) This mosaic of images taken in mid-January 2012 shows the windswept vista northward (left) to northeastward (right) from the location where NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is spending its fifth Martian winter, an outcrop informally named “Greeley Haven.” Opportunity’s Panoramic Camera (Pancam) took the component images as part of full-circle view being assembled […]
Putting Scientists on Mars in Permanent Colonies
November 30, 2011
By Ted Greenwald - www.wired.com Eminent physicist Paul Davies has a proposal for you: a one-way ticket to the Red Planet. As it’s typically conceived, a round-trip Mars mission would take about two years and cost at least $80 billion. But you could cut 80 percent of the expense, Davies says, by nixing the return and […]
Orbit-raising commands fail to budge Phobos-Grunt probe
November 30, 2011
BY STEPHEN CLARK SPACEFLIGHT NOW Plagued by an undiagnosed problem that stranded it in Earth orbit, Russia’s Phobos-Grunt Mars mission remained quiet Tuesday after renewed attempts to coax the craft back into contact with ground controllers. European Space Agency officials transmitted signals to raise Phobos-Grunt’s orbit Tuesday in hopes it would allow greater communications opportunities […]
The ChemCam system of Curiosity rover
November 29, 2011
Light on Mars? Curiosity rover to fire ‘million bulb torch’ at planet’s surface to see if it’s habitable The Mars lander will fire a laser beam with the energy of a million lightbulbs at the surface of the red planet to see whether or not it could have supported life. The international team of space […]
Curiosity Rover – Mars Science Laboratory Lifts Off for Red Planet
November 26, 2011
NASA began a historic voyage to Mars with the Nov. 26 launch of the Mars Science Laboratory, which carries a car-sized rover named Curiosity. Liftoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station aboard an Atlas V rocket occurred at 10:02 a.m. EST (7:02 a.m. PST). http://youtu.be/qmJO449R_5g “We are very excited about sending the world’s most advanced […]
New NASA rover to scout for life’s habitats on Mars
November 25, 2011
Watch live streaming video from spaceflightnow at livestream.com http://youtu.be/P4boyXQuUIw Mars rover Curiosity poised for Nasa’s ‘most ambitious’ mission to planet The rover, part of the Mars Science Laboratory, will probe the Red Planet’s secrets with a wide array of scientific instruments Richard Luscombe A vehicle the size of a small 4×4,is about to embark on a one-way 350m-mile trip […]
To Mars by Sky Crane
November 18, 2011
Source: SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration
Space crew returns after ‘Mars’ mission to nowhere
November 2, 2011
Six-strong ESA team end ordeal of boredom and cultural barriers in 18-month simulated Mars mission at Moscow research centre Ian Sample and Miriam Elder The six-strong crew of the European Space Agency’s most gruelling mission yet will emerge from their capsule on Friday afternoon after an 18-month voyage that went, literally, nowhere. The would-be spacefarers […]
Mars’ Newton Crater
November 1, 2011
This image, which combines orbital imagery with 3-D modeling, shows flows that appear in spring and summer on a slope inside Mars’ Newton Crater. Sequences of observations recording the seasonal changes at this site and a few others with similar flows might be evidence of salty liquid water active on Mars today. Evidence for that […]
Possible life in the Martian trenches?
September 21, 2011
A team of scientists at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, have drawn attention to a couple of small mineral-rich depressions on Mars that, perhaps relatively recently in the red planet’s history, could have been places for life. The troughs were discovered at Noctis Labyrintus, also known as ‘the labyrinth of the night’ – […]
Probe spots remains of Martian lake and river
September 3, 2011
On the floor of Eberswalde crater, winding channels once fed water into a lake, depositing a fan of dark sediment that covers 115 square kilometres. The structure was discovered in 2002 images from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor, and appears here in a new colour photograph from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express satellite. The feature […]
Evidence for Mars floods all dried up?
August 23, 2011
Lava, not water, may have carved the biggest channels on Mars. Ever since NASA’s Mariner 9 spacecraft beamed back the first images of the channels in the 1970s, most people have assumed they were created by massive floods. But David Leverington of Texas Tech University in Lubbock says flowing water would have left behind much more sediment […]
Final destination: After three years, Mars rover Opportunity poised to reach rim of giant crater for last brave adventure
August 9, 2011
Finish line in sight for Opportunity after three-year journey Endeavour crater is a 14mile-wide depression near the Martian equator It is likely to be the rover’s final destination Months after the death of the Mars rover Spirit, its surviving twin is poised to reach the rim of a vast crater to begin a fresh round […]
Rock Layers in Gale Crater
July 29, 2011
This oblique view of the lower mound in Gale Crater shows layers of rock that preserve a record of environments on Mars. Here, orbiting instruments have detected signatures of both clay minerals and sulfate salts, with more clay minerals apparent in the foreground of this image and fewer in higher layers. This change in mineralogy […]
NASA Picks Rover Destination: Mountain on Mars
July 23, 2011
NASA’s next Mars rover — the ambitious, beleaguered, delayed Mars Science Laboratory — finally has a destination. Mission scientists announced Friday that the rover, a nuclear-powered vehicle the size of a small S.U.V., would head to Gale Crater, a 96-mile-wide depression near the Martian equator. What attracted them there is a mountain that rises upward […]
Snowstorms on Mars may dwarf those on Earth
July 22, 2011
SNOWSTORMS more violent than any on Earth may have hit Mars – and could occasionally strike again, despite its extremely dry climate. No rain or snowstorms have ever been observed on Mars, which has been mostly cold and dry for about 3.5 billion years. But mineral evidence suggests short-lived lakes have formed intermittently on the […]
Mars through the eyes of spirit
July 20, 2011
http://www.space.com/12349-mars-eyes-spirit-montage.html
Drive Direction Image by Opportunity After Surpassing 20 Miles
July 19, 2011
NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity used its navigation camera to record this view in the eastward driving direction after completing a drive on July 17, 2011, that took the rover’s total driving distance on Mars beyond 20 miles. Opportunity drove 407 feet (124 meters) during the 2,658th Martian day, or sol, of the rover’s exploration […]
March 7, 2013
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