Space and astronomy news
It’s hard to believe, but Mars Curiosity Rover has been on Mars doing its thing for 11 years. And, so what’s it doing to celebrate? Heading up a hill, making one of its toughest climbs ever.
Continue reading “Curiosity Had to Route Around a 23-Degree Slope to Reach a Fascinating Field of Craters”
NASA plans to send astronauts to Mars in the coming decade. This presents many challenges, not the least of which is the distance involved and the resulting health risks. To this end, they are investigating and investing in many technologies, ranging from life support and radiation protection to nuclear power and propulsion elements. A particularly promising technology is Nuclear-Thermal Propulsion (NTP), which has the potential to reduce transit times to Mars significantly. Instead of the usual one-way transit period of six to nine months, a working NTP system could reduce the travel time to between 100 and 45 days!
In January of this year, NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced that they were launching an interagency agreement to develop a nuclear-thermal propulsion (NTP) system – known as the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO). Just yesterday, DARPA announced that it had finalized an agreement with Lockheed Martin to design and build a prototype NTR system – the Experimental NTR Vehicle (X-NTRV) – that will be sent to space for testing by 2027.
Continue reading “NASA and DARPA Award Contract for a Nuclear Engine to Lockheed Martin”
Olympus Mons, located at the northwest edge of the Tharsis Montes region on Mars, was appropriately named. Based on readings obtained by the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA), an instrument aboard NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), this mountain is the tallest in the Solar System, standing 21.9 km (13.6 mi) tall – about two and a half times the height of Mount Everest (8.85 km; 5.5 mi). According to current estimates, this extinct shield volcano formed during Mars’ Hesperian Period (ca. 3.7 to 3 billion years ago), which was characterized by widespread volcanic activity and catastrophic flooding.
This coincides with a period when Mars had a denser atmosphere, a warmer environment, and flowing water on its surface. This included a global ocean that spanned much of the northern hemisphere, known today as the Northern Lowlands, encompassing Olympus Mons. According to a recent study led by researchers from the Centre National de Recherches Scientifique (CNRS), features found on the slopes of Olympus Mons indicate that it could have been a massive volcanic island where volcanic eruptions flowed into the ocean, similar to ones found on Earth.
Continue reading “Olympus Could Have Been a Giant Volcanic Island in an Ancient Martian Ocean”
Since the Viking 1 and 2 missions visited Mars in 1976, scientists have been confronted with mounting evidence that Mars once had flowing water on its surface. The images collected by the twin Viking landers and orbiters showed clear signs of ancient flow channels, alluvial deposits, and weathered rocks. Thanks to the dozens of additional orbiters, landers, and rovers sent that have been sent there since scientists have been getting a clearer picture of what Mars once looked like. At the end of this journey, they hope to find evidence (if there’s any to be found) that Mars once supported life and still does today.
The latest evidence of Mars’ warmer watery past comes to us courtesy of NASA’s Perseverance rover, which continues to explore the Jezero Crater and obtain samples for the first Mars sample-return mission. On Friday, June 23rd, the rover obtained its 20th sample, which was drilled from a rocky outcropping known as “Emerald Lake.” Named “Otis Peak,” this sample is part of an outcropping formed by mineral deposits transported by an ancient river and could contain invaluable geological information about the many places these minerals came from.
Continue reading “This Mess of Boulders Was Deposited by an Ancient River on Mars”
Impact craters are nature’s signature from a more chaotic time in our Solar System’s history. A quick glance at the Moon’s disfigured surface makes that clear. Same with Mars, though a telescope is needed to examine it. Or better yet, an orbital spacecraft with a powerful camera.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and its HiRISE camera have been examining Mars’ surface for years, cataloguing the planet’s menagerie of impact craters. One of them, recently chosen as the HiRISE Picture of the Day (HIPOD,) looks like a Thunderbird. Or a dinosaur footprint left in the mud.
Continue reading “Not All Craters are Circular. Sometimes They Look Like This”
Human-driven climate change is a serious threat to humanity. While climatologists continue to improve our understanding of its impact and consequences, they also look at nature-driven climate change going back millions of years. Whereas for human climate change, we only have a case study of one planet, for natural climate change we have a case study of two planets. Like Earth, Mars has undergone significant climate change in the past. We know, for example, that young Mars was both warm and wet. Its climate changed over a billion years to become the cold and dry world we know today. Even more recently, there have been shifts in the Martian weather, as noted in a recent study in Nature.
Continue reading “Wind Direction on Mars Changed Abruptly About 400,000 Years Ago”
Mars may be a cold, dry, dead world, but it’s still part of nature. As part of nature, it displays a sort of haunted beauty as only non-living forces shape its surface over long periods of time. It’s like a rocky-planet laboratory shaped by natural forces where interference from living processes is absent.
Continue reading “Amazing Video Takes Flight Across the Dunes of Mars”
The pareidolia crowd is sure to have a field day with this! Once again, an oddly-shaped rock has been spotted on Mars. Once again, the rock is donut-shaped. This particular rock was spotted by NASA’s Perseverance rover, which continues to explore the Jezero Crater in Mars’ northern hemisphere. The image was taken by the Remote Microscopic Imager (RMI), part of the SuperCam instrument, at a distance of about 100 meters (328 feet) from the rover, on June 22nd, 2023 – the 832nd Martian day (or sol) of the mission.
Continue reading “Mmm. Perseverance Finds a Doughnut-Shaped Rock on Mars.”
A recent study published in Science examines how thin channels inside impact craters on Mars could have formed from Martian gullies, which share similar characteristics with gullies on Earth and are typically formed from cascading meltwater, despite the Martian atmosphere being incapable of supporting liquid water on its surface. However, the researchers hypothesize these gullies could have formed during periods of high obliquity, also known as axial tilt, on Mars, which could have resulted in a brief rise in surface temperatures that could have melted some surface and subsurface ice, leading to meltwater cascading down the sides of impact craters across the planet.
Continue reading “Melting Water in Mars’ Past Could Have Created Martian Gullies”
NASA recently used its powerful High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to take a breathtaking image of a dust devil traversing Syria Planum on Mars. One unique aspect of dust devils is their shadows can be used to estimate their height, which have been estimated to reach 20 km (12 miles) into the Martian sky. Studying dust devils on Mars is a regular occurrence for the scientific community and can help scientists better understand surface processes on other planets. But with the atmospheric pressure on Mars being only a fraction of Earth’s, what processes are responsible for producing dust devils?
Continue reading “NASA’s HiRISE Camera Recently Imaged a Martian Dust Devil. But Why Study Them?”