Posted on by Ian O'Neill

NASA Worried: Spirit Reboots Rover Computer, Twice

A panorama by Sprit, taken last month (NASA)

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Mars Exploration Rover Spirit is acting a little strange. Over the Easter weekend, it would appear that the tenacious little Mars explorer rebooted its computer not once, but at least two times. Mission scientists were alerted to the problem as some of the communication sessions from Spirit-to-Earth were irregular, prompting mission control to investigate the problem…

“While we don’t have an explanation yet, we do know that Spirit’s batteries are charged, the solar arrays are producing energy and temperatures are well within allowable ranges. We have time to respond carefully and investigate this thoroughly,” said John Callas project manager for Spirit at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “The rover is in a stable operations state called automode and taking care of itself. It could stay in this stable mode for some time if necessary while we diagnose the problem.”

Although Spirit successfully communicated with Earth on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, some of the communication sessions were irregular, suggesting that the rover’s computer was resetting during the use of the high-gain dish antenna. The twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have several modes of communication open to them, including a pointable high-gain antenna, non-pointable low-gain antenna and a separate UHF transceiver that uses the Mars satellites as relays.

It seems possible that the issue could be software-based, as new software was uploaded only last month. However, this is a routine upload and Opportunity received identical commands and has not suffered from anomalous reboots. Playing it safe, mission operators are not using the high-gain antenna and have opted for using the slower, low-gain antenna while the investigation into the fault is ongoing. Unfortunately, the thought on everyone’s mind is that the rover may be suffering from age-related problems; after all, the MER mission was originally slated for three months, not five years.

Although there is concern for Spirit, it is hoped that the weekend’s reboot isn’t a sign of bigger problems. The rover may have had a rough mission (one of its wheels stopped moving three years ago, and it has since been dragged everywhere it has trundled), but the science it is producing has been astounding. Hopefully Spirit will fight through this latest glitch and continue to do battle in the Martian regolith for a while yet…

Source: NASA

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

New Collection of Flythough Videos From HiRISE


Yowza! There’s a new collection of Mars flythrough video clips from the folks over at the HiRISE website, and they are fabulous! Most of the files are pretty hefty (between 5 and 33 MB) but the download time is worth it. I think my favorite one is of Candor Chasma, which is a large canyon in the Valles Marineris system. The contrast between ragged hills and layered valleys is amazing. All the videos are created from images from the high-resolution HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has the highest resolution of any other camera on a Mars orbiter. This translates into extraordinary detail for all kinds of surface features — meaning these videos are incredible. Choose from Candor Chasma, the Columbia Hills, Nili Fossae, Mawrth Vallis and more. There’s also scroll videos of weekly image highlights, which are also available for iPhones.

The HiRISE site also has another new feature…

They are called Hi Flyers, which are mini-posters with images and info about features on Mars
All HiFlyers are PDF documents and are 11 x 17 inches.
New “flyers” are available each week with the latest images from HiRISE.

Also, if you enjoy 3-D imagery, you might want to take a look at Nathanial Burton-Bradford’s Flickr page where he has created some great 3-d shots with frames taken from the HiRISE videos. So, grab your 3-D glass and take a look — the Candor Chasma image is oustanding!

Enjoy!

Posted on by Nicholos Wethington

Crew of Six Begins 105-day Mars Mission Simulation

The Mars 500 simulation participants enter their new home. Image Credit: ESA

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Earlier today in Moscow, six people were locked inside a hermetically sealed living space, where they will remain for the next 105 days. They will eat dehydrated food, have limited contact with the outside world and will be constantly monitored. No, it’s not another season of ‘Big Brother’, but a joint experiment by the European Space Agency and the Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP) of the Russian Academy of Sciences to study the effects a mission to Mars would have on a human crew.

The crew consists of six volunteers, two selected by the ESA and four by the Russian Academy of Sciences. Oliver Knickel, a 34-year old German engineer, and Cyrille Fournier, a 40-year old French airline pilot will represent the ESA. The four Russian crew members are Oleg Artemyez, a 37-year old cosmonaut, Sergei Ryazansky a 34-year old cosmonaut and biologist, Alexei Baranov a 34-year old doctor, and Alexei Shpakov, 25, who is a sports physiologist.

These six, along with two alternate candidates willing to step in at the last minute, were chosen from over 5600 applicants for the first stage in the Mars 500 isolation study. The crew will live in a small, cramped module designed to simulate a potential craft that would send astronauts to Mars. The Mars mission mock-up is located inside a research facility at the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow.

The 105-day study will simulate all aspects of a mission to Mars. The crew will have no communication with the outside world besides delayed radio communication with mission control, and radio contact with friends and family, much like that of astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Simulated emergencies such as equipment failure will test the ability of the crew to overcome difficulties that may endanger an actual mission, and there is the danger of real emergencies from disease or injury inside their sealed facility.

The crew will be far from bored during the simulation, as they will perform scientific, maintenance and quotidian duties much as they would on a real mission. A greenhouse will also need tending to provide the crew with fresh vegetables, and there will be a gym available to the participants to help keep them fit. Instructions from the mission directors and reports from the crew will be on a 20-minute delay, as would be the case on a real Mars mission.

The habitable area of the isolation facility has 6 individual rooms for the participants, a kitchen/dining room, living room, main control room and toilet. In addition to the habitable module, there is also a Mars lander module, which the crew during the longer 500-day mission scheduled for later this year will use to simulate a landing on Mars. A medical module and utility module will house other equipment necessary for such a long-term mission.

An external view of the Module for Mars 500 Image Credit: ESA
An external view of the Module for Mars 500 Image Credit: ESA

A potential manned mission to Mars would pose many challenges to the astronauts involved, and the Mars 500 series of isolation studies hopes to try and work out any ‘kinks’ while humans are still safely on the planet.

“It is of paramount importance to understand the psychological and physiological effects of long-duration confinement, to be able to prepare the crews in the best way possible and to learn about important aspects of the vehicle design. To contribute to their psychological well-being and long-term performance, we need to learn how to support the crew with optimum nutrition, artificial light, appropriate medical countermeasures and also planned and off-nominal task management.” – Martin Zell, Head of the ISS Utilisation Department in ESA’s Directorate of Human Spaceflight

ESA crewmembers Cyrille Fournier and Oliver Knickel will keep a diary of their experience, which will be available on the European Space Agency site here.

Fournier wrote in anticipation of the program, “During the study I look forward to observing how communications develop and how relationships are established between crew members. I expect that each of us will feel both highs and lows, mentally, physically and socially. I am however optimistic about how the experiment will turn out as I strongly believe the group, as a whole, will be able to overcome momentary and personal downs.”

As always, we’ll keep you posted here on Universe Today as to how the simulation goes.

Source: ESA

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Spirit’s Serendipitous Science

A bright patch of soil churned up by Spirit on March 28, 2009. Credit: NASA/JPL

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The scientists and engineers working with the Spirit rover on Mars were hoping the aging rover could take the short route over the top of a small plateau called “Home Plate;” she could get to her next destination quicker and easier. But with the rover’s right front wheel not working, the rover was unable to make the climb from the side of the plateau where Spirit spent the majority of the Martian winter (with her solar panels tilted towards the sun) up to the top. So, Spirit is now making her way around Home Plate, where the less desirable path may have led to a serendipitous discovery. The rover’s immobile right-front wheel has churned up a long stripe of bright soil. Could this bright soil be sulfur or silica, providing evidence of past action of water at this site? The rover will test the soil today with it’s alpha particle X-ray spectrometer. And this isn’t the first time Spirit’s bum wheel has churned up something interesting.

In 2006, Spirit uncovered another patch of bright soil. The material was found to be sulfur-rich and consisted of sulfate salts associated with iron, and likely calcium. “This material could have been left behind by water that dissolved these minerals underground, then came to the surface and evaporated, or it could be a volcanic deposit formed around ancient gas vents,” said Dr. Ray Arvidson back in 2006. He is the deputy principal investigator for NASA’s twin Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.

View of Home Plate from Orbit (HiRISE) Credit: NASA, JPL, U of AZ
View of Home Plate from Orbit (HiRISE) Credit: NASA, JPL, U of AZ

“These salts could have been concentrated by hydrothermal liquid or vapor moving through the local rocks,” said rover science team member Dr. Albert Yen, a geochemist at JPL. Two other patches of bright soil uncovered by Spirit before were also sulfur-rich, but each had similarities to local rock compositions that were different at the three sites, suggesting localized origins.

This most recent discovery was made on the 1,861st Martian day, or sol, of Spirit’s mission on Mars (March 28, 2009). After the drive, the rover took the image above with its front hazard-avoidance camera, looking back at the tracks from the drive.

As usual since losing the use of its right-front wheel in 2006, Spirit drove backwards, and the immobile right-front wheel turned up the soil.

The Sol 1861 drive took the rover past the northwest corner of the low plateau called “Home Plate,” making progress on a route around the western side of Home Plate. The edge of Home Plate forms the horizon on the right side of this image. Husband Hill is on the horizon on the left side. For scale, the parallel rover wheel tracks are about 1 meter (40 inches) apart. The rover’s hazard-avoidance cameras take “fisheye” wide-angle images.

Source: JPL’s Photojournal

Posted on by Anne Minard

Fresh Mars Impact Craters Blast Ice Onto Surface

Martian ejecta

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Fresh impact craters on Mars have revealed more evidence of stable ice that’s been hiding just beneath the surface all along, say scientists working on images sent back by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The craters appeared sometime between January and September of last year, in areas that had been previously imaged without them prior to January 2008. The impacts served as “natural probes” to excavate evidence that gets to a long-standing question about ice on Mars: where is it stable, and where is it residual, in the process of sublimating away?

Study leader Shane Byrne, of the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, presented the new set of images last week, at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas. 

Computer models agree that Mars contains stable high-latitude ice, but researchers have encountered difficulty deciding the quantity and geographical boundary of the ice, partly because they can’t see it beneath the surface and partly because pinning down an indirect measure of sub-surface ice — a long-term, global average water vapor concentration in the atmosphere — has proved challenging. 

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Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

The new craters are a significant clue, because they hit not in the high latitudes where planetary scientists are fairly certain about stable ice, but in the mid-latitudes where the ice’s reach is unclear.

“Here we report on natural probes of the Martian subsurface which have ‘detected’ ice in this critical mid-latitude zone,” wrote Byrne and his co-authors.

“In five such cases (with latitudes spanning 43.3° to 55.6° N), these impacts have excavated bright material which in High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) data have a brightness and color consistent with water ice.”

Each of the five new craters is a few meters in diameter, several decimeters deep and with associated bright material a few meters across, the authors report. Four of them showed no spectral evidence of water ice. But one proved a jackpot. 

“Spectra from this site show clear water ice absorption features at 1.25, 1.5 and 2 ?m,” the team reported. Exposed surface ice is not expected to be stable at the latitudes, and the team has already noticed shrinkage and fading.

Based on atmospheric water vapor data, even stable underground ice isn’t expected to be widespread at the mid-latitudes where the reservoir was found: “Thus the ground ice exposed here is probably in the process of retreat from a previously larger extent,” the authors wrote.

Source: LPSC proceedings

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Bouncing Boulders on Mars

Bouncing Boulder on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL/U of A, Color and enhanement by Stuart Atkinson. Click for larger version.

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Mars is not the dead world we once thought it was, and these images portray that fact. Stuart Atkinson (not a relative, but a good pal) is part of the UnmannedSpaceflight.com crew, the folks who have created fantastic visual treats from raw images sent back from our space exploring robots. Stu also has his own website, Cumbrian Sky . Today, Stu posted some pictures on his website, along with his story of how he came to create an utterly fantastic image from a rather ordinary-looking picture from the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaisaince Orbiter. After seeing Stu’s handiwork today, I asked him if he wouldn’t mind sharing his story on Universe Today of how he came to make an amazing discovery on Mars. (Click on the image above for a larger version.)

HiRISE original image. Credit: NASA/JPL/U of AZ
HiRISE original image. Credit: NASA/JPL/U of AZ

Stu said he found the image above on the “dangerously addictive” Mars Global Data website. The image, of the Aram Chaos region, didn’t look very interesting at first. But then he zoomed in to get a better look at the “slumpy” feature in the middle of the image, and then zoomed in some more. “It looked like a section of the valley wall had come loose and slid down to the lower ground below,” Stu said as he raised a Spock-like eyebrow…
Zoom in of HiRISE original. Credit: Stuart Atkinson
Zoom in of HiRISE original. Credit: Stuart Atkinson

There, he discovered the track of a huge boulder that had “fallen from the valley wall and tumbled down, bouncing and rolling and boinging along for a long, long way.”

Adding color to the image really highlighted the tracks left by the bouncing boulder, and a few other tracks showed up as well, creating an absolutley awesome image and discovery!

“You know what I love about these images?,” Stu wrote on his blog. “They show movement, they show that things are moving on Mars right now. It’s not the dead, lifeless, corpse of a world I grew up with; it’s a world – we now know – where dust devils whirl and twirl across the plains… where clouds drift through the pale pink sky… and where huge stones fall from high cliff face, fall to the ground below, then bounce and roll and crash over it… unseen by anyone.”

“For now.”

Great detective work, Stu! I propose that this region should be named after Stuart Atkinson (at least the boulders, if nothing else!)

Also, check out Stu’s pictoral history of the International Space Station, starting from when it was a wee infant back in 1998 to the great images we’ve seen of the ISS this past week.

Posted on by Anne Minard

New Views of Spring on Mars

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New high-resolution images taken last month of Mars’ south polar region are revealing signs of spring that are decidedly Martian.

The image above features a spider trough network left behind as seasonal dry ice caps have sublimated away in the warmer temperatures. It’s part of a new series of images released this week by the University of Arizona’s High Resolution Imaging Experiment, or HiRISE, aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

See more information and photos below.

The gas beneath the ice cap can flow in the same places year after year, eroding troughs in the surface of the planet. 

“What happens on Mars, we think, is that as the seasonal ice cap thins from the bottom, gas underneath the cap builds up pressure,” said HiRISE deputy principal investigator Candice J. Hansen-Koharcheck of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

“And where gas under the ice finds a weak spot or a crack, it will flow out of the opening, often carrying a little dust from the surface below.”

The next HiRISE image shows how dust that has been carried to the surface by gas jetting through the ice cap is blown about by prevailing winds before settling in fan-shaped deposits atop the ice cap. Varying orientations suggest that as the ice layer thins, a set of gas jets becomes active, they die down, then further away another set starts up at a later time with a different prevailing wind direction.

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NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many jets appear to be active at the same time since numerous fans are all deposited in the same direction: this next, closer image is an example of such an occurrence. 

co2-jets-closeup
Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

This southern hemisphere crater has gullies on its north and northeast walls. Gullies are proposed to be carved by liquid water originating from the subsurface or melting ice/snow on the surface.

 

Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Dark dunes are visible on the crater floor. Lighter, smaller dunes rim the south side of the crater floor. The entire scene, pictured below, has a pitted texture, suggesting that ground ice was once present in this region. When ground ice sublimates (goes from a solid directly to a gas), it leaves behind empty spaces in the soil that turn into pits as the remaining overlying soil collapses to fill them.

 

Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The full set of new HiRISE Mars images is here. Check out all the downloadable formats and sizes, with some even designed to fit an iPhone screen!

Source: Lori Stiles, at the University of Arizona

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Mars Webcam is Back!

Mars image from the VMC, enhanced by submitted by Ian Musgrave, Adelaide, Australia. Credit: ESA

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The Mars Webcam is back in action after taking a three month hiatus surrounding Mars solar conjunction. If you don’t remember, or if haven’t heard about this “eye on Mars” before, here is a little background: the Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) is part of the Mars Express spacecraft, ESA’s Mars orbiter. Its original purpose was to provide simple, low-tech images of Beagle lander separation. After the Beagle departed from the orbiter in Dec. 2003 (and subsequently wasn’t heard from again) the VMC was switched off. But in August of 2008 mission planners had the idea of trying to turn the camera back on, and using it as a “webcam,” which ran until December and solar conjunction. The VMC team also has a new blog and they are also looking for the public’s help in processing and cleaning up their images.

The Mars Webcam is not a scientific instrument, but it does provide fantastic views of Mars – including crescent views of the planet not obtainable from Earth.

According to the VMC blog, the scientific team is looking for the public’s help to interpret and rework images, as well as perform a little photo artistry (i.e. Photoshopping) on the images taken by this camera. “We cordially invite you to download any of our images sets and send us your results. We’ll post the best in our public gallery.”

Find more info on how to work with the VMC team here.

Posted on by Ian O'Neill

Mars Express Finds Rusty Evidence to Red Planet’s Wet Past

Aram Chaos region of Mars as imaged by the OMEGA instrument on board ESA's Mars Express (ESA)

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The picture of Mars’ wet history is gradually becoming more comprehensive. This time, new observations by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express satellite have revealed concentrations of sulphates and ferric oxides in the 175 mile-wide (280 kilometres) Aram Chaos region, an ancient crater basin. Although the true nature of these compounds remain elusive, it could reveal past atmospheric precipitation, otherwise known as rain and snow…

Artist's impression of Mars Express (ESA)
Artist's impression of Mars Express (ESA)
It is the mother of all planetary jigsaw puzzles, piecing together the geological and atmospheric evidence to better understand Martian history. Although we have hypothesised for some time about the presence of water in the regolith, it wasn’t until the Mars Phoenix Lander touched down in the Martian arctic in May 2008, dug a trench and detected water ice that we had proof of the existence of water on the surface. Observations made by the lander helped too, as it saw broken, regular shapes of a permafrost layer in the surrounding landscape (suggesting quantities of ice below the surface), and there is tantalizing evidence that liquid water brines may also exist at very low atmospheric pressures (with the help of perchlorate salts). It doesn’t stop there, Phoenix also confirmed that atmospheric ice may get large enough to fall as snow in arctic regions.

Now, from Mars orbit, the ESA Mars Express has used its OMEGA instrument (a.k.a. the Visible and Infrared Mineralogical Mapping Spectrometer) to map an equatorial region to gain clues about Martian history. The results beamed back to Earth are both exciting and a little peculiar.

It is well known that Mars is covered in ferric oxides, contained within the dust that blankets much of the planet. This is the compound that gives Mars its characteristic red hue. However, looking deep into the crater of Aram Chaos, there is a four-fold increase in the spectral signature of ferric oxides. This has led ESA scientists to believe this is indicative of a specific concentration mechanism. On Mars, ferric oxides are usually found with sulphates, but in this location, strong winds have blown away the lighter sulphates, leaving the ferric oxides behind, allowing the Mars Express spectrometer to measure the high concentrations.

On Earth, we commonly know ferric oxide as rust. Rust forms when there is a reaction between iron and atmospheric oxygen, facilitated by the presence of water.

“They have accumulated in dark deposits at the bottom of sulphate cliffs,” said Stephane Le Mouelic of the University of Nantes in France. This suggests that the ferric oxides have been uncovered by eolian (wind) erosion before being eroded themselves, dropping to the bottom of sulphate enriched cliffs. Driven by Martian winds, the ferric oxides went on to enrich dunes in the region.

Opportunitys blue berries, or ferric oxide deposits (NASA)
Opportunity's blue berries, or ferric oxide deposits (NASA)
It turns out the ferric oxide accumulation processes are not exclusive to Aram Chaos. According to observations by Mars rover Opportunity, there are ferric oxide concentrations in Meridiani Planum about 1000 km (600 miles) away. Also, Valles Marineris, about 3000 km (1900 miles) away appears to have similar deposits.

This is an intriguing study and it is possible that other regions will show similar accumulation processes, but are covered by other material. “OMEGA is sensitive to the first hundreds of microns of the surface. So, a layer of Martian dust just one millimeter thick will hide the signature from us,” said Marion Masse, also of the University of Nantes. Although OMEGA is restricted to hunting for ferric oxide deposits only in regions where rock is exposed due to wind action, this could be an important method to seek out how and where ferric oxides got deposited. Although scientists are keeping an open mind as to how these deposits formed, it could be due to atmospheric precipitation (rain or snow) or it could be down to volcanic ashes or glacial deposits.

Source: Astronomy.com

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

HiRISE Looks Down to the Bottom of a Pit on Mars

Pit on Mars in Tractus Fossae. Credit: NASA/JPL/U of Arizona

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Dark pits on Mars are fascinating – probably because they provide mysteries and possibilities. Could anything be inside? Or could this be a place where humans could set up a base since it would provide shelter from Mars’ harsh environment? Some of the pits found earlier have been speculated to be entrances into caves, but more likely this is a collapse pit. Pits like this form by collapse into underground voids, such as those left by propagating magma-filled dikes. The pit in this image has very steep walls, and so only a narrow arc is illuminated by sunlight. The rest of the pit is in dark shadow. However, the HiRISE teams created a stretched version of the image, which shows details of the pit floor, due to a small amount of scattered sunlight. Anything interesting inside?

The bottom is the pit is visible in this stretched image due to scattered light. Credit: NASA/JPL/ U of AZ
The bottom is the pit is visible in this stretched image due to scattered light. Credit: NASA/JPL/ U of AZ

No, not really; at least with the detail we can see here. The inside of the pit looks much the the surrounding region of Mars, but it could offer a possible habitat for future Mars explorers, even though the pit is quite deep, probably 150 meters (490 feet) deep. This pit is located in Tractus Fossae, a region of large ridges and troughs created by tectonic activity. Sometimes collapse pits may have overhanging walls, although in this case the walls can be seen and appear nearly vertical.

This pit is essentially a vertical shaft cut through the lava flows on the flank of the volcano. Such pits form on similar volcanoes in Hawaii and are called ‘pit craters.’ They generally do not connect to long open caverns but are the result of deep underground collapse.

The fossae, or troughs, occur on the Tharsis volcanic rise, a giant region of enhanced volcanic activity that includes the three large volcanoes Ascraeus Mons, Pavonis Mons and Arsia Mons.

Source: HiRISE