Space and astronomy news
Life might have wiped itself out on early Mars. That’s not as absurd as it sounds; that’s sort of what happened on Earth.
But life on Earth evolved and persisted, while on Mars, it didn’t.
Continue reading “Early Life on Mars Might Have Wiped Out Life on Mars”
You know, sometimes the old ways are the best. At least, when it comes to landing on Mars and other planets, it’s worth looking at past successes—and failures. That’s the case with an idea that engineers at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory are testing: crashing spacecraft onto surfaces.
Continue reading “Why NASA Is Trying to Crash Land on Mars”
The Curiosity rover has now reached its primary target on Mount Sharp on Mars, the mountain in the middle of Gale Crater the rover has been climbing since 2014. This target is not the summit, but a region over 600 meters (2,000 feet) up the mountain that planetary geologists have long anticipated reaching.
Known as the “sulfate-bearing unit,” the region is a boundary between the rocks that saw a lot of water in their history and those that didn’t; a possible shoreline, if you will. That boundary is already providing insights into Mars’ transition from a wet planet to dry, filling in a key gap in the understanding of the planet’s history.
Continue reading “Curiosity Arrives in a Salty Region of Mars. Was it Left Over From a Dying Sea?”
New research shows that the best way to protect future Martian astronauts from deadly solar radiation is as simple as can be. For good shielding, they just need to put as much stuff between them and the sky as possible.
Continue reading “What’s the Best Shielding to Protect Astronauts on Mars?”
That’s no moon … wait … yes, it is, and more!
ESA’s Mars Express has captured an unusual and rare occultation, all from its vantage point in orbit of Mars. The spacecraft’s orbit brought it to the right place where it could witness the moment Mars’ small moon Deimos passed in front of Jupiter and its four largest moons. Scientists say that celestial alignments like these enable a more precise determination of the Martian moons’ orbits.
Continue reading “Mars Express Watched Deimos Pass in Front of Jupiter and its Moons”
Scientists and engineers seem to have difficulty coming up with estimated mission timelines for their space exploration projects. Most don’t even reach the first day after succumbing to one form or another of technical failure, sometimes resulting in a dramatic fireball. Others have missions that extend orders of magnitude longer than they were originally designed for. Such is the case for India’s first mission to the Red Planet, which finally seems to have run out of fuel eight years into its original six-month mission.
Continue reading “India’s Mars Orbiter Mission is Finally out of Fuel After 8 Years of Science Operations”
When planning crewed missions to Mars, the key phrase is “follow the water.” When astronauts set down on the Red Planet in the next decade, they will need access to water to meet their basic needs. Following the water is also crucial to our ongoing exploration of Mars and learning more about its past. While all of the water on the Martian surface exists as ice today (the majority locked away in the polar ice caps), it is now known that rivers, lakes, and an ocean covered much of the planet billions of years ago.
Determining where this water went is essential to learning how Mars underwent its historic transformation to become the dry and cold place it is today. Close to twenty years ago, the ESA’s Mars Express orbiter made a huge discovery when it detected what appeared to be a massive deposit of water ice beneath the southern polar region. However, recent findings by a team of researchers from Cornell University indicate that the radar reflections from the South Pole Layered Deposit (SPLD) may be the result of geological layering.
Continue reading “Underground Liquid Water Detected on Mars? Maybe not”
We hope this is just as inconsequential as having a piece of toilet paper stuck to your shoe, but images from the Ingenuity helicopter show it had a piece of debris fluttering from its leg during its most recent flight. A blog post from NASA said a small piece of foreign object debris (FOD) was seen in footage from the Mars helicopter’s navigation camera (Navcam) for a portion of its 33rd flight on September 24, 2022.
Continue reading “A Small Piece of “Foreign Object Debris” Fell off Ingenuity’s Leg During its 33rd Flight”
NASA’s Mars Sample Return Mission is inching closer and closer. The overall mission architecture just hit a new milestone when Perseverance collected the first sample that will be sent back. But what happens once that sample actually gets here? NASA and its partner, ESA, are still working on that, but recently they released a fact sheet that covers what will happen during the first stage of that process – returning to the ground.
Continue reading “How Does NASA Plan to Keep Samples From Mars Safe From Contamination (and Contaminating) Earth?”
Mars exploration has been ongoing for decades at this point, and some regions of the planet have become more interesting than others. Of particular interest is a basin known as Utopia Planitia. It was the site of the Viking-2 landing, one of the first-ever successful missions to Mars. From data collected during that mission, scientists developed a theory that the crater that formed Utopia might have been the site of an ancient ocean. New results from China’s Zhurong rover point to an even more exciting past – repeated flooding.
Continue reading “China’s Zhurong Rover Looks Deep Underground and Sees Layers From Multiple Floods on Mars”