Category: Mars

Image credit: ESA

The European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton X-Ray Observatory took this recent image of Mars in the x-ray spectrum. Every planet in the solar system, including the Earth, emits x-rays, but scientists aren’t completely sure why. One reason is thought to be “florescence emission”, when x-rays from the Sun hit atoms in our atmosphere and then get re-emitted with a characteristic signature. The bulk of the x-rays in the picture are coming from oxygen in the Martian atmosphere.

Another ESA mission is turning its gaze towards Mars. This recent image was taken by the X-ray observatory XMM-Newton.

All bodies in our Solar System, including planets such as Earth and Mars, emit X-ray radiation. As far as we know, there are several possible sources of this radiation.

One of the main sources is thought to be ?fluorescence emission?. X-rays from the Sun hit atoms of elements such as oxygen in the atmosphere of the planet, and this radiation is re-emitted as so-called ?characteristic? radiation which identifies those specific elements.

This image from XMM-Newton, recorded as part of a study by Dr K. Dennerl (Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany) shows X-ray fluorescence emission from the atmosphere of Mars, mainly from oxygen. All of these emissions tell us something about the interaction of radiation with the planet’s atmosphere and its environment.

The study of Mars in X-ray wavelengths brings together the work of two very important ESA missions XMM-Newton and Mars Express. Both are crucial to our understanding of our nearest planetary neighbour, demonstrating the coherence of the ESA Science programme.

Original Source: ESA News Release

Image credit: JAXA

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has reportedly given up their efforts to have their Mars-bound spacecraft Nozomi reach the Red Planet. A solar flare in 2002 damaged the spacecraft’s electronics and prevented its thrusters from working properly. Engineers were working up until the last minute, but in the end they weren’t able to get the equipment working again. Nozomi will now follow a wide orbit around Mars and then slingshot out into space. Spacecraft from NASA and the European Space Agency will arrive at Mars over the next couple of months.

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) today confirmed that the Japanese satellite Nozomi has been rerouted away from Mars by JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Crucial orbit insertion manoeuvers were impossible to achieve because of defective equipment onboard and the mission has been canceled. Nozomi will now follow a harmless large elliptic solar orbit.

Canada was a partner in this international Mars mission with a $ 5 million Canadian-built scientific instrument onboard — the Thermal Plasma Analyser (TPA). The TPA was designed to analyse the Martian atmosphere to better understand its origin and composition. The University of Calgary was leading the TPA research team and Canadian firms COM DEV International (Cambridge, Ont.), Pakwa Engineering (Saskatoon, Sask.), CAL Corp. (Ottawa, Ont.) and CompAS Electronics (Kanata, Ont.) were involved in the design and building of the instrument.

“This is not a total loss for the Canadian Space Program”, said Alain Berinstain, CSA’s acting Director of Planetary Exploration and Space Astronomy. TPA has positioned Canada as a preferred supplier of state-of-the-art science and technology. It has opened doors to current and future collaborations with Japan and with other countries involved in the exploration of the solar system. Our thoughts are with our colleagues and friends from Japan and we look forward to working with them again in the future.”

In April 2002, on its way to Mars, NOZOMI had experienced a very strong solar energetic proton event associated with a strong solar flare. This caused a short circuit in one of the subsystems and a loss of telemetry signal, which made the Mars orbit insertion impossible.

Original Source: Canadian Space Agency News Release

After traveling for more than 400 million kilometres, the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft has nearly arrived at the Red Planet. Things are about to get pretty busy. On December 19, the Beagle 2 lander will detach from the spacecraft and plunge through the Martian atmosphere six days later. At the same time that Beagle 2 is making its way down to the surface, the Mars Express orbiter will begin its aerobraking maneuvers to get into its final orbit around the Red Planet.

After a journey of 400 million km, ESA’s Mars Express is now approaching its final destination. On 19 December, the spacecraft is scheduled to release the Beagle 2 lander it has been carrying since its launch on 2 June.

At 9:31 CET, ESA’s ground control team at Darmstadt (Germany) will send the command for the Beagle 2 lander to separate from Mars Express. A pyrotechnic device will be fired to slowly release a loaded spring, which will gently push Beagle 2 away from the mother spacecraft.

Data on the spacecraft’s position and speed will be used by mission engineers to assess whether the lander was successfully released. In addition, the onboard Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) should provide an image showing the lander slowly moving away. The image is expected to be available mid-afternoon.

Beagle 2 will then continue its journey towards the surface of Mars, where it is expected to land on 25 December, early in the morning. At the same time, the Mars Express orbiter should be manoeuvring to enter into orbit around Mars.

In view of the complexity of this operation, the Mars Express control team has been trained to deal with the eventuality that separation might not be achieved at the first attempt. If that did turn out to be the case, there is a series of procedures that has already been set up and tested for completing the manoeuvre successfully within the subsequent 40 hours.

The “separation” event can be followed live at ESA/ESOC on Friday 19 December from 8:30 to 15:00. A videoconference will link the control centre at Darmstadt with ESA Headquarters in Paris (F), and ESA/ESRIN at Frascati (I). Media wishing to attend are asked to complete the attached reply form and fax it to the Communication Office at the establishment of their choice.

Highlights of this event will be streamed over the Internet at http://mars.esa.int at the following times:

09:09 UT – 09:32 UT
11:25 UT – 11.47 UT
12:00 UT – 12:10 UT

As well as live streaming of key events, the Mars Express site will have daily news, features, images, videos and more.

Original Source: ESA News Release

Image credit: NASA/JPL

The odds aren’t great. For every three missions sent to Mars, two fail. With NASA’s twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, now only a few weeks away from their encounter with the Red Planet, it’s important to appreciate the challenges they still have to face. Already in space for five months, they’ve endured several solar storms. But the hardest work is still to come: they have to decelerate through the atmosphere, deploy their parachutes, and then land on their airbags.

Two out of three missions to the red planet have failed. One reason there have been so many losses is that there have been so many attempts. “Mars is a favorite target,” says Dr. Firouz Naderi, manager of the Mars Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We — the United States and former USSR — have been going to Mars for 40 years. The first time we flew by a planet, it was Mars. The first time we orbited a planet, it was Mars. The first time we landed on a planet it was Mars, and the first time we roved around the surface of a planet, it was Mars. We go there often.”

Another reason is that getting to Mars is hard.

To get there, Spirit and Opportunity, the two Mars Exploration Rovers launched this past June and July, will have to fly through about 483 million kilometers (300 million miles) of deep space and target a very precise spot to land. Adjustments to their flight paths can be made along the way, but a small trajectory error can result in a big detour and or even missing the planet completely.

The space environment isn’t friendly. Hazards range from what engineers call “single event upsets,” as when a stray particle of energy passes through a chip in the spacecraft’s computer causing a glitch and possibly corrupting data, to massive solar flares, such as the ones that occurred this fall, that can damage or even destroy spacecraft electronics.

The road to the launch pad is nearly as daunting as the journey to Mars. Even before the trip to Mars can begin, a craft must be built that not only can make the arduous trip but can complete its science mission once it arrives. Nothing less than exceptional technology and planning is required.

If getting to Mars is hard, landing there is even harder. “One colleague describes the entry, descent and landing as six minutes of terror,” says Naderi.

Spirit and Opportunity will enter the martian space traveling 19,300 kilometers per hour (12,000 miles per hour). “During the first four minutes into descent, we use friction with the atmosphere to slow us down considerably,” says Naderi. “However, at the end of this phase, we’re still traveling at 1,600 kilometers per hour (1,000 miles per hour), but now we have only 100 seconds left and are at the altitude that a commercial airliner typically flies. Things need to happen in a hurry. A parachute opens to slow the spacecraft down to ‘only’ 321 kilometers per hour (200 miles per hour), but now we have only 6 seconds left and are only 91 meters (100 yards) off the ground. Now, the retro rockets fire to bring the spacecraft down to zero velocity, and we’re the height of a four-story building above the surface. The spacecraft freefalls the rest of the way cocooned in airbags to cushion the blow. It hits the ground at 48 kilometers per hour (30 miles per hour) or 80 kilometers per hour (50 miles per hour) if it is windy. It bounces as high as a four-story building and continues to bounce afterward, perhaps 30 times all together. What’s inside the airbag weighs 453 kilograms (half a ton). So, the challenge of entry, descent and landing is how to get something that massive traveling at 19,300 kilometers per hour (12,000 miles per hour) slowed down in six minutes to have a chance of survival.”

Mars doesn’t exactly put out a welcome mat. Landing is complicated by difficult terrain. The martian surface is full of obstacles–massive impact craters, cliffs, cracks and jagged boulders. Even the toughest airbag can be punctured if it hits a bad rock. Unpredictable winds can also stir up further complications.

No matter how hard it is, getting to Mars is just the beginning. “The challenge after we land,” says Rob Manning, manager of Mars Exploration Rovers entry, descent and landing operations, “is how to get the vehicle out of its cramped cocoon and into a vehicle roving in such a way as to please the scientists.”

The rewards are great. “Mars is the most Earth-like of the planets in our solar system,” says Naderi. “It has the potential to have been an abode of life.”

The risks are also great. “We do everything humanly possible and try to avoid human mistakes,” says Naderi. “That’s why we check, double check, test and test again and then have independent eyes check everything again. Humans, even very smart humans, are fallible particularly when many thousands of parameters are involved. But even if you have done the best engineering possible, you still don’t know what Mars has in store for you on the day your arrive. Mars can get you.”

“We are in a tough business,” says Naderi. “It is like climbing Mt. Everest. No matter how good you are, you are going to lose your grip sometimes and fall back. Then you have a choice, either retreat to the relative comfort and safety of the base camp, or get up, dust yourself off, get a firmer grip and a surer toehold and head back up for the summit. The space business is not about base camps. It is about summits. And, the exhilaration of discoveries you make once you get there. That is what drives you on.”

Original Source: NASA/JPL News Release

Image credit: NASA/JPL

NASA’s twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, are still on track to reach the Red Planet in early January. Spirit, which launched first, is scheduled to arrive on the evening of January 3, 2004 near the centre of Gusev Crater, which might have held a lake in the past. The spacecraft will jettison its cruise stage 15 minutes before hitting the top of the Martian atmosphere, and then will slow down to only 1,500 kph before deploying its parachute. 20 seconds later its retrorockets will fire and the spacecraft will cushion its final few metres with an airbag. The rover will then spend three months exploring the Martian surface.

NASA’S robotic Mars geologist, Spirit, embodying America’s enthusiasm for exploration, must run a grueling gantlet of challenges before it can start examining the red planet. Spirit’s twin Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, also faces tough Martian challenges.

“The risk is real, but so is the potential reward of using these advanced rovers to improve our understanding of how planets work,” said Dr. Ed Weiler, associate administrator for space science at NASA Headquarters, Washington.

Spirit is the first of two golf-cart-sized rovers headed for Mars landings in January. The rovers will seek evidence about whether the environment in two regions might once have been capable of supporting life. Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif., have navigated Spirit to arrive during the evening of Jan. 3, 2004, in the Eastern time zone.

Spirit will land near the center of Gusev Crater, which may have once held a lake. Three weeks later, Opportunity will reach the Meridiani Planum, a region containing exposed deposits of a mineral that usually forms under watery conditions.

“We’ve cleared two of the big hurdles, building both spacecraft and launching them,” said JPL’s Peter Theisinger, project manager for the Mars Exploration Rover Project. “Now we’re coming up on a third, getting them safely onto the ground,” he said.

Since their launches on June 10 and July 7 respectively, each rover has been flying tucked inside a folded-up lander. The lander is wrapped in deflated airbags, cocooned within a protective aeroshell and attached to a cruise stage that provides solar panels, antennas and steering for the approximately seven month journey.

Spirit will cast off its cruise stage 15 minutes before hitting the top of the Martian atmosphere at 5,400 meters per second (12,000 miles per hour). Atmospheric friction during the next four minutes will heat part of the aeroshell to about 1,400 C (2,600 F) and slow the descent to about 430 meters per second (960 mph). Less than two minutes before landing, the spacecraft will open its parachute.

Twenty seconds later, it will jettison the bottom half of its aeroshell, exposing the lander. The top half of the shell, still riding the parachute, will lower the lander on a tether. In the final six seconds, airbags will inflate, retro rockets on the upper shell will fire, and the tether will be cut about 15 meters (49 feet) above the ground.

Several bounces and rolls could take the airbag-cushioned lander about a kilometer (0.6 mile) from where it initially lands. If any of the initial few bounces hits a big rock that’s too sharp, or if the spacecraft doesn’t complete each task at just the right point during the descent, the mission could be over. More than half of all the missions launched to Mars have failed.

JPL Director Dr. Charles Elachi said, “We have done everything we know that could be humanly done to ensure success. We have conducted more testing and external reviews for the Mars Exploration Rovers than for any previous interplanetary mission.”

Landing safely is the first step for three months of Mars exploration by each rover. Before rolling off its lander, each rover will spend a week or more unfolding itself, rising to full height, and scanning surroundings. Spirit and Opportunity each weigh about 17 times as much as the Sojourner rover of the 1997 Mars Pathfinder mission. They are big enough to roll right over obstacles nearly as tall as Sojourner.

“Think of Spirit and Opportunity as robotic field geologists,” said Dr. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for the rovers’ identical sets of science instruments. “They look around with a stereo, color camera and with an infrared instrument that can classify rock types from a distance. They go to the rocks that seem most interesting. When they get to one, they reach out with a robotic arm that has a handful of tools, a microscope, two instruments for identifying what the rock is made of, and a grinder for getting to a fresh, unweathered surface inside the rock,” he said.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover project for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington. For information about the Mars Exploration Rover project on the Internet, visit:

http://space.mit.edu/HETE/

For Cornell University’s Web site about the science payload, visit:

http://athena.cornell.edu

Original Source: NASA/JPL News Release

Image credit: NASA/JPL

During a recent solar storm, an instrument on board NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft failed, and so far, operators haven’t been able to get it working again. The Martian Radiation Environment (MARIE) was designed to measure the radiation in the Martian space environment, which will help mission planners understand what kinds of risks humans might face if they traveled to the Red Planet. Operators will continue their attempts to get the instrument working for a few weeks before writing it off.

The martian radiation environment experiment on NASA?s 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter has collected data continuously from the start of the Odyssey mapping mission in March 2002 until late last month. The instrument has successfully monitored space radiation to evaluate the risks to future Mars-bound astronauts. Its measurements are the first of their kind to be obtained during an interplanetary cruise and in orbit around another planet.

On Oct. 28, 2003, during a period of intense solar activity, the instrument stopped working properly. Controllers? efforts to restore the instrument to normal operations have not been successful. These efforts will continue for the next several weeks or months.

The martian radiation environment experiment detects energetic charged particles, including galactic cosmic rays and particles emitted by the Sun in coronal mass ejections. The dose equivalent from galactic cosmic rays as measured by the instrument agrees well with predictions based on modeling. Validation of radiation models is a crucial step in predicting radiation-related health risks for crews of future missions.

“Even if the instrument provides no additional data in the future, it has been a great success at characterizing the radiation environment that a crewed mission to Mars would need to anticipate,” said Dr. Jeffrey Plaut, project scientist for Mars Odyssey at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

JPL manages the Mars Odyssey and Global Surveyor missions for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. Investigators at Arizona State University, Tempe; University of Arizona, Tucson; NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Houston; the Russian Aviation and Space Agency, Moscow; and Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, N.M., built and operate Odyssey science instruments. Information about NASA’s Mars exploration program is available on the Internet at: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov.

Original Source: NASA/JPL News Release

Image credit: NASA/JPL

In case you’d forgotten about them, NASA’s twin Mars Exploration spacecraft, Spirit and Opportunity, are still on their way to the Red Planet. Spirit made its third trajectory correction last week to fine-tune its flight path as it gets closer. Both rovers have rebooted their computers in the past two weeks to remove any data errors that could have caused by the recent powerful solar storms. Spirit should arrive at the Gusev Crater on January 4, 2004, while Opportunity will land Meridiani Planum on January 25.

NASA’s Spirit spacecraft made its third trajectory correction maneuver on Friday, Nov. 14, fine tuning its flight path toward Mars with an engine-firing operation planned into the seven-month trip.

The trajectory adjustment was designed to alter Spirit’s velocity by 0.6 meters per second (1.3 miles per hour), moving the arrival point by 770 kilometers (478 miles) and arrival time by 16.5 minutes closer to the planned target location and time, said Louis D’Amario, the project’s navigation team chief. To accomplish that adjustment, the flight team commanded Spirit to fire its engines for 132 seconds in the direction of the spacecraft’s rotation axis and for short pulses totaling 27 seconds in a direction roughly perpendicular to the rotation axis.

Spirit has three more scheduled dates for additional trajectory corrections before reaching Mars less than seven weeks from now. The spacecraft is carrying the first of two Mars Exploration Rovers equipped to examine the geology around their landing sites for evidence about past environmental conditions.

Both Spirit and its twin, Opportunity, have rebooted their computers in the past two weeks. Mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., sent commands for that procedure on each spacecraft to correct possible corruption of computer memory registers by radiation from powerful solar flares in late October and early November. The flares were among the most intense ever recorded.

“We had no evidence of memory problems, but we considered it prudent to reboot both spacecraft to assure memory integrity, using the sleep-wake cycle that we plan to do each night after the rovers are on the surface of Mars,” said JPL’s Peter Theisinger, project manager for the Mars Exploration Rover Project.

High-energy protons ejected by the stormy Sun appeared on Oct. 28 as bursts of bright spots in star-tracking instruments used by both Spirit and Opportunity to sense the spacecrafts’ orientation. The instruments interpreted the proton hits as stars, so the bursts overwhelmed their ability to recognize star patterns and determine spacecraft attitude. Both spacecraft temporarily switched to a backup method of attitude sensing, using the Sun. They resumed use of the star trackers last week.

Spirit’s target is arrival at Mars’ Gusev Crater at 04:35 Jan. 4, 2004, Universal Time (8:35 p.m. Jan. 3, Pacific Standard Time and 11:35 p.m. Jan. 3, Eastern Standard Time). These are “Earth received times,” meaning they reflect the delay necessary for a speed-of-light signal from Mars to reach Earth; on Mars, the landing will have happened nearly 10 minutes earlier. Three weeks later, at 05:05 Jan. 25, Universal Time, Opportunity will arrive at a level plain called Meridiani Planum on the opposite side of Mars from Gusev. Each rover will examine its landing area for geological evidence about the history of water there, key information for assessing whether the site ever could have been hospitable to life.

As of 6 a.m. PST on Nov. 19, Spirit had traveled 396.5 million kilometers (246.4 million miles) since its June 10 launch, with 91.5 million kilometers (56.2 million miles) to go before reaching Mars. Opportunity, launched on July 7, had traveled 326 million kilometers (202 million miles) and has 130 million kilometers (81 million miles) yet to go.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the Mars Exploration Rover project for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. Additional information about the project is available from JPL at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mer and from Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., at http://athena.cornell.edu.

Original Source: NASA/JPL News Release

Image credit: ESA

The European Space Agency is planning a mission to study the surface of Mars by picking up material from the surface and returning it to the Earth. The Mars Sample Return mission will consist of two parts: the return capsule will launch in 2011 and go into orbit around Mars; the lander and ascent module will launch two years later and land on the planet to collect a sample from a depth of 2 metres. It will then launch into Mars’ orbit, link up with the return capsule, and bring the sample back to the Earth.

What is the next best thing to humans landing on Mars and exploring the wonders of the Red Planet? The answer: touching, imaging and analysing carefully preserved samples of Martian rock in a state-of-the-art laboratory on Earth.

If all goes according to plan, this is exactly what ESA?s long-term Aurora Programme of solar system exploration will achieve a decade from now, when the first samples of Mars material will be sealed in a special capsule and returned to Earth for analysis.

The first step towards making this great leap in human knowledge a reality was taken at the end of October with the announcement of the winners of competitive contracts for the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, the second Flagship robotic mission to be proposed as part of Aurora.

The parallel contracts for the Phase A studies that will carry out a full mission design iteration for the MSR have been placed with two industrial teams.

One team, headed by Alenia Spazio (Italy), includes Alcatel (France), Dutch Space (Netherlands), ELV (Italy) and MDR (Canada). The other team, headed by EADS Astrium (UK), also includes Astrium SAS (France), EADS ST (France), Galileo Avionica (Italy), RAL (UK), SAS (Belgium), SENER (Spain) and Utopia Consultancies (Germany).

?The industrial proposals received were of outstanding quality, reflecting the enthusiasm and the commitment of the industrial teams who prepared them,? said Bruno Gardini, Aurora Project Manager.

Bringing Mars back to Earth
As currently envisaged, the MSR will be a two-stage endeavour. First, a spacecraft that includes a return capsule will be launched in 2011 and inserted into orbit around Mars. Then, two years later, a second spacecraft carrying a descent module and a Mars ascent vehicle (MAV) will be launched on a similar trajectory.

During its final approach to Mars, the descent module/MAV will be released and make a controlled landing on the planet. A robotic drill will then collect a soil sample from a depth of 1? to 2 metres and seal it inside a small canister on the ascent vehicle. Other samples of Martian soil and air may also be gathered and stored inside the canister.

Carrying its precious samples, the MAV will lift off from the surface, then rendezvous and dock with the spacecraft in Martian orbit. After receiving the canister loaded with Martian rocks, the spacecraft will return to Earth with the re-entry capsule containing the samples and send it plummeting into the atmosphere.

Slowed by a parachute or inflatable device, the capsule will make a fairly gentle touchdown before recovery teams retrieve the container from the landing site and deliver it to a planetary protection facility where the samples will be removed to await analysis by eager scientists. The design of the capsule will ensure that the structural integrity of the sample container remains intact, even if the parachute fails to open and a crash landing occurs.

?The Mars Sample Return mission is one of the most challenging missions ever considered by ESA,? said Gardini. ?Not only does it include many new technologies and four or five different spacecraft, but it is also a mission of tremendous scientific importance and the first robotic mission with a similar profile to a possible human expedition to Mars.?

A number of the critical technologies required for the success of this ambitious endeavour have yet to be developed in Europe, e.g. re-entry of spacecraft arriving from deep space at a high velocity. As a preliminary stage in developing a vehicle capable of bringing back samples from Mars, it was considered necessary to develop this re-entry capability and to demonstrate its maturity as part of the Aurora Programme. Feasibility studies for a dedicated Arrow mission, known as the Earth re-entry Vehicle Demonstrator (EVD), were recently announced.

In the same way, testing of the complex rendezvous and docking techniques will be carried out as an experiment on the ExoMars mission, the first Flagship mission of the Aurora Programme. The Phase A industrial study contracts for the ExoMars mission began in September.

Original Source: ESA News Release

Image credit: NASA/JPL

The NASA/ASU THEMIS imaging team has released a photo of Mars which has been corrected as close as possible to realistic colour. This image of cliffs and basalt sand dunes in the southern Melas Chasma region of Mars was taken by NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft. Astronomer and space artist Don Davis used photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope and his own experience to modify the colours in the picture until they looked natural.

This spectacular view of the sunlit cliffs and basaltic sand dunes in southern Melas Chasma shows Mars in a way rarely seen: in full, realistic color. The colorization is the result of a collaboration between THEMIS team members at Cornell University and space artist Don Davis, who is an expert on true-color renderings of planetary and astronomical objects. Davis began with calibrated and co-registered THEMIS VIS multi-band radiance files produced by the Cornell group. Using as a guide true-color imaging from the Hubble Space Telescope and his own personal experience at Mt. Wilson and other observatories, he performed a manual color balance to match more closely the colors of previous visual Mars observations. He also did some manual smoothing and other image processing to mimimize the effects of residual scattered light in the images. The result is a view of Mars that invites comparisons to Earth; a scene that one might observe out the window on a flight over the southwest United States, but not quite. The basaltic dunes are commonplace on Mars but a rare feature on Earth. The rounded knobs and elongated mesas on the canyon floor show an erosional style as exotic as Utah’s Bryce Canyon but wholly familiar on Mars. Although the inhospitable Martian atmosphere cannot be seen, the magnificent Martian landscape on display in this image beckons space-suited human explorers and the sightseers who will follow.

Initial image processing and calibration by THEMIS team members J. Bell, T. McConnochie, and D. Savransky at Cornell University; additional processing and final color balance by space artist Don Davis.

Original Source: NASA/ASU News Release

The Mars-bound Japanese spacecraft Nozomi, which has been plagued with problems since its launch in 1998, could be on a collision course with the Red Planet, and might crash into it if engineers can’t change its trajectory. Officials from the Japanese space agency will attempt to fire the spacecraft’s engines on December 8 to kick it into a safer orbit. But before that, they need to fix the spacecraft’s malfunctioning electrical. One worry is that Nozomi was never intended to enter Mars’ atmosphere, so it wasn’t carefully decontaminated – it could deliver Earth-based microbes to the Martian surface.