Solar System Archives

August 30, 2013December 23, 2015 by Ken Kremer

Are We Martians? Chemist’s New Claim Sparks Debate

Are Earthlings really Martians ?
Did life arise on Mars first and then journey on rocks to our planet and populate Earth billions of years ago? Earth and Mars are compared in size as they look today. NASA’s upcoming MAVEN Mars orbiter is aimed at answering key questions related to the habitability of Mars, its ancient atmosphere and where did all the water go.
Story updated[/caption]

Are Earthlings really Martians?

That’s the controversial theory proposed today (Aug. 29) by respected American chemist Professor Steven Benner during a presentation at the annual Goldschmidt Conference of geochemists being held in Florence, Italy. It’s based on new evidence uncovered by his research team and is sure to spark heated debate on the origin of life question.

Benner said the new scientific evidence “supports the long-debated theory that life on Earth may have started on Mars,” in a statement. Universe Today contacted Benner for further details and enlightenment.

“We have chemistry that (at least at the level of hypothesis) makes RNA prebiotically,” Benner told Universe Today. “AND IF you think that life began with RNA, THEN you place life’s origins on Mars.” Benner said he has experimental data as well.

First- How did ancient Mars life, if it ever even existed, reach Earth?

On rocks violently flung up from the Red Planet’s surface during mammoth collisions with asteroids or comets that then traveled millions of miles (kilometers) across interplanetary space to Earth – melting, heating and exploding violently before the remnants crashed into the solid or liquid surface.

An asteroid impacts ancient Mars and send rocks hurtling to space - some reach Earth — An asteroid impacts ancient Mars and send rocks hurtling to space – some reach Earth. Did they transport Mars life to Earth? Or minerals that could catalyze the origin of life on Earth?

“The evidence seems to be building that we are actually all Martians; that life started on Mars and came to Earth on a rock,” says Benner, of The Westheimer Institute of Science and Technology in Florida. That theory is generally known as panspermia.

To date, about 120 Martian meteorites have been discovered on Earth.

And Benner explained that one needs to distinguish between habitability and the origin of life.

“The distinction is being made between habitability (where can life live) and origins (where might life have originated).”

NASA’s new Curiosity Mars rover was expressly dispatched to search for environmental conditions favorable to life and has already discovered a habitable zone on the Red Planet’s surface rocks barely half a year after touchdown inside Gale Crater.

Furthermore, NASA’s next Mars orbiter- named MAVEN – launches later this year and seeks to determine when Mars lost its atmosphere and water- key questions in the Origin of Life debate.

Curiosity accomplished Historic 1st drilling into Martian rock at John Klein outcrop on Feb 8, 2013 (Sol 182) and discovered a habitable zone, shown in this context mosaic view of the Yellowknife Bay basin taken on Jan. 26 (Sol 169). The robotic arm is pressing down on the surface at John Klein outcrop of veined hydrated minerals – dramatically back dropped with her ultimate destination; Mount Sharp. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer-kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo

Of course the proposed chemistry leading to life is exceedingly complex and life has never been created from non-life in the lab.

The key new points here are that Benner believes the origin of life involves “deserts” and oxidized forms of the elements Boron (B) and Molybdenum (Mo), namely “borate and molybdate,” Benner told me.

“Life originated some 4 billion years ago ± 0.5 billon,” Benner stated.

He says that there are two paradoxes which make it difficult for scientists to understand how life could have started on Earth – involving organic tars and water.

Life as we know it is based on organic molecules, the chemistry of carbon and its compounds.

But just discovering the presence of organic compounds is not the equivalent of finding life. Nor is it sufficient for the creation of life.

And simply mixing organic compounds aimlessly in the lab and heating them leads to globs of useless tars, as every organic chemist and lab student knows.

Benner dubs that the ‘tar paradox’.

Although Curiosity has not yet discovered organic molecules on Mars, she is now speeding towards a towering 3 mile (5 km) high Martian mountain known as Mount Sharp.

Curiosity Spies Mount Sharp - her primary destination. Curiosity will ascend mysterious Mount Sharp and investigate the sedimentary layers searching for clues to the history and habitability of the Red Planet over billions of years. This mosaic was assembled from over 3 dozen Mastcam camera images taken on Sol 352 (Aug 2, 2013. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/ Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer — Curiosity Spies Mount Sharp – her primary destination
Curiosity will ascend mysterious Mount Sharp and investigate the sedimentary layers searching for clues to the history and habitability of the Red Planet over billions of years. This mosaic was assembled from over 3 dozen Mastcam camera images taken on Sol 352 (Aug 2, 2013. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/ Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer-kenkremer.com

Upon arrival sometime next spring or summer, scientists will target the state of the art robot to investigate the lower sedimentary layers of Mount Sharp in search of clues to habitability and preserved organics that could shed light on the origin of life question and the presence of borates and molybdates.

It’s clear that many different catalysts were required for the origin of life. How much and their identity is a big part of Benner’s research focus.

“Certain elements seem able to control the propensity of organic materials to turn into tar, particularly boron and molybdenum, so we believe that minerals containing both were fundamental to life first starting,” says Benner in a statement. “Analysis of a Martian meteorite recently showed that there was boron on Mars; we now believe that the oxidized form of molybdenum was there too.”

The second paradox relates to water. He says that there was too much water covering the early Earth’s surface, thereby causing a struggle for life to survive. Not exactly the conventional wisdom.

“Not only would this have prevented sufficient concentrations of boron forming – it’s currently only found in very dry places like Death Valley – but water is corrosive to RNA, which scientists believe was the first genetic molecule to appear. Although there was water on Mars, it covered much smaller areas than on early Earth.”

Parts of ancient Mars were covered by oceans, lakes and streams of liquid water in this artists concept, unlike the arid and bone dry Martian surface of today. Subsurface water ice is what remains of Martian water.

I asked Benner to add some context on the beneficial effects of deserts and oxidized boron and molybdenum.

“We have chemistry that (at least at the level of hypothesis) makes RNA prebiotically,” Benner explained to Universe Today.

“We require mineral species like borate (to capture organic species before they devolve to tar), molybdate (to arrange that material to give ribose), and deserts (to dry things out, to avoid the water problem).”

“Various geologists will not let us have these [borates and molybdates] on early Earth, but they will let us have them on Mars.”

“So IF you believe what the geologists are telling you about the structure of early Earth, AND you think that you need our chemistry to get RNA, AND IF you think that life began with RNA, THEN you place life’s origins on Mars,” Benner elaborated.

“The assembly of RNA building blocks is thermodynamically disfavored in water. We want a desert to get rid of the water intermittently.”

I asked Benner whether his lab has run experiments in support of his hypothesis and how much borate and molybdate are required.

“Yes, we have run many lab experiments. The borate is stoichiometric [meaning roughly equivalent to organics on a molar basis]; The molybdate is catalytic,” Benner responded.

“And borate has now been found in meteorites from Mars, that was reported about three months ago.

At his talk, Benner outlined some of the chemical reactions involved.

Although some scientists have invoked water, minerals and organics brought to ancient Earth by comets as a potential pathway to the origin of life, Benner thinks differently about the role of comets.

“Not comets, because comets do not have deserts, borate and molybdate,” Benner told Universe Today.

The solar panels on the MAVEN spacecraft are deployed as part of environmental testing procedures at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Littleton, Colorado, before shipment to Florida 0on Aug. 2 and blastoff for Mars on Nov. 18, 213. Credit: Lockheed Martin — MAVEN is NASA’s next Mars orbiter and seeks to determine when Mars lost its atmosphere and water- key questions in the Origin of Life debate. MAVEN is slated to blastoff for Mars on Nov. 18, 2013. It is shown here with solar panels deployed as part of environmental testing procedures at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Waterton, Colorado, before shipment to Florida in early August. Credit: Lockheed Martin

Benner has developed a logic tree outlining his proposal that life on Earth may have started on Mars.

“It explains how you get to the conclusion that life originated on Mars. As you can see from the tree, you can escape that conclusion by diverging from the logic path.”

Finally, Benner is not one who blindly accepts controversial proposals himself.

He was an early skeptic of the claims concerning arsenic based life announced a few years back at a NASA sponsored press conference, and also of the claims of Mars life discovered in the famous Mars meteorite known as ALH 84001.

“I am afraid that what we thought were fossils in ALH 84001 are not.”

The debate on whether Earthlings are really Martians will continue as science research progresses and until definitive proof is discovered and accepted by a consensus of the science community of Earthlings – whatever our origin.

On Nov. 18, NASA will launch its next mission to Mars – the MAVEN orbiter. Its aimed at studying the upper Martian atmosphere for the first time.

“MAVENS’s goal is determining the composition of the ancient Martian atmosphere and when it was lost, where did all the water go and how and when was it lost,” said Bruce Jakosky to Universe Today at a MAVEN conference at the University of Colorado- Boulder. Jakosky, of CU-Boulder, is the MAVEN Principal Investigator.

MAVEN will shed light on the habitability of Mars billions of years ago and provide insight on the origin of life questions and chemistry raised by Benner and others.

Ken Kremer

…………….
Learn more about Mars, the Origin of Life, LADEE, Cygnus, Antares, MAVEN, Orion, Mars rovers and more at Ken’s upcoming presentations

Sep 5/6/16/17: “LADEE Lunar & Antares/Cygnus ISS Rocket Launches from Virginia”; Rodeway Inn, Chincoteague, VA, 8 PM

Oct 3: “Curiosity, MAVEN and the Search for Life on Mars – (3-D)”, STAR Astronomy Club, Brookdale Community College & Monmouth Museum, Lincroft, NJ, 8 PM

Oct 9: “LADEE Lunar & Antares/Cygnus ISS Rocket Launches from Virginia”; Princeton University, Amateur Astronomers Assoc of Princeton (AAAP), Princeton, NJ, 8 PM

August 29, 2013December 23, 2015 by David Dickinson

Curiosity Spies a Martian Annular Eclipse

Phobos transiting the Sun as seen by the Mars Curiosity rover on Sol 369. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems/Texas A & M University).

It’s always interesting to consider the astronomical goings-on that occur under alien skies.

On August 17^th, Curiosity wowed us once again, catching the above sequence of images of the Martian moon Phobos transiting the Sun.

Such phenomena have been captured by the Curiosity, Opportunity and Spirit rovers before, as the twin Martian moons of Deimos & Phobos cross the face of the Sun. But these recent images taken by Curiosity’s right Mastcam pair are some of the sharpest yet.

Orbiting only an average of 6,000 kilometres above the surface of Mars, Phobos is the closest to its primary of any moon in the solar system. It appears about 11 arc minutes in size when directly overhead, about 3 times smaller than our own Moon does from the Earth.

“This event occurred near noon at Curiosity’s location, which put Phobos at its closest point to the rover, appearing larger against the Sun than it would at other times of the day,” Said co-investigator Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University in a recent press release. “This is the closest to a total eclipse that you can have on Mars.”

Phobos is 40% more distant from an observer standing on the surface of Mars when it is rising above the local horizon than when it is overhead. The Sun is about 20’ arc minutes across as seen from Mars, 66% of its diameter as seen from the Earth.

The sequence above spans only six seconds in duration. You would easily note the apparent motion of Phobos as it drifted by! Also, since Phobos orbits Mars once every 7.7 hours, it actually rises in the west and sets in the east. The Martian day is over three times this span, at 24.6 hours long. Deimos has a more sedate orbit of 30.4 hours in duration.

The twin Moons of Deimos and Phobos were discovered this month back during the opposition of 1877 by Asaph Hall using the United States Naval Observatory’s newly installed 65 centimetre refractor. The moons are just within the grasp of eagle-eyed amateurs near opposition. You’ve got another opportunity to cross these elusive moons off of your life list coming up in the Spring of 2014.

image_preview — The telescope that was used to discover the moons of Mars. (Credit: The United States Naval Observatory).

It’s especially captivating that you can make out the irregular “potato shape” of Phobos in the above images. With low orbital inclinations relative to the equator of Mars of 1.1 degrees for Phobos and 0.9 degrees for Deimos, solar transits are not an uncommon occurrence, transpiring somewhere along the Martian surface with every orbit. If Phobos were twice as close to Mars, it would completely cover the Sun in a total solar eclipse. What Curiosity gave us this month is more akin to an annular eclipse with a ragged central shadow. An annular eclipse occurs when the occulting body is too distant to cover the Sun, leaving a bright, shining ring, or annulus.

On the Earth, we live in an epoch where annular eclipses are slightly more common than total solar eclipses, as the Moon currently recedes from us to the tune of 3.8 centimetres a year. About 1.4 billion years from now, the last total solar eclipse will be seen from the Earth. The next purely annular eclipse as seen from Earth occurs on April 29^th, 2014 across Australia and the Antarctic.

Conversely, Phobos is in a “death spiral,” meaning that it will one day crash into Mars about 30-50 million years from now. This also means that in about half that time, it will also be large enough to visually cover the Sun when crossing it near local noon. For a brief time far in the future, jagged total solar eclipses will be visible from Mars. That is, if the gravitational field of Mars doesn’t rip Phobos apart before that!

But beyond just aesthetics, these observations serve a scientific purpose as well. These phenomena serve to refine our understanding of the precise positions of Phobos and Deimos and their orbits.

“This one is by far the most detailed image of any Martian lunar transit ever taken, and it is especially useful because it is annular. It was taken closer to the Sun’s center than predicted, so we learned something.”

The track during the August 17^th observation was off by about 2-3 kilometres, allowing for a surprise central transit of the Sun as seen from Curiosity’s location.

Both Phobos and Deimos are captured asteroids only 22.2 & 12.6 kilometres across, respectively. Both must be subject to occasional bombardment from meteorites blasted off of the surface of nearby Mars. Sample return missions to Phobos have been proposed. Russia’s ill-fated Phobos-Grunt mission would’ve done just that.

Will humans ever stand on the surface of the Red Planet and witness an annular eclipse of the Sun by Phobos in person? Well, if we make it there by November 10^th, 2084, observers placed on the slopes of Elysium Mons will witness just such an event… with a rare transit of Earth and the Moon to boot!:

Arthur C. Clarke wrote of a transit of Earth from Mars that occurred in 1984 in his science fiction short story Transit of Earth.

Hey, I’m marking my calendar for the 2084 event… assuming, of course, my android body is ready by then!

August 26, 2013December 23, 2015 by Jason Major

Titan Has a Fancy Collar

UV image of Titan acquired by Cassini on April 13 (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI)

As high summer slowly but steadily approaches on Saturn, Cassini is opening a window to the seasonal changes that occur not only on the ringed planet but also its moons. Here we can see a dark band developing around Titan’s north polar latitudes, a “fancy collar” made visible in ultraviolet wavelengths.

Polar collars have previously been seen by both Hubble and Voyager 2, and in fact a southern version was observed by HST 5 years after the planet’s 1995 equinox.

This summer collar is thought to be part of a seasonal process, related to the migration of upper-level haze material within Titan’s atmosphere.

Source: CICLOPS (Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS)

August 23, 2013December 23, 2015 by Jason Major

An Illustrative Explanation Of Our Solar System

The Solar System: Our Home in Space (screenshot) © Philipp Dettmer Information Design

The Solar System: it’s our home in space, the neighborhood that we all grew up in and where — unless we figure out a way to get somewhere else — all of our kids and grandkids and great-great-great-great-times-infinity-great-grandkids will grow up too. That is, of course, until the Sun swells up and roasts Earth and all the other inner planets to a dry crunchy crisp before going into a multi-billion year retirement as a white dwarf.

But until then it’s a pretty nice place to call home, if I may say so myself.

Edu-film designer Philipp Dettmer and his team have put together a wonderful little animation explaining the basic structure of the Solar System using bright, colorful graphics and simple shapes to illustrate the key points of our cosmic neighborhood. It won’t teach you everything you’ll ever need to know about the planets and it’s not advisable to use it as a navigation guide, but it is fun to watch and well-constructed, with nice animation by Stephan Rether and narration by Steve Taylor.

Check out the full video below:

“Through information design, concepts can be made easy and accessible when presented in a short, understandable edu-film or perhaps an infographic. Whether explaining the vastness of the universe or the tiniest building blocks of life – all information can be presented in a way that everyone understands. Regardless of prior knowledge.”
– Philipp Dettmer

(And come on, admit it… you learned something new from this!)

Credit: Philipp Dettmer Information Design. HT to Colin Lecher at Salon.

August 22, 2013December 23, 2015 by Ken Kremer

NASA’s LADEE Lunar Probe Set for Spectacular Science and September Night Launch – Visible to Millions and Millions

LADEE Minotaur V Launch - Maximum Elevation Map This map shows the maximum elevation (degrees above the horizon) that the Minotaur V rocket will reach during the Sep. 6, 2013 launch depending on your location along the US east coast. Credit: Orbital Sciences

LADEE Minotaur V Launch – Maximum Elevation Map
The LADEE nighttime launch will be visible to millions of spectators across a wide area of the Eastern US -weather permitting. This map shows the maximum elevation (degrees above the horizon) that the Minotaur V rocket will reach during the Sep. 6, 2013 launch depending on your location along the US east coast. Credit: Orbital Sciences [/caption]

A spectacular nighttime blastoff blazing a historic trail to the Moon is set to soar in two weeks time when NASA’s LADEE spacecraft lifts off from the Eastern Shore of Virginia at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island – from America’s newest spaceport.

NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) Observatory will thunder to space at 11:27 p.m. Friday, Sept. 6, from the commercial Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) launch complex 0B at NASA’s Wallops Island facility atop the maiden flight of the new, solid fueled Minotaur V rocket developed by Orbital Sciences Corp.

LADEE’s late night launch will be absolutely spectacular and visible to tens of millions of spectators up and down the US East coast and interior areas stretching into the Midwest- weather permitting.

“I love this mission,” said John Grunsfeld, NASA Associate Administrator for Science at NASA Headquarters, at a media briefing today, Aug. 22.

Close-up view of STAR 37FM 5th stage solid fuel motor of Minotaur V rocket at NASA Wallops rocket facility will propel LADEE into its lunar transfer orbit. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com — LADEE’s Ticket to the Moon – 5th Stage of new Minotaur V rocket
Close-up view of STAR 37 5th stage solid fuel motor for inaugural Minotaur V rocket launch at NASA Wallops rocket facility will propel LADEE into its lunar transfer orbit. LADEE will be mounted on top and surrounded by the payload fairing attached at bottom ring. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com

“With NASA’s prior LRO and GRAIL spacecraft we studied the Moon’s surface and interior. Now with LADEE we study the atmosphere and dust,” said John Grunsfeld.

The purpose of LADEE is to collect data that will inform scientists in unprecedented detail about the ultra thin lunar atmosphere, environmental influences on lunar dust and conditions near the surface. In turn this will lead to a better understanding of other planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond.

The small car sized LADEE lunar orbiter mission will be historic in many ways. It’s the first probe of any kind ever launched to beyond Earth orbit from NASA Wallops, as well as being the first planetary science mission from Wallops.

It also marks the first launch of a five stage rocket and the first launch of a decommissioned Peacekeeper missile from Wallops.

The first three stages of the Minotaur V are based on the nuclear armed Peacekeeper ICBM intercontinental ballistic missile built during the Cold War – now retired and refurbished by Orbital for peaceful uses. Its literally beating sword into ploughshares.

The 5th stage is a new addition and what makes this Minotaur a new rocket class. The added thrust is precisely what enables shooting for the Moon.

Recently, I had an exclusive tour and photoshoot up close and personal with the upper stages of LADEE’s Minotaur V rocket at Wallops prior to integration at the commercial launch pad – 0B – and will be reporting on that here and in upcoming stories.

4th and 5th stages of the inaugural Minotaur V rocket launch that will propel NASA’s LADEE lunar spacecraft to the Moon on Sep. 6, 2013 from NASA Wallops Island in Virginia. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com

“LADEE is equipped with three science instruments to study the atmosphere and dust and a lunar laser technology demonstration,” said Joan Salute, LADEE program executive, NASA Headquarters.

These include an ultraviolet and visible light spectrometer that will gather detailed information about the composition of the tenuous lunar atmosphere; a neutral mass spectrometer to measure variations in the lunar atmosphere over time; a laser dust experiment that will collect and analyze dust particle samples; and a laser communications experiment that will test the use of lasers in place of radio waves for high speed dad communications with Earth.

“The lunar atmosphere is so thin that the molecules never collide,’ said Sarah Noble, LADEE program scientist, NASA Headquarters.

“It’s a ‘Surface Boundary Exosphere’ which is actually the most common type of atmosphere in our Solar System.”

Scientists also hope to solve a mystery dating back nearly five decades to the Apollo moon landing era, by determining if electrically charged lunar dust is responsible for the pre-sunrise horizon glow seen by the Apollo astronauts and also by the unmanned Surveyor 7 lander, according to Noble.

“This is the first NASA mission with a dedicated laser communications experiment,” said Don Cornwell, mission manager for the Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
I asked when we could see laser communications implemented on future NASA spacecraft?

“A new laser communications system could possibly be used on the 2020 Mars rover from the surface of Mars,” Grunsfeld told Universe Today.

The couch sized 844 pound (383 kg) robotic explorer was assembled at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., and is a cooperative project with NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center in Maryland.

The spacecraft is a first of its kind vehicle built from a NASA Ames-developed Modular Common Spacecraft Bus architecture that can be applied to other missions. The mission cost is approximately $280 million.

The Minotaur V will boost LADEE into a highly elliptical orbit. Then over the next 23 days, as LADEE orbits Earth 3.5 times, the Moon’s gravitational field will increase the perigee of its orbit. The spacecraft will fire its on-board braking thrusters to achieve lunar orbit.

NASA Ames LADEE Mission – Lunar Orbital Insertion Animation

Video caption: This animation is a representation of lunar orbital insertion for LADEE, which is the path the spacecraft follows when it is captured by the Moon’s gravity and enters lunar orbit. Credit: NASA Ames/Dana Berry. Note: Animation is silent with no audio/music track included.

The mission will fly in a very low science orbit of about 50 kilometers altitude above the moon. The science mission duration is approximately 100 days.

“It’s limited by the amount of onboard fuel required to maintain orbit,” Doug Voss, launch manager, Wallops, told Universe Today.

“I’m excited about the night launch because people up and down the Atlantic seacoast will be able to see it,” Jim Green, Planetary Science Division Director at NASA HQ, told me.

And don’t forget that NASA has a 2nd really big launch from Wallops slated for Sep. 17 – with blastoff of the Orbital Sciences Antares rocket and Cygnus cargo carrier on their historic 1st mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

I’ll be on site at Wallops for both historic launches on Sep. 6 and 17 – reporting for Universe Today.

We’ll see you in Virginia!

Ken Kremer

…………….
Learn more about LADEE, Cygnus, Antares, MAVEN, Orion, Mars rovers and more at Ken’s upcoming presentations

Sep 5/6/16/17: “LADEE Lunar & Antares/Cygnus ISS Rocket Launches from Virginia”; Rodeway Inn, Chincoteague, VA, 8 PM

Oct 3: “Curiosity, MAVEN and the Search for Life on Mars – (3-D)”, STAR Astronomy Club, Brookdale Community College & Monmouth Museum, Lincroft, NJ, 8 PM

Oct 9: “LADEE Lunar & Antares/Cygnus ISS Rocket Launches from Virginia”; Princeton University, Amateur Astronomers Assoc of Princeton (AAAP), Princeton, NJ, 8 PM

Looking up the Flame Trench of the LADEE Minotuar V Launch Pad 0B at NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com — Looking up the Flame Trench of the LADEE Minotaur V Launch Pad 0B at NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com

August 21, 2013December 23, 2015 by Ken Kremer

Curiosity Conducts Science on the Go and Zooms to Stunning Mount Sharp

Curiosity Spies Mount Sharp – her primary destination. Curiosity will ascend mysterious Mount Sharp and investigate the sedimentary layers searching for clues to the history and habitability of the Red Planet over billions of years. But first she must safely trespass through the treacherous dark dunes fields. This mosaic was assembled from over 2 dozen Mastcam camera images taken on Sol 352 (Aug 2, 2013). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/ Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer
See the full mosaic below [/caption]

It’s never a dull moment for NASA’s Curiosity rover at T Plus 1 Year since touchdown on the Red Planet and T Minus 1 year to arriving at her primary target, the huge mountain overwhelming the center of the landing site inside Gale Crater.

Curiosity is literally and figuratively zooming in on stunningly beautiful and mysterious Mount Sharp (see our new mosaics above/below), her ultimate destination, while conducting ‘Science on the Go’ with her duo of chemistry labs – SAM and CheMin – and 8 other science instruments as she passes the 2 kilometer driving milestone today; Aug 20 !

“We are holding samples for drops to ChemMin and SAM when the science team is ready for it,” Jim Erickson, Curiosity Project Manager of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), told Universe Today in an exclusive interview.

“Curiosity has landed in an ancient river or lake bed on Mars,” Jim Green, Director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, told Universe Today.

So, those samples were altered by liquid Martian water – a prerequisite for life.

In fact the car sized rover has saved samples from both the ‘John Klein’ and ‘Cumberland’ drill sites collected previously in the ‘Yellowknife Bay’ area for analysis by the miniaturized labs in the rovers belly -when the time is right.

“Curiosity has stored a Cumberland sample and still has a John Klein sample on board for future use,” Erickson explained.

And that time has now arrived!

“We have put a sample from the Cumberland drill hole into SAM for more isotopic measurements,” reported science team member John Bridges in a blog update on Sol 363, Aug. 14, 2013.

“The sample had been cached within the robotic arm’s turret.”

Curiosity is multitasking – conducting increasingly frequent traverses across the relatively smooth floor of Gale Crater while running research experiments for her science handlers back here on Earth.

NASA’s Curiosity rover make tracks to Mount Sharp (at left) across the floor of Gale Crater. The rover paused to image the windblown ripple at right, below the hazy crater rim. The wheel tracks are about eight feet apart. This panoramic mosaic was assembled from a dozen navcam camera images taken on Sol 354 (Aug 4, 2013. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer Marco Di Lorenzo — NASA’s Curiosity rover make tracks to Mount Sharp (at left) across the floor of Gale Crater. The rover paused to image the windblown ripple at right, below the hazy crater rim. The wheel tracks are about eight feet apart. This panoramic mosaic was assembled from a dozen navcam camera images taken on Sol 354 (Aug 4, 2013). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

She’s captured stunning new views of Mount Sharp – rising 5 km (3 miles) high into the sky – and movies of Mars tiny pair of transiting moons while ingesting new portions of the drilled rock samples acquired earlier this year.

Here’s our video compilation of Phobos and Deimos transiting on Aug 1, 2013

Video caption: Transit of Phobos in front of Deimos, taken by MSL right MastCam imager on Sol 351 around 3:12 AM local time (Aug 1, 2013, 8:42 UTC); 16 original frames + 14 interpolated (5x speed-up). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/ Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer

The sample analysis is still in progress.

“The SAM data have not all been received yet,” wrote science team member Ken Herkenhoff in a blog update.

Earlier analysis of sample portions from both ‘John Klein’ and ‘Cumberland’ revealed that the Yellowknife Bay area on Mars possesses the key mineral ingredients proving that Red Planet was once habitable and could have sustained simple microbial life forms.

The scientists are seeking further evidence and have yet to detect organic molecules – which are the building blocks of life as we know it.

This time lapse mosaic shows Curiosity maneuvering her robotic arm to drill into her 2nd martian rock target named “Cumberland” to collect powdery Martian material on May 19, 2013 (Sol 279) for analysis by her onboard chemistry labs; SAM & Chemin. The photomosaic was stitched from raw images captured by the navcam cameras on May 14 & May 19 (Sols 274 & 279). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo — This time lapse mosaic shows Curiosity maneuvering her robotic arm to drill into her 2nd martian rock target named “Cumberland” to collect powdery Martian material on May 19, 2013 (Sol 279) for analysis by her onboard chemistry labs; SAM & Chemin- see 3 inlet ports lower left. The photomosaic was stitched from raw images captured by the navcam cameras on May 14 & May 19 (Sols 274 & 279). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

Yellowknife Bay resembles a dried out river bed where liquid water once flowed eons ago when the Red Planet was far warmer and wetter than today.

As the 1 ton robot ascends Mount Sharp, she will examine sedimentary layers layed down on ancient Mars over hundreds of millions and perhaps billions of years of past history and habitability.

And just as the rover was celebrating 1 year on Mars on Aug 5/6, she found an intriguing sand dune on Sol 354. See our mosaic

“The rover paused to take images of its tracks after crossing a windblown ripple,” Herkenhoff reported.

As the six wheeled rover approaches Mount Sharp over the next year, she will eventually encounter increasing treacherous dunes that she must cross before beginning her mountain climbing foray.

As of today, Sol 369 (Aug. 20) Curiosity has broken through the 2 kilometer driving mark with a new 70 meter drive, snapped over 75,000 images and fired over 75,000 laser shots.

Mount Sharp is about 8 kilometers (5 miles) distant as the Martian crow flies.

How long will the journey to Mount Sharp require?

“Perhaps about a year,” Erickson told me. “We are trying to make that significantly faster by bringing autonav [autonomous navigation software] online.”

“That will help. But how much it helps really depends on the terrain.”

So far so good.

Meanwhile NASA’s next Mars orbiter called MAVEN (for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution), recently arrived at the Kennedy Space Center after a cross country flight.

Kennedy technicians are completing assembly and check out preparations for MAVEN’s blastoff to the Red Planet on Nov. 18 from Florida atop an Atlas V rocket similar to the one that launched Curiosity nearly 2 years ago.

And I’ll be at Kennedy to report up close on MAVEN’s launch.

Stay tuned.

Ken Kremer

August 21, 2013December 23, 2015 by Ken Kremer

Earthlings Wave at Saturn as Cassini Images Us

Earth Waves at Cassini on July 19, 2013- From more than 40 countries and 30 U.S. states, people around the world shared more than 1,400 images of themselves as part of the Wave at Saturn event organized by NASA's Cassini mission on July 19, 2013. The Cassini team created this image collage as a tribute to the people of Earth Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/People of Earth See link below to the absolutely gigantic full resolution version

Earth Waves at Saturn and Cassini on July 19, 2013
From more than 40 countries and 30 U.S. states, people around the world shared more than 1,400 images of themselves as part of the Wave at Saturn event organized by NASA’s Cassini mission on July 19, 2013. The Cassini team created this image collage as a tribute to the people of Earth
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/People of Earth
See link below to the absolutely gigantic full resolution version [/caption]

On July 19, millions of Earthlings worldwide participated in NASA’s ‘Wave at Saturn’ campaign as the NASA Cassini Saturn orbiter turned about and imaged all of us.

Earthlings from 40 countries and 30 U.S. states heeded NASA’s call to photograph themselves while smiling and waving at Saturn and Cassini across 1 billion miles of interplanetary space and shared over 1400 images.

The results of all those images has now been assembled into a fabulous collage in the shape of our planet and released today (Aug. 21) by NASA and the Cassini team as a tribute to the People of Earth.

“Did you wave at Saturn and send us your photo? Then here’s looking at you!” NASA announced on the Cassini Facebook page.

This event was the first time that the citizens of Earth knew in advance that a distant interplanetary spacecraft was photographing portraits of our home planet and our Moon. NASA invited everyone to participate.

Photos flooded into NASA via Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, Google+ and email.

Click here for the full resolution version. But be forewarned – it weighs in at over 26 MB and it’s far too big to post here.

The Day the Earth Smiled: Sneak Preview In this rare image taken on July 19, 2013, the wide-angle camera on NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured Saturn's rings and our planet Earth and its moon in the same frame. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute — The Day the Earth Smiled: Sneak Preview
In this rare image taken on July 19, 2013, the wide-angle camera on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has captured Saturn’s rings and our planet Earth and its moon in the same frame. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

“Thanks to all of you, near and far, old and young, who joined the Cassini mission in marking the first time inhabitants of Earth had advance notice that our picture was being taken from interplanetary distances,” said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif, in a statement.

“While Earth is too small in the images Cassini obtained to distinguish any individual human beings, the mission has put together this collage so that we can celebrate all your waving hands, uplifted paws, smiling faces and artwork.”

The Cassini imaging science team is still assembling the hundreds of images of Saturn and Earth snapped by the spacecraft as we were waving, to create individual color composites and a panoramic view of the ‘pale blue dot’ and the entire Saturnian system.

To capture all of Saturn and its wide swath of rings, Cassini’s wide angle camera snapped a mosaic of 33 footprints on July 19, 2013.

“At each footprint, images were taken in different spectral filters for a total of 323 images,” says Carolyn Porco, Cassini Imaging Team leader, Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

Cassini took the pictures of Earth from a distance of about 898 million miles (1.44 billion kilometers) away from the home to every human being that has ever lived.

Here is our partial version of Cassini’s mosaic.

Partial context mosaic of the Earth and Saturn taken by NASA’s Cassini orbiter on July 19, 2013. This mosaic was assembled from five wide angle camera raw images. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo — Partial context mosaic of the Earth and Saturn taken by NASA’s Cassini orbiter on July 19, 2013. This mosaic was assembled from five Cassini wide angle camera raw images and offers a sneak peek of the complete panorama. Earth at lower right. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

Cassini was launched from Florida in 1997.

It achieved orbit at Saturn in 2004 and has transmitted breathtaking images and science that revolutionized our understanding of the Saturnian system.

The mission is scheduled to continue until 2017 when it will commit a suicide death dive into the humongous gas giant.

Coincidentally, the first humans (Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin) set foot on the Moon 44 years ago nearly to the day of Cassini’s Earth-Moon portrait on July 20, 1969 aboard Apollo 11.

And likewise on July 19, 2013, billionaire space enthusiast Jeff Bezos announced that his dive teams had recovered components of an Apollo 11 first stage F-1 rocket engine from the Saturn V moon rocket that propelled the first humans to the Moon.

Ken Kremer

JPL Waves at Saturn As NASA's Cassini spacecraft turned its imaging cameras to Earth, scientists, engineers and visitors at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., gathered to wave at our robotic photographer in the Saturn system on July 19, 2013. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech — JPL Waves at Saturn As NASA’s Cassini spacecraft turned its imaging cameras to Earth, scientists, engineers and visitors at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., gathered to wave at our robotic photographer in the Saturn system on July 19, 2013. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

August 20, 2013December 23, 2015 by David Dickinson

Haiku for Mars: Winners Selected for MAVEN Mission

A DVD bound for Mars... (Courtesy of Lockheed Martin/LASP).

Fans of Mars and spaceflight waxed poetic as the haiku selected to travel to Mars aboard the MAVEN spacecraft were announced earlier this month.

The contest received 12,530 valid entries from May 1^st through the contest cutoff date of July 1^st. Students learned about Mars, planetary exploration and the MAVEN mission as they composed haiku ranging from the personal to the insightful to the hilarious.

“The contest has resonated with people in ways that I never imagined! Both new and accomplished poets wrote poetry to reflect their views of Earth and Mars, their feelings about space exploration, their loss of loved ones who have passed on, and their sense of humor,” said Stephanie Renfrow, MAVEN Education & Public Outreach & Going to Mars campaign lead.

A total of 39,100 votes were cast in the contest; all entries receiving more than 2 votes (1,100 in all) will be carried on a DVD affixed to the MAVEN spacecraft bound for Martian orbit.

Five poems received more than a thousand votes. Among these were such notables as that of one 8th grader from Denver Colorado, who wrote;

Phobos & Deimos

Moons orbiting around Mars

Snared by Gravity

Another notable entry which was among the poems sited for special recognition by the MAVEN team was that of Allison Swets of Michigan;

My body can’t walk

My mouth can’t make words but I

Soar to Mars today

377 artwork entries were also selected to fly aboard MAVEN as well.

Didn’t get picked? There’s still time to send your name aboard MAVEN along with thousands that have already been submitted. You’ve got until September 10!

Part of NASA’s discontinued Scout-class of missions, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN mission, or MAVEN, is due to launch out of Cape Canaveral on November 18^th, 2013. Selected in 2008, MAVEN has a target cost of less than $500 million dollars US, not including launch carrier services atop an Atlas V rocket in a 401 flight configuration.

(Credit: NASA). — An artist’s concept of MAVEN in orbit around Mars (Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center).

The Phoenix Lander was another notable Scout-class mission that was extremely successful, concluding in 2008.

Principal investigator for MAVEN is the University of Boulder at Colorado’s Bruce Jakosky of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP).

The use of poetry to gain public interest in the mission is appropriate, as MAVEN seeks to solve the riddle that is the Martian atmosphere. How did Mars lose its atmosphere over time? What role does the solar wind play in stripping it away? And what is the possible source of that anomalous methane detected by Mars Global Surveyor from 1999 to 2004?

MAVEN is based on the design of the Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. It will carrying an armada of instruments, including a Neutral Gas & Ion Mass Spectrometer, a Particle and Field Package with several analyzers, and a Remote Sensing Package built by LASP.

MAVEN just arrived at the Kennedy Space Center earlier this month for launch processing and mating to its launch vehicle. Launch will be out of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on November 18th with a 2 hour window starting at 1:47 PM EST/ 18:47 UT.

MAVEN spacecraft at a Lockheed Martin clean room near Denver, Colo. (Credit: Lockheed Martin).

Assuming that MAVEN launches at the beginning of its 20 day window, it will reach Mars for an orbital insertion on September 22, 2014. MAVEN will orbit the Red Planet in an elliptical 150 kilometre by 6,200 kilometre orbit, joining the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the European Space Agencies’ Mars Express and the aging Mars Odyssey orbiter, which has been surveying Mars since 2001.

The window for an optimal launch to Mars using a minimal amount of fuel opens every 24 to 26 months. During the last window of opportunity in 2011, the successful Mars Curiosity rover and the ill-fated Russian mission Phobos-Grunt sought to make the trip.

This time around, MAVEN will be joined by India’s Mars Orbiter Mission, launching from the Satish Dhawan Space Center on October 21^st. If successful, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) will join Russia, ESA & NASA in nations that have successfully launched missions to Mars.

This window comes approximately six months before Martian opposition, which next occurs on April 8^th, 2014. In 2016, ESA’s ExoMars Mars Orbiter and NASA’s InSight Lander will head to Mars. And 2018 may see the joint ESA/NASA ExoMars rover and… if we’re lucky, Dennis Tito’s proposed crewed Mars 2018 flyby.

Interestingly, MAVEN also arrives in Martian orbit just a month before the close 123,000 kilometre passage of comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring, although as of this time, there’s no word if it will carry out any observations of the comet.

These launches will also represent the first planetary missions to depart Earth since 2011. You can follow the mission as @MAVEN2Mars on Twitter. We’ll also be attending the MAVEN Conference and Workshop this weekend in Boulder and tweeting our adventures (wi-fi willing) as @Astroguyz. We also plan on attending the November launch in person as well!

And in the end, it was perhaps for the good of all mankind that our own rule-breaking (but pithy) Mars haiku didn’t get selected:

Rider of the Martian Atmosphere

Taunting Bradbury’s golden-bee armed Martians

While dodging the Great Galactic Ghoul

Hey, never let it be said that science writers make great poets!

August 15, 2013April 26, 2016 by Jason Major

Voyager 1: Is It In or Is It Out?

Has Voyager 1 actually left the Solar System? Some researchers are saying yes. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Nearly 18.7 billion kilometers from Earth — about 17 light-hours away — NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is just about on the verge of entering interstellar space, a wild and unexplored territory of high-energy cosmic particles into which no human-made object has ever ventured. Launched in September 1977, Voyager 1 will soon become the first spacecraft to officially leave the Solar System.

Or has it already left?

I won’t pretend I haven’t heard it before: Voyager 1 has left the Solar System! Usually followed soon after by: um, no it hasn’t. And while it might all seem like an awful lot of flip-flopping by supposedly-respectable scientists, the reality is there’s not a clear boundary that defines the outer limits of our Solar System. It’s not as simple as Voyager rolling over a certain mileage, cruising past a planetary orbit, or breaking through some kind of discernible forcefield with a satisfying “pop.” (Although that would be cool.)

The outer edge of the heliosphere has been found to contain many different regions, which Voyager 1 has been passing through since 2004. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Rather, scientists look at Voyager’s data for evidence of a shift in the type of particles detected. Within the transitionary zone that the spacecraft has most recently been traveling through, low-energy particles from the Sun are outnumbered by higher-energy particles zipping through interstellar space, also called the local interstellar medium (LISM). Voyager’s instruments have been detecting dramatic shifts in the concentrations of each for over a year now, unmistakably trending toward the high-energy end — or at least showing a severe drop-off in solar particles — and researchers from the University of Maryland are claiming that this, along with their model of a porous solar magnetic field, indicates Voyager has broken on through to the other side.

“It’s a somewhat controversial view, but we think Voyager has finally left the Solar System, and is truly beginning its travels through the Milky Way,” said Marc Swisdak, UMD research scientist and lead author of a new paper published this week in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

According to Swisdak, fellow UMD plasma physicist James F. Drake, and Merav Opher of Boston University, their model of the outer edge of the Solar System fits recent Voyager 1 observations — both expected and unexpected. In fact, the UMD-led team says that Voyager passed the outer boundary of the Sun’s magnetic influence, aka the heliopause… last year.

But, like some of last year’s claims, these conclusions aren’t shared by mission scientists at NASA.

“Details of a new model have just been published that lead the scientists who created the model to argue that NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft data can be consistent with entering interstellar space in 2012,” said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist at Caltech, in a press release issued today. “In describing on a fine scale how magnetic field lines from the sun and magnetic field lines from interstellar space can connect to each other, they conclude Voyager 1 has been detecting the interstellar magnetic field since July 27, 2012. Their model would mean that the interstellar magnetic field direction is the same as that which originates from our sun.

The famous "Golden Record" carried aboard both Voyager 1 and 2 contains images, sounds and greetings from Earth. (NASA) — The famous “Golden Record” carried aboard both Voyager 1 and 2 contains images, sounds and greetings from Earth. (NASA)

“Other models envision the interstellar magnetic field draped around our solar bubble and predict that the direction of the interstellar magnetic field is different from the solar magnetic field inside. By that interpretation, Voyager 1 would still be inside our solar bubble.”

Stone says that further discussion and investigation will be needed to “reconcile what may be happening on a fine scale with what happens on a larger scale.”

Whether still within the Solar System — however it’s defined — or outside of it, the bottom line is that the venerable Voyager spacecraft are still conducting groundbreaking research of our cosmic neighborhood, 36 years after their respective launches and long after their last views of the planets. And that’s something nobody can argue about.

“The Voyager 1 spacecraft is exploring a region no spacecraft has ever been to before. We will continue to look for any further developments over the coming months and years as Voyager explores an uncharted frontier.”

– Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist

Built by JPL and launched in 1977, both Voyagers are still capable of returning scientific data from a full range of instruments, with adequate power and propellant to remain operating until 2020.

Read the full UMD news release here, and find out more about the Voyager mission on the NASA/JPL website here.

_____________

Note: The definition of “Solar System” used in this article is in reference to the Sun’s magnetic influence, the heliosphere, and all that falls within its outermost boundary, the heliopause (wherever that is.) Objects farther out are still gravitationally held by the Sun, such as distant KBOs and Oort Cloud comets, but orbit within the interstellar medium.

August 6, 2013December 23, 2015 by Ken Kremer

Opportunity Mountain Goal Dead Ahead as Mars Orbiter Restarts Critical Targeting Hunt for Habitability Signs

Opportunity rover’s 1st mountain climbing goal is dead ahead in this up close view of Solander Point along the eroded rim of Endeavour Crater. Opportunity will soon ascend the mountain in search of minerals signatures indicative of a past Martian habitable environment. This navcam panoramic mosaic was assembled from raw images taken on Sol 3385 (Aug 2, 2013). Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer (kenkremer.com)

Opportunity rover’s 1st mountain climbing goal is dead ahead in this up close view of Solander Point at Endeavour Crater. Opportunity will ascend the mountain looking for clues indicative of a Martian habitable environment. This navcam panoramic mosaic was assembled from raw images taken on Sol 3385 (Aug 2, 2013).
Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer (kenkremer.com)[/caption]

NASA’s most powerful Mars orbiter has been given the green light today (Aug. 5) to capture new high resolution spectral scans that are absolutely crucial for directing the long lived Opportunity rover’s hunt for signatures of habitability atop the intriguing mountain she will soon ascend.

In a plan only recently approved by NASA, engineers are aiming the CRISM mineral mapping spectrometer aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) circling overhead to collect high resolution survey scans of Solander Point – Opportunity’s 1st mountain climbing goal along the rim of huge Endeavour Crater.

“New CRISM observations centered over Solander Point will be acquired on Aug. 5, 2013,” Ray Arvidson told Universe Today exclusively. Arvidson is the mission’s deputy principal scientific investigator from Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.

NASA’s decade old rover Opportunity is about to make ‘landfall’ at the base of Solander Point, the Martian mountain she will scale in search of the chemical ingredients that could sustain Martian microbes.

So the new spectral data can’t come back to Earth soon enough.

And all this is taking place as NASA’s Curiosity rover celebrates her 1st Birthday on the Red Planet. Read that story – here.

Currently, the science team lacks the same quality of high resolution CRISM data from Solander Point that they had at a prior stop at Cape York. And that data was crucial because it allowed the rover to be precisely targeted – and thereby discover a habitable zone, Arvidson told me.

“CRISM collected lots of overlapping measurements at Cape York to sharpen the image resolution to 5 meters per pixel to find the phyllosilicate smectite [clay minerals] signatures at Matejivic Hill on Cape York.”

“We don’t have that at Solander Point. We only have 18 meters per pixel data. And at that resolution you can’t tell if the phyllosilicate smectite [clay minerals] outcrops are present.”

Today’s new survey from Mars orbit will vastly improve the spectral resolution – from 18 meters per pixel down to 5 meters per pixel.

“5 meter per pixel CRISM resolution is expected in the along-track direction over Solander Point by commanding the gimbaled optical system to oversample that much,” Arvidson explained.

Opportunity rover’s view from very near the foothills of Solander Point looking along the rim and vast expanse of Endeavour Crater. Solander Point is the 1st Martian Mountain NASA’s Opportunity will climb and the rovers next destination. Solander Point may harbor clay minerals indicative of a past Martian habitable environment. This navcam mosaic was assembled from raw images taken on Sol 3374 (July 21, 2013). Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer (kenkremer.com) See complete panoramic mosaic below — Opportunity rover’s view from very near the foothills of Solander Point looking along the rim and vast expanse of Endeavour Crater. Solander Point is the 1st Martian Mountain NASA’s Opportunity will climb and the rovers next destination. Solander Point may harbor clay minerals indicative of a past Martian habitable environment. This navcam mosaic was assembled from raw images taken on Sol 3374 (July 21, 2013). Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer (kenkremer.com)

The new CRISM spectral survey from Mars is essential to enable the science team to carefully study the alien, unexplored terrain in detail and locate the clay minerals and other water bearing minerals, even before the rover arrives.

Clay minerals form in neutral pH water conducive to life.

Opportunity would then be commanded to drive to preselected sites to conduct “ground truth” forays at Solander.

That’s just like was done at Cape York and the “Esperance” rock loaded with clay minerals that turned into one of the “Top 5 discoveries of the mission” according to Arvidson and Steve Squyres, Opportunity’s Science Principal Investigator of Cornell.

But it took some cajoling and inter team negotiations to convince everyone to move forward with the special but crucial CRISM imaging plan.

Since MRO is getting on in age – it launched in 2005 – NASA and the spacecraft managers have to carefully consider special requests such as this one which involves slewing the MRO spacecraft instruments and therefore entails some health risks to the vehicle.

“CRISM has been operating at Mars since 2006 and sometimes the optics on a gimble have actuators that get stuck a little bit and don’t sweep as fully as planned.”

Nevertheless, Arvidson told me a few weeks ago he was hopeful to get approval.

“I suspect I can talk the team into it.”

And eventually he did! And informed me for the readers of Universe Today.

The fact that the Opportunity scientists already scored a ‘Science Home Run’ with their prior CRISM targeting request at Cape York certainly aided their cause immensely.

The new approved CRISM measurements due to be captured today will give Opportunity the best chance to be targeted to the most promising mineral outcrops, and as quickly as possible.

“With the coordinated observations from CRISM and Opportunity we will go into Solander Point a lot smarter!”

“And we’ll have a pretty good idea of what to look for and where,” Arvidson told me.

Opportunity snap up close view of the base of Solander Point and mountain slopes she will ascend soon. This hi res pancam camera mosaic was assembled from raw images taken on Sol 3385 (Aug 2, 2013). Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/ASU/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer (kenkremer.com)

Today marks Opportunity’s 3389th Sol or Martian day roving Mars. Merely 90 days were expected!

Having completed her investigation of the rocky crater plains, the rover continues to drive south.

Any day now Opportunity will drive onto the Bench surrounding Solander and start a new phase of the mission.

Since she basically arrived at Solander with plenty of power and ahead of schedule prior to the onset of the 6th Martian winter, the robot has some spare time to investigate the foothills before ascending the north facing slopes.

“We will be examining the bench and then working our way counterclockwise to reach the steep slopes associated with the Noachian outcrops that are part of the Endeavour rim,” Arvidson said.

Ken Kremer