Space and astronomy news
Friday April 24th was China’s “Space Day,” celebrated on the 50 year anniversary of their first satellite launch. This past Friday, China marked the occasion with the announcement of the name for their first Mars Lander: Tianwen.
According to China’s National Space Administration (CNSA), Tianwen translates to “Quest for Heavenly Truth.”
Continue reading “China’s First Mars Lander is Going to be Called “Tianwen””
After a lot of hard work spanning many years, a team of scientists have discovered something surprising. They’ve found abundant bacterial life in tiny cracks in undersea volcanic rock in the Earth’s crust. The bacteria are thriving in clay deposits inside these tiny cracks.
This discovery is generating new excitement around the hope of finding life on Mars.
Continue reading “Seriously, Life Really Does Get Around. It was Found in Rocks Deep Beneath the Seafloor”
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) delivers once again! Using its advanced imaging instrument, the High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera, the orbiter captured a breathtaking image (shown below) of the plains north of Juventae Chasma. This region constitutes the southwestern part of Valles Marineris, the gigantic canyon system that runs along the Martian equator.
Continue reading “Another Incredible Picture of Mars, This Time From a Region Just Outside Valles Marineris”
There’s at least one small bit of good news in these challenging Covid-19 times. And it’s playing out on the surface of Mars. In a brief Tweet, NASA says that using InSight’s robotic arm to push the Mole into the ground is working, somewhat.
Continue reading “Good News! The New Strategy of Using InSight’s Arm to Push the Mole Seems to be Making Progress.”
What do coal, crude oil, and truffles have in common? Go ahead. We’ll wait.
The answer is thiophenes, a molecule that behaves a lot like benzene. Crude oil, coal, and truffles all contain thiophenes. So do a few other substances. MSL Curiosity found thiophenes on Mars, and though that doesn’t conclusively prove that Mars once hosted life, its discovery is an important milestone for the rover. Especially since truffles are alive, and oil and coal used to be, sort of.
Continue reading “Curiosity Finds Organic Molecules That Could Have Been Produced by Life on Mars”
The Curiosity rover on Mars has captured the most detailed panoramic image ever taken of the Red Planet’s surface. The image is made from over 1,000 images, containing 1.8 billion pixels of the Martian landscape, with 2.43 GB of high-resolution planetary goodness.
“This is the first time during the mission we’ve dedicated our operations to a stereo 360-degree panorama,” said Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada.
Continue reading “Curiosity’s Latest Mars Panorama, Captured in 1.8 Billion Glorious Pixels”
Want to look inside a deep, dark pit on Mars? Scientists and engineers using the HiRISE Camera on board NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have done just that.
From its orbit about 260 km (160 miles) above the surface, HiRISE can spot something as small as a dinner table, about a meter in size. But can it look inside a cave-like feature on the Red Planet and actually resolve any details inside this pit?
Continue reading “Look down into a pit on Mars. The caved-in roof of a lava tube could be a good place to explore on the Red Planet”
The InSight lander has been on the surface of Mars for about a year, and a half dozen papers were just published outlining some results from the mission. Though InSight’s primary mission is to gather evidence on the interior of Mars—InSight stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport—the lander also keeps track of Martian Meteorology. A new paper reports that InSight has found gravity waves, swirling dust devils, and a steady background rumble of infrasound.
Continue reading “InSight has been Sensing Dust Devils Sweep Past its Landing Site”
The NASA and DLR InSight lander has been on Mars for over a year now. The mission has faced significant challenges getting its HP3 (Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package) into the subsurface, but the spacecraft’s other instruments are working as intended. Now, researchers have published six papers outlining some of the mission’s scientific results.
Continue reading “After a Challenging First Year on Mars, InSight Shows Us that Mars is Seismically Active”
There may be no life on Mars, but there’s still a lot going on there. The Martian surface is home to different geological process, which overlap and even compete with each other to shape the planet. Orbiters with powerful cameras give us an excellent view of Mars’ changing surface.
Continue reading “Dust Devils Have Left Dark Streaks All Over This Martian Crater”