Mars Archives

November 13, 2019November 13, 2019 by Evan Gough

Mars 2020 Rover is Going to a Place on Mars That’s Perfect for Preserving Fossils

Jezero Crater on Mars. Lighter colors represent higher elevations. The Mars 2020 rover will investigate the "bathtub ring" of carbonates around the edge of the crater for microscopic fossils. The dark oval is the landing ellipse. Image NASA/MRO

Back in November 2018, NASA announced that the Mars 2020 rover would land in the Jezero Crater. Jezero Crater is a geologically diverse area, with an alluvial fan of sediment deposited by an incoming river. That sediment may contain preserved ancient organic molecules, and the deposit is clearly visible in satellite images of the Crater.

But the crater holds something else that has scientists intrigued, something that doesn’t show up so clearly in visible light images: a “bathtub ring” of carbonates, which scientists think could hold fossils.

November 1, 2019November 1, 2019 by Matt Williams

Mars 2020 Stands Up on its Wheels For The First Time

This coming July, the Mars 2020 rover will launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and begin its journey to the Red Planet. After it touches down in the Jezero Crater, the rover will commence science operations similar to what Curiosity has been doing since 2012. This will consist of driving over rough terrain, sampling the atmosphere, collecting drill samples, and subjecting them to chemical analysis.

In order to get it ready for this mission, the engineering team over at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are putting the rover through its paces. On Oct. 8th, this included placing the full weight of the rover on its legs and wheels for the first time ever. This event, which was tantamount to an infant standing for the very first time, was captured with a time-lapse video that you can see below.

October 28, 2019October 28, 2019 by Evan Gough

InSight’s Heat Probe Has Bounced Back Out Of Its Hole

InSight's Heat Probe (HP3) has popped out of its hole. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This is sad news. After finding what seemed like a solution to the Mole’s difficulties on Mars, engineers are stymied again. The Mole, or Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) has bounced half-way out of its hole.

It’s like Groundhog Day on Mars. If the Mole bounces out of its hole, it means six more weeks of engineers scratching their heads to come up with a solution.

October 22, 2019October 22, 2019 by Evan Gough

A NASA Panel Says We Don’t Need to be so Careful About Infecting Other Worlds

This artist's concept depicts NASA's Mars 2020 rover exploring Mars. Credit: NASA

It’s time to update the rules. That’s the conclusion of a panel that examined NASA’s rules for planetary protection. It was smart, at the dawn of the space age, to think about how we might inadvertently pollute other worlds with Earthly microbes as we explore the Solar System. But now that we know a lot more than we did back then, the rules don’t fit.

October 18, 2019October 18, 2019 by Evan Gough

Success! NASA Confirms the Mole is Working Again.

The scoop on InSight's instrument arm exerting pressure on the Mole. This may supply the necessary friction to get the Mole going again. Image Credit: NASA/DLR

After months of setbacks, NASA says that the InSight Lander’s Mole is working again.

InSight landed on Mars on Nov. 26 2018 in Elysium Planitia. Its mission is to study the interior of the planet, to learn about how Mars and other rocky planets formed. InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport) is a NASA mission with other partners, including the DLR (German Aerospace Center.)

October 18, 2019October 18, 2019 by Evan Gough

There’s the Curiosity Rover, On the Move, Seen from Space

MSL Curiosity as imaged by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Image Credit: NASA/CalTech-JPL

If the Curiosity rover was paranoid, would it feel like it was being watched? Well, it is being watched, by its brother in orbit, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The MRO watched Curiosity as it travelled through the ‘Clay-Bearing Unit‘ in Gale Crater, during June and July, 2019.

October 15, 2019October 15, 2019 by Evan Gough

It Looks Like it’s Working! NASA InSight’s Mole is Making Progress Again Thanks to the Arm Scoop Hack

NASA and the DLR are making some progress with the Mole. The Mole has been stuck for months now, and NASA/DLR have been working to get it unstuck. After removing the mole’s housing to get a better look at it with InSight’s cameras, the team came up with a plan.

October 11, 2019October 11, 2019 by Evan Gough

This Dried Up Riverbed Shows that Water Once Flowed on the Surface of Mars

This image from ESA’s Mars Express shows a dried-up river valley on Mars named Nirgal Vallis. Copyright ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

From some viewpoints, Mars is kind of like a skeleton of Earth. We can see that it had volcanoes, oceans, and rivers, but the volcanoes no longer fume and the water is all gone. A new image from the ESA’s Mars Express drives the point home.

October 8, 2019October 8, 2019 by Evan Gough

Curiosity Finds A Region of Ancient Dried Mud. It Could Have Been an Oasis Billions of Year Ago

This Martian rock slab is called "Old Soaker." It may have formed more than 3 billion years ago when a mud layer dried out. The cracks indicate alternating periods of dryness and wetness. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

What happened to Mars? If Mars and Earth were once similar, as scientists think, what happened to all the water? Did there used to be enough to support life?

Thanks to the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity, we’re getting a better picture of ancient Mars and what it went through billions of years ago. A new study published in Nature Geoscience says that Mars likely underwent alternating periods of wet and dry, before becoming the frigid, dry desert it is now. Or at least, Gale Crater did.

October 3, 2019October 3, 2019 by Evan Gough

Here’s NASA’s New Plan to Get InSight’s Temperature Probe Into Mars

The mole with its wiring harness, and the scoop. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The mole is still stuck.

The mole is the name given to the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument on NASA’s Mars InSight lander. It’s job is to penetrate into the Martian surface to a depth of 5 meters (16 ft) to measure how heat flows from the planet’s interior to the surface. It’s part of InSight’s mission to understand the interior structure of Mars, and how it formed.

But it’s stuck at about 35 centimers (14 inches.) The mole can do science shy of its maximum depth of 5 meters, but not this shallow. And NASA, and the DLR (German Aerospace Center) who provided the mole, have a new plan to fix it.