Posted on by Andy Tomaswick

Ingenuity Makes a one-way Trip for the First Time, Flying to a new Landing Site

Ever feel like no matter how far you fly you end up in the same spot?  Ingenuity certainly does.  The helicopter that has been making dozens of headlines lately for all of the firsts it is achieving as part of its mission on Mars so far has only returned back to its original take-off point.  Named Wright Brothers Field, after the brothers who first brought controlled powered flight to Earth, it has been the site of all of Ingenuity’s firsts so far.  But now the basic science of Ingenuity’s mission is over and it is time to start moving on, which it did last week to a new “air field”.

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Posted on by Matt Williams

The Same Technology Could Search for Microbes in Mars Rocks or Under the ice on Europa

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Ever since it landed in the Jezero Crater on Feb. 18th, 2021, the Perseverance rover has been prepping its scientific instruments to begin searching for signs of past life on the Red Planet. These include spectrometers that will scan Martian rocks for organics and minerals that form in the presence of water and a caching system that will store samples of Martian soil and rock for retrieval by a future mission.

These telltale indicators could be signs of past life, which would most likely take the form of fossilized microbes. In the near future, a similar instrument could be used to search for present-day extraterrestrial life. It’s known as the Wireline Analysis Tool for the Subsurface Observation of Northern ice sheets (WATSON), and could be used to find evidence of life inside “ocean worlds” like Europa, Enceladus, and Titan.

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