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MARS
Nov 27, 2018 11:07:33 GMT -6
Post by swamprat on Nov 27, 2018 11:07:33 GMT -6
What's Next for NASA's New Mars Lander?By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | November 27, 2018
PASADENA, Calif. — NASA's InSight lander has made it to Mars, but it'll be a while before the robot is ready to start its science work.
InSight arrived at its new home yesterday afternoon (Nov. 26), acing a touchdown on an equatorial plane called Elysium Planitia. The lander will begin probing the Red Planet's interior in unprecedented detail — a few months from now. It'll take that long for InSight to deploy and calibrate its two main science instruments, a burrowing heat probe and a suite of super-sensitive seismometers. This gear must be placed on the Martian surface by the lander's robotic arm, and InSight team members want to make sure they get this crucial step — which no other Mars robot has ever done — exactly right.
So, the researchers will spend the next few weeks studying InSight's landing site carefully, deciding on the best deployment area. Then they'll practice deployment using a testbed lander here at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which manages InSight's mission.
This work will include "terraforming" the testbed to resemble InSight's actual environs on the Red Planet, mission instrument operations lead Elizabeth Barrett of JPL said yesterday during a post-landing news conference here.
Barrett likened deployment to a very difficult and high-stakes version of an arcade claw-machine game.
"It makes it a little bit longer — you need to take more pauses, to make sure you actually have the grapple on the payload before you lift it up, and it's actually on the ground before you let it go," Barrett said.
InSight's arm will actually perform three such placements, because it will drop a shield over the seismometer suite to insulate the instrument from wind and temperature swings, which could interfere with data collection and interpretation.
It'll take two to three months to finish the deployments, Barrett said, "and then another couple of months" before InSight's ready to begin its Mars science campaign in earnest. The additional time will be needed for the heat probe to hammer itself up to 16 feet (5 meters) below the surface, and to calibrate both instruments properly.
When they're up and running, the seismometers will be on the lookout for "marsquakes" caused by internal Martian rumblings and meteorite strikes. The heat probe, meanwhile, will gauge heat flow at different depths. InSight team members will also learn about the Martian core by measuring the slight wobbles in the planet's axial tilt — data they'll gather by precisely tracking InSight's position over time.
Together, these observations will reveal a great deal about Mars' internal structure and composition, which in turn will shed considerable light on how rocky planets in general form and evolve, mission team members have said.
InSight has already beamed home a bit of information, including a dust-speckled photo of its immediate surroundings. And this little taste — the stationary lander's first image from Mars — bodes well for future data collection, Barrett and other team members said: The area appears to be relatively flat and sandy, without lots of big rocks or other impediments to deployment. "We were all certain that that first image would help us determine how difficult a job we would have in placing the instruments," Barrett said. "And I'm very happy that it looks like we'll be able to do it quite easily — we hope."
"InSight" is short for "Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport." The lander's surface mission is scheduled to run for one Mars year, which is nearly two Earth years. It'll probably take the lander about that long to gather enough data to address its main mission goals, team members have said.
Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate) is out now.
www.space.com/42549-insight-mars-lander-whats-next.html
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MARS
Nov 27, 2018 21:43:56 GMT -6
Post by swamprat on Nov 27, 2018 21:43:56 GMT -6
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MARS
Dec 12, 2018 11:09:49 GMT -6
Post by swamprat on Dec 12, 2018 11:09:49 GMT -6
The first selfie taken by NASA’s InSight lander on Mars. The 11-image composite, which was released on Dec. 11, 2018, shows the lander's solar panels and deck. Atop the deck are InSight’s science instruments, weather sensor booms and UHF antenna. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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MARS
Dec 20, 2018 19:49:03 GMT -6
lois likes this
Post by swamprat on Dec 20, 2018 19:49:03 GMT -6
Moody photo from Mars shows a giant crater loaded with iceMark Kaufman December 20, 2018
Flying over the frigid northern reaches of Mars, the orbiting Mars Express satellite captured images of the 50-mile wide Korolev crater filled with ice.
Korolev is an especially alluring sight, not just because it's a well-preserved impact crater but because it's loaded with ice over a mile deep year round. Launched 15 years ago by the European Space Agency (ESA), Mars Express often focuses on glaciers and ice in the Martian polar regions.
The Korolev crater's ice is resistant to melting during the warmer summer seasons because the massive plain of ice creates a "cold trap," ESA explains. When air travels above the crater, it cools and sinks over the ice, building a sort of cool "shield" over the ice.
The Mars Orbiter looking down upon the Korolev crater. Image: esa
So even as the seasons change, Korolev remains brimming with ice. Most Martian craters, even in cooler regions, don't remain full year-round.
As Mars Express zips over the desert planet, it takes photos of different strips of land, and then transmits the pictures back to Earth.
ESA scientists then combine the images together to build a coherent picture of different Martian landforms, dried-up lakes, and masses of frozen water.
These Korolev images above are composites of five different photos, each taken during a separate orbit across Mars. Korolev is named for a giant in space history: rocket scientist Sergei Korolev.
Korolev headed the Soviet space program and famously beat the Americans into space. The Soviets, under Korolev's leadership, sent both the first human and satellite into space.
"He’s a key figure in space history — though he died much too early," space historian Robert Pearlman said.
Mars Express continues to actively scour the red Martian terrain and transmit truly brilliant extraterrestrial images back to Earth.
www.yahoo.com/news/moody-photo-mars-shows-giant-163837923.html
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MARS
Mar 13, 2019 16:42:07 GMT -6
Post by auntym on Mar 13, 2019 16:42:07 GMT -6
mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/03/mysterious-piece-of-metal-with-round-hole-spotted-on-mars/ Mysterious Piece of Metal with Round Hole Spotted on Marsby Paul Seaburn / mysteriousuniverse.org/author/paulseaburn/ March 13, 2019 Pareidolia: the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern. Mars: a red planet covered in pareidolia. The Opportunity Mars rover may be dead, but the phenomena it helped propagate is alive and well and continuing to cause odd news stories about creatures, humanoids and strange out-of-place objects on the surface of the fourth rock from the Sun. The latest can be seen in a photograph making the usual romp across the paranormal and weird news side of the Internet showing what appears to be a piece of metal with a perfectly round hole cut into it lying on the surface of Mars as if it: a) fell off of an alien spaceship; b) was left by humans who secretly visited the planet; c) is part of an abandoned alien city slowly rising up as the soil is blown away. Or it could be a rock. Credit: NASA The photo was the star of a video uploaded this week on the WhatsUpInTheSky37 YouTube channel, which attributes it to a “Shamus” who apparently found it at a really cool site called Gigapan for SOL 2013 which shows paannamic views of the Martian surface that can be moved and zoomed. All of that could be more impressive than the object itself, which indeed looks like a triangular piece of metal with a perfect circle cut out that skeptics know from looking at other pareidolia-fied photos from Mars and the Moon could very well be a rock whose image is distorted by shadows and angles. Or it could be something else. On the “piece of a human Martian probe” side, commenters point out that it could be debris from the lander that brought Curiosity to Mars or it could have fallen to the surface from another successful or failed Mars mission. Adding a little imagination, it could be a piece of a spaceship or vehicle or other equipment from a secret mission – you know, the NASA missions to land humans on Mars that no one can talk about. There are no tire tracks or footprints around the piece, but those could easily have been blown away by the strong Martian winds, although they somehow didn’t cover up or pile sand against the object, which seems to be resting unobstructed on the Martian ground. Going full pareidolia-plus-enhanced-imagination, commenters speculate it could be from an alien spacecraft – assuming their spacecraft crash or fall apart like ours do, even after successfully navigating accident-free for light years. Again, that paannamic view from Gigapan shows no other objects in the immediate area. Yes, that’s the case with many fossils found on Earth, but those are tissue that can deteriorate, decay and disintegrate … this is allegedly a piece of metal that survived a trip of light years. Or a rock. In the end, unless a rover with an arm, a robot with an arm or a human astronaut with an arm can pick up the object, inspect it closely or bring it back to Earth, we’re unarmed to do more than just speculate what this thing might be. For now, the needle on the meter is very close to ‘rock’. Pareidolia … you’re a cruel friend. mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/03/mysterious-piece-of-metal-with-round-hole-spotted-on-mars/
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MARS
Apr 14, 2019 12:06:24 GMT -6
Post by auntym on Apr 14, 2019 12:06:24 GMT -6
mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/04/is-there-wine-on-mars-the-answer-may-soon-be-yes/ Is There Wine on Mars? The Answer May Soon Be “Yes”by Paul Seaburn / mysteriousuniverse.org/author/paulseaburn/April 11, 2019 “Georgians were the first winemakers on Earth and now we hope to pioneer viticulture on the planet next door.” It’s often said that real progress in a new technology isn’t made until someone starts using it for sex or getting high. That seems to be the case in the quest to be ready to grow plants on Mars as soon as humans first step onto the red soil. Yes, I know, some of you believe humans are already there – but do they have booze? A group of researchers in the country of Georgia, which prides itself on being the birthplace of wine-making, is planting the seeds to become the first to grow grapes and make wine on another planet. And yes, they’re planning for more than just reds. “In the distant future, Martian colonists will be able to grow plants directly in Martian soil.” The IX Millennium project (named for the 8,000 years Georgia has been making wine) was founded in January 2019 by Nikoloz Doborjginidze to lead the way to wine on Mars. The Independent reports this week that in just three short months, astrobiologist Marika Tarasashvili, has developed a composting bacteria that will turn Martian dirt into fertile Earth-like soil. Working in a lab in Tbilisi, she’s using bacteria collected from “extreme ecosystems” (no, not gas station restrooms, but that’s a good backup plan) like hot sulphurous springs and breeding it to ingest Mars and excrete earth. “But first we need to create a model of completely controlled sustainable Martian greenhouses.” Tusia Garibashvili is the founder of Space Farms company, which is now building a vertical farming laboratory with tightly controlled temperature, atmosphere and radiation conditions that will simulate the Martian environment … on the inside. On the outside will be a luxury hotel in Tbilisi that will house the laboratory — who says scientists have to live like lab rats? Meanwhile, a second part of IX Millennium is working at the Business and Technology University testing various Georgian grape varieties in a simulated Martian environment. So far they’ve determined that pale-skinned Rkatsiteli grapes — an ancient and versatile white wine variety that dates back to 3000 BCE – grows best under harsh Mars-like ultra-violet rays. Rkatsiteli grapes Is the faux Rkatsiteli wine any good? The researchers at IX Millennium aren’t ready to answer that and are planning to test many more barrels of Martian whites and reds until the first Mars mission is ready … so they have plenty of time. Of course, they also have a noble cause to use as a front for all of that wine-tasting, according to Business and Technology University Dean Nino Enukidze. “Martian dreams aside, our experiments are providing information that is vital as humanity confronts a multitude of environmental challenges. We will be able to identify and breed food crops resistant to the problems caused by global climate change.” That’s right … the solution to climate change could come from drinking Martian wine made from Georgian grapes. As Matt Damon might say, it beats growing potatoes mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/04/is-there-wine-on-mars-the-answer-may-soon-be-yes/
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MARS
Apr 16, 2019 14:57:21 GMT -6
via mobile
Post by jcurio on Apr 16, 2019 14:57:21 GMT -6
As “neat” as all this sounds, “faux” grapes is one of the foods I have come to question in the last 2 years.
You know, those large, exceedingly plump green ones that look too good to be true? The couple of times that I found one later, spilled next to the driveway, were UNTOUCHED by insects.
And unspoiled a few days later. Even ones halved.
??
Kind of reminds me of ice cream that doesn’t melt.
Questionable.
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MARS
May 22, 2019 16:40:50 GMT -6
Post by auntym on May 22, 2019 16:40:50 GMT -6
NASA360 Verified account @nasa360 May 21, 2019
🎶 I'm leaving on an Atlas V-541 launch vehicle and I won't be back again 🎶
All aboard! Here's your chance to get a ticket to Mars, boarding pass and all. Sign up to have your name flown to the Red Planet on our next Mars rover: go.nasa.gov/2VUryMV APPLY FOR BOARDING PASS... mars.nasa.gov/participate/send-your-name/mars2020/
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MARS
Jun 17, 2019 13:25:34 GMT -6
Post by auntym on Jun 17, 2019 13:25:34 GMT -6
mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/06/nasa-photographs-giant-starfleet-emblem-from-star-trek-on-mars/ NASA Photographs Giant Starfleet Emblem from ‘Star Trek’ on Marsby Sequoyah Kennedy / mysteriousuniverse.org/author/skennedy/June 15, 2019 Are Martians obsessive Star Trek fans? How infuriating would it be if Mars turned out to be inhabited by a civilized society that was absolutely ruined by the re-runs TV shows we’ve been blasting out in all directions? Perhaps a friendly debate over who was the best captain of the USS Enterprise (it’s Picard, and yeah that’s probably the most common answer but it also happens to be correct) would be a good icebreaker when we make first contact. These are things we need to start thinking about, as apparently there’s a giant Starfleet logo on the surface of Mars. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) recently photographed a geological structure on the surface of Mars that looks nearly identical to the insignia worn by the members of Starfleet through every iteration of “Star Trek.” The formation was spotted on a sand dune in the volcanic plain of Hellas Plantia on Mars. Ross Beyer of the SETI Institute tweeted the picture and said: “Enterprising viewers will make the discovery that these features look conspicuously like a famous logo.” The dune in question. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona Yep. It sure does. But Beyer says that it’s only a coincidence that it looks like the Starfleet logo. Meaning that it wasn’t drawn by Martians who’s only reprieve from their boring, boring world is our TV shows. According to Beyer, the structure is a result of the complex interactions between sand, lava, and wind. He writes: Long ago, there were large crescent-shaped (barchan) dunes that moved across this area, and at some point, there was an eruption. The lava flowed out over the plain and around the dunes, but not over them. The lava solidified, but these dunes still stuck up like islands. However, they were still just dunes, and the wind continued to blow. Eventually, the sand piles that were the dunes migrated away, leaving these “footprints” in the lava plain. These are also called “dune casts” and record the presence of dunes that were surrounded by lava. Although, the coincidences do go a little bit further. In the pilot episode of the latest Star Trek series, “Star Trek: Discovery,” Captain Philippa Georgiou and Commander Michael Burnham are stranded on Mars and draw a giant Starfleet logo in the sand to signal their location. Starfleet Command emblem. In any case, it’s just about the best pop-culture reference we could ask to find on an alien planet. In a world that seems to be heading towards a future more reminiscent of “Blade Runner” than the optimism and spirit of exploration in “Star Trek,” perhaps we need a heavenly reminder to boldly go where no one has gone before. Also, it could just be Q messing with us. mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/06/nasa-photographs-giant-starfleet-emblem-from-star-trek-on-mars/
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MARS
Jun 21, 2019 13:26:31 GMT -6
jcurio likes this
Post by auntym on Jun 21, 2019 13:26:31 GMT -6
www.space.com/mars-fresh-crater-nasa-mro-photo-2019.html Bam! Fresh Crater Spied on Mars — and It Looks SpectacularBy Elizabeth Howell / www.space.com/author/elizabeth-howell6-18-2019 The crater is about 50 feet wide. Mars got whacked.A small space rock crashed into the Red Planet's surface recently, producing a fresh crater that researchers estimate is 49 feet to 53 feet (15 to 16 meters) wide. The dramatic feature is clearly visible in a newly released image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The spacecraft has been imaging the Red Planet up close for more than 13 years using its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera and photographing larger swaths of terrain with its lower-resolution Context Camera (CTX). A new crater on Mars, which appeared sometime between September 2016 and February 2019, shows up as a dark smudge on the landscape in this high-resolution photo. (Image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)A color image from HiRISE, www.uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_059635_1635 posted June 6 and taken in April, shows a large black-and-blue bruise on the landscape amid an otherwise flat area of red Martian dirt. Because MRO cannot look everywhere at once, it's unclear exactly when the new crater formed; the best estimate is somewhere between September 2016 and February 2019, scientists said. While MRO captures hundreds of these new dark smudges a year, said HiRISE team member and University of Arizona staff scientist Veronica Bray, this new crater is on the larger side of the ones that she has ever seen. That means the impact that created it was a fairly rare event, at least as far as we know from 13 years of MRO's continuous observing. Bray estimated that the impactor responsible was about 5 feet (1.5 m) wide — so small that it would either have burst into pieces or eroded away completely had it come through Earth's much thicker atmosphere. The impactor might have been a more solid rock than usual, she added, because other rocks coming into Mars' atmosphere often shatter high in the air and create chains of craters as broken-up pieces smack into the terrain below. "It is a reminder of what's out there," Bray, a HiRISE targeting specialist who imaged this new crater, told Space.com. She said that Mars is a dynamic place, complete with shifting sand dunes and whirling dust devils, but she finds craters the most interesting Red Planet surface features. "It's a gorgeous [crater]. I'm glad I got it in the color strip," she said. CONTINUE READING: www.space.com/mars-fresh-crater-nasa-mro-photo-2019.html
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MARS
Jun 24, 2019 9:32:38 GMT -6
jcurio likes this
Post by jojustjo on Jun 24, 2019 9:32:38 GMT -6
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Deleted
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MARS
Jul 4, 2019 16:37:17 GMT -6
Post by Deleted on Jul 4, 2019 16:37:17 GMT -6
Mars is known as the Red Planet, but could we color it green?
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MARS
Jul 4, 2019 22:58:10 GMT -6
Post by jojustjo on Jul 4, 2019 22:58:10 GMT -6
I could see that in some future time...I'm sure the technology is out there. Welcome JohnnyLee
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MARS
Oct 18, 2019 14:45:37 GMT -6
Post by auntym on Oct 18, 2019 14:45:37 GMT -6
mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/10/ex-nasa-scientist-claims-life-was-discovered-on-mars-in-1976/ Ex-NASA Scientist Claims Life Was Discovered on Mars in 1976by Paul Seaburn / mysteriousuniverse.org/author/paulseaburn/October 19, 2019 David Bowie sang about it. Ray Bradbury wrote about it. Elon Musk dreams about it being him. The possibility of life existing on Mars has intrigued humans ever since the red dot in the sky was called a planet and given a name. But no one – that includes robotic rovers – has ever proven without a doubt that there is life on Mars. Now, an ex-NASA scientist who worked on the Viking 1 and Viking 2 missions to the Red Planet in the mid 1970s is claiming that life – or something that looked an awful lot like it – was discovered by the Viking landers but NASA dismissed all of the positive signs when it couldn’t duplicate them in an Earth laboratory. Now he wants the agency to send life detection equipment to Mars again. Wait a minute … you mean in 43 years NASA has NEVER sent life-detection instruments back to Mars? Is this a cover-up? “NASA concluded that the LR had found a substance mimicking life, but not life. Inexplicably, over the 43 years since Viking, none of NASA’s subsequent Mars landers has carried a life detection instrument to follow up on these exciting results.” In an article published in Scientific American, Gilbert V. Levin — an engineer and inventor and the principal investigator for the Labeled Release life detection experiment on NASA’s Viking missions to Mars – claims that what the landers found in two locations 4,000 miles apart couldn’t be anything BUT life forms, yet NASA pays lip service to a life-detection mission but has no plans for one, even after the Curiosity rover last year found organic matter in 3-billion-year-old mudstone and recently found evidence of salty lakes where organisms could live. Levin explains his frustration. “Life on Mars seemed a long shot. On the other hand, it would take a near miracle for Mars to be sterile. NASA scientist Chris McKay once said that Mars and Earth have been “swapping spit” for billions of years, meaning that, when either planet is hit by comets or large meteorites, some ejecta shoot into space. A tiny fraction of this material eventually lands on the other planet, perhaps infecting it with microbiological hitch-hikers. That some Earth microbial species could survive the Martian environment has been demonstrated in many laboratories. There are even reports of the survival of microorganisms exposed to naked space outside the International Space Station (ISS).” Swapping spit? That gives me an idea! Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, in many scientific writings, Gilbert V. Levin has presented evidence which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Viking LR experiments detected living organisms metabolizing in a solution known to reliably detect life. Furthermore, subsequent missions have found methane, surface water, formaldehyde, ammonia and other substances needed for life as well as physical formations that indicate life. In fact, as he states in his article: “No factor inimical to life has been found on Mars.” (Inimical: hostile or adverse.) In conclusion, Gilbert V. Levin sees no other way to rule but: “… the Viking LR did find life.” Is he right? Why has NASA continued to look on Mars for evidence of past life, but not present life? The instruments are available and ready to go. What are they waiting for? Even if Martians are just Earth spit, we have a right to know. mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/10/ex-nasa-scientist-claims-life-was-discovered-on-mars-in-1976/
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MARS
Jun 3, 2020 13:27:41 GMT -6
Post by auntym on Jun 3, 2020 13:27:41 GMT -6
www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/map-every-mars-landing-attempt.html Map of Every Mars Landing Attempt, Ever by Emily Lakdawalla / www.planetary.org/about/staff/emily-lakdawalla.html June 3, 2020 New and improved guide to all the places we've landed—or crashedIt’s almost Mars launch season again! Once every 26 months, as Earth runs on its inside track around the Sun, physics favors launches from our planet toward Mars. There are 3 Mars-bound missions that plan to launch in July, and 2 of them hope to land. (The one that won’t land is just named Hope.) NASA will be launching the Perseverance rover, and China its Tianwen-1 orbiter and rover. There was to have been a 3rd rover launching this summer, but the European Space Agency had to delay Rosalind Franklin and Kazachok’s mission until the next opportunity comes around in 2022. Many years ago, as Spirit and Opportunity were readying for launch, I produced a map of all the locations of landed Mars missions, both failed and successful. Since then I’ve updated it with Phoenix, Curiosity, Schiaparelli, and InSight. Now that we have several new missions planned, I figured it was time for a complete do-over. Here it is! Emily Lakdawalla for The Planetary Society. Base maps processed by Patrick McGovern from MOLA data. Every Mars Landing Attempt, Ever Mars has seen 12 landing attempts, of which 8 have led to successful surface missions. All successes were also NASA missions. NASA has had only one Mars landing failure. ESA has made 2 unsuccessful attempts. Russia has tried 3 times. Of those, one—Mars 3—may have landed successfully, but ceased communication soon after. This map shows all of those sites, plus proposed landing regions for 3 future missions, on a shaded-relief map produced using Mars Global Surveyor laser altimeter data. The map will be updated with actual landing locations in early 2021 after the 2020 launches reach Mars. To make this map, I dug into publications about landing site locations to get precise latitudes and longitudes. Wherever we know where landing sites are, we now have images from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s powerfully sharp HiRISE camera, so these locations are precise out to the fourth decimal place, the accuracy limited only by how well the HiRISE images are registered to the topographic base map (0.0001 degrees is about 6 meters). There are several crash locations that have never been found, including Mars 2, Mars 6, and Mars Polar Lander. I thought it would be interesting to note landing site elevations while I was looking up publications on landing positions. It turned out to be surprisingly hard to find elevation data; a lot of publications on Mars landing sites don’t include it. For most of the successful landing sites, there are two or more overlapping HiRISE images, permitting the production of a digital elevation model, so it’s possible to measure elevations that are accurate to the nearest meter or so. In the end I needed help from Tom Stein and Feng Zhou of Washington University in St. Louis to read elevations off of digital terrain models or topographic maps for me. As far as I know, this is the first publication to include all the landing locations to this level of precision, and the first to list elevations for all Mars landing sites. This map was a big research project, but it was actually an interim product that I made on the way to producing one that is a little friendlier for mobile viewing and social sharing. This simplified version has only the successful and future landing sites. Thanks to Planetary Society volunteer and retired Jet Propulsion Laboratory space image wrangler Sue LaVoie for helping me find or make the handy-dandy spacecraft icons. The Planetary Society Mars Landings: Past and Future There have been 8 successful Mars landings, and 3 more are already planned. This map will be updated once the 2 launches of 2020 have attempted their landings in early 2021. I hope this map is useful to people, space fans and professionals alike. I’m providing it in both PNG (9.5 MB) and PDF (35 MB) form for easy, crisp printing. Enjoy! www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/map-every-mars-landing-attempt.html
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Post by auntym on Apr 19, 2021 13:08:41 GMT -6
Mars Helicopter Ingenuity Makes Its First Flight On Red Planet | TODAY
Apr 19, 2021
After successfully test-flying a mini helicopter on Mars, NASA is calling the flight a “Wright Brothers moment” on the Red Planet. NBC’s Tom Costello reports for TODAY.
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MARS
Dec 6, 2021 12:23:51 GMT -6
Post by swamprat on Dec 6, 2021 12:23:51 GMT -6
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover snapped a spectacular 360-degree selfie of the Red Planet. The paannamic selfie is actually constructed from 81 individual images taken on November 20, 2021, using the Mars Hand Lens Imager. In the rocky landscape behind the rover is "Greenheugh Pediment" and "Rafael Navarro Mountain." Curiosity will next head toward the u-shaped opening to the left known as "Maria Gordon Notch."
www.coasttocoastam.com/article/curiosity-selfie/
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MARS
Jan 21, 2022 16:53:46 GMT -6
Post by auntym on Jan 21, 2022 16:53:46 GMT -6
time.com/6140688/life-on-mars-clues/Is There Life on Mars? A New Study Offers Tantalizing CluesBY JEFFREY KLUGER / time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/ JANUARY 20, 2022 This low-angle self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle at the site from which it reached down to drill into a rock target. JPL/NASA Mars is both a wonderful and a terrible place to go looking for life. On the one hand, the planet is a wasteland, where wintertime temperatures plunge to -153º C (-225º F), and the atmosphere—such as it is—is just 1% the density of Earth’s and composed principally of carbon dioxide. On the other hand, the Red Planet wasn’t always such a wreck. For the first billion or so years of its 4.5 billion year life span, it was awash in oceans and seas and protected by a thick blanket of air. Eventually, however, its magnetic field shut down, allowing the solar wind to claw away the atmosphere and the water to vanish into space. Democrats Lost Virginia By Ignoring Parents. Snow Days Show They Still Are But that first billion years offered Mars plenty of time to cook up at least microbial life, some of which may have died and left chemical traces on the surface—or even have retreated underground to continue thriving in deep, warm aquifers. Now, a new study, announced by NASA and published on Jan. 18 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that some of those lingering surface markers of ancient life may have been found—lying in plain sight, in fact. The new research, led by geoscientist Christopher House of Pennsylvania State University, was based on work conducted by NASA’s Curiosity rover, which has spent the last nine and a half years in Mars’s Gale Crater, a one-time lake, studying its rocks and surface sediments in search of clues to the planet’s geologic—and biologic—history. In the first part of House’s study, the rover used its on-board drill to collect rock and soil samples at 24 different sites around Gale Crater. The samples were then transferred to a laboratory oven within the body of the rover and heated to about 850º C (1,500º F). A laser spectrometer then went to work, analyzing the chemistry of the vaporized samples—looking especially for carbon, the elemental backbone of all life as we know it. Plenty of carbon was indeed detected—which was pretty much as expected. The surprise was just which type. Carbon comes in two principal isotopes: carbon-13, with six protons and seven neutrons; and carbon-12, with six protons and six neutrons. Carbon-13 doesn’t play well with biology; its heavier structure makes for tougher molecular bonds that don’t allow for the nimble coupling, decoupling and recombining that make biological processes possible, and that carbon-12 performs so easily. The more carbon-12 you find in a Martian sample, the greater the possibility that you’re looking at an artifact of early life. And Curiosity found plenty of it: Nearly half of the samples the rover studied had significantly higher levels of carbon-12 than scientists typically detect in Martian meteorites or in the Martian atmosphere. House and his colleagues posit an intriguing biological explanation for their findings: Ancient Martian microbes growing in and under the soil would have preferentially grabbed the available carbon-12 over carbon-13, metabolizing the isotope and producing methane as a byproduct. The methane would have risen into the atmosphere, where it would have been broken down by ultraviolet light, and the carbon-12 would then have precipitated back down as a dusting on the surface. Adding support to that idea was that the samples were collected in the relative highlands and cliffs of Gale Crater—which would have been above the ancient water level and been particularly exposed to the precipitating carbon-12. “The large carbon-12 amounts observed [on Mars] are found on Earth in biological methane or when biological methane is consumed by microbes,” wrote House in an email to TIME. “In some ways, the Martian samples resemble Earth rocks from Australia from 2.7 billion years ago, when our atmosphere was rich in biological methane.” NASA is no less sanguine about the findings—even if cautiously so. “We’re finding things on Mars that are tantalizingly interesting,” said Paul Mahaffy, a recently-retired member of the Curiosity science team, in a statement. “But we would really need more evidence to say we’ve identified life.” Mahaffy’s caution is well-placed, because even House admits there are other, non-biological phenomena that could explain the new findings. For one thing, ultraviolet energy from the sun might have caused changes in the molecular makeup of the Martian atmosphere, producing excess amounts of carbon dioxide and carbon-12, which would then have rained down on the surface just as it would in biological processes. “There are papers that predict that UV could cause this type of fractionation,” said House in a statement released by Penn State. “However, we need more experimental results showing this … fractionation so we can rule in or rule out this explanation.” Alternatively, and more dramatically, evidence from meteorites indicates that every 100 million years or so, the solar system passes through an interstellar cloud that is rich in multiple elements, including lighter carbon-12. In theory, that carbon could have rained down on Mars and could explain the new findings. The problem with that scenario is that the cloud would have led to global cooling that would in turn have resulted in glaciation in Gale Crater—signs of which have not been detected. “We have not seen significant evidence for a glacier at Gale Crater yet,” House says. The Curiosity rover, meantime, will continue its explorations, not only analyzing more of the Martian surface, but also sniffing for methane plumes that are known to be released from beneath the surface of Mars periodically, and checking them for the telltale carbon. That would be something of a gold standard finding—possibly indicating not just ancient, but extant life. “If we were to [discover a large enough plume],” House says, “the result might match the carbon on the ancient surface, suggesting that the same microbes still inhabit the subsurface.” Short of that case-closed discovery, House is reserving his judgment. “All three of the explanations proposed fit the data that we have,” he says. “We are being cautious with our interpretations here, but that is the right approach when studying another world such as Mars.” time.com/6140688/life-on-mars-clues/
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MARS
Feb 9, 2022 14:56:34 GMT -6
jcurio likes this
Post by auntym on Feb 9, 2022 14:56:34 GMT -6
www.yahoo.com/now/alien-figure-mars-why-people-181159810.html‘Alien figure on Mars’: Why people are saying an anonymous piece of rock is proof of life on the red planet
by Andrew Griffin / Mon, February 7, 2022 (Scott C Waring/Nasa) A piece of rock has ignited hope that it is actually a tranquil person hanging out on Mars – but it almost certainly isn’t. But it is no scientific breakthrough or major find – instead, it is just a trick of the eye that has been used a number of times to get people excited about the possibility of life on the red planet. The supposed sighting began on a blog, UFO Sightings Daily, written by Scott C Waring. In a large image originally sent back by the Mars rover in Last year, he claimed to have spotted a person lying down – with some people suggesting it was akin to the pose that Kate Winslet takes in Titanic when she is being drawn. “Everyone here knows I love to comb through NASA photos,” wrote Scott C Waring in a post on his blog. “Well, I came across something unique...something that is 100% proof of intelligent life. There is a person laying down watching the NASA Mars rover from a safe distance away. “The person is about 1 foot tall, .3 meters and is laying down, pinkish upper chest, neck and face, radish hair, wearing a dark suit, but has a grey object over one shoulder...looks like a backpack of some sort. There are even footprints behind the person leading up to the location they chose to lay down at.” (Nasa/Scott C Waring) But while it is all but impossible to say for sure that the Mars rover hasn’t spotted an alien, the picture is far from 100 per cent proof of alien life. In fact, it is almost certainly just a trick of the eye. That phenomenon is known as “pareidolia”, which describes the way that humans tend to see something meaningful in things that are in fact just arbitrarily arranged. People are given to seeing faces or other objects, even in the simplest and most unrelated things, whether on Earth or elsewhere. CONTINUE READING: www.yahoo.com/now/alien-figure-mars-why-people-181159810.html
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MARS
May 11, 2022 14:43:18 GMT -6
Post by auntym on May 11, 2022 14:43:18 GMT -6
www.coasttocoastam.com/article/anomaly-hunters-spot-doorway-on-mars/Anomaly Hunters Spot 'Doorway' on Mars
May 11, 2022 By Tim Binnall / www.coasttocoastam.com/pages/tim-binnall/Anomaly hunters scouring the latest NASA images of Mars for strange and unusual objects spotted a peculiar feature that resembles a doorway on the side of a hill. The intriguing oddity was photographed mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/1064629/?site=msl by the space agency's Curiosity rover this past Saturday as the vehicle was continuing its mission exploring the Red Planet. The image in question, which can be seen in full and in color here, shows a rocky hillside that initially appears fairly pedestrian until one looks closer and sees what appears to be a doorway seemingly carved into the landscape and leading into a hallway with walls sporting smooth sides. Some observers have noted that the intriguing feature bears an uncanny resemblance to the entrances of temples in ancient Egypt and, as such, have posited that the perceived doorway served a similar function for a building of significance to Martians who resided on the Red Planet in the distant past. Of course, as always, skeptics will argue that the curious sight is merely a natural formation that merely looks fantastic thanks to the phenomenon of pareidolia. What's your take on the eyebrow-raising anomaly? Is it the opening to an ancient Martian temple or simply the product of erosion? www.coasttocoastam.com/article/anomaly-hunters-spot-doorway-on-mars/
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MARS
Jun 13, 2022 11:55:27 GMT -6
Post by auntym on Jun 13, 2022 11:55:27 GMT -6
www.coasttocoastam.com/article/nasa-photographs-starfleet-logo-on-surface-of-mars/NASA Photographs 'Starfleet Logo' on Surface of MarsJune 13, 2019 NASA Photographs 'Starfleet Logo' on Surface of Mars By Tim Binnall / www.coasttocoastam.com/pages/tim-binnall/Proving that anomaly hunters aren't alone in spotting strange things out in space, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped an image of the Red Planet which seems to show Star Trek's iconic Starfleet logo. The amusing photo was taken by the satellite back in April and released by the space agency this week. Before one begins speculating that perhaps the odd formation was created by an alien race enamored with the classic TV series, NASA offered a more scientific explanation. According to the space agency, the 'logo' is actually the remnants of dunes which once sat on the surface of Mars. NASA explained that an eruption occurred on Mars "at some point" in the distant past and the mounds of sand were turned into veritable islands amid a sea of cooling lava. Over time, wind subsequently swept the tops of the dunes away and left "these 'footprints' in the lava plain." www.coasttocoastam.com/article/nasa-photographs-starfleet-logo-on-surface-of-mars/
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MARS
Jun 5, 2023 16:22:27 GMT -6
Post by swamprat on Jun 5, 2023 16:22:27 GMT -6
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MARS
Jul 22, 2023 22:03:17 GMT -6
Post by auntym on Jul 22, 2023 22:03:17 GMT -6
The Proof Is Out There: Top 4 MIND-BLOWING Mysteries on Mars
HISTORY
Jul 22, 2023 #TheProofIsOutThere
These Martian images and theories will shock you. See more in this compilation from The Proof Is Out There.
00:00 UFO Crash 05:47 Martian Civilization 11:23 Buildings on Mars 15:52 Birds
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