Archive for mars rover

Mars rover finds hint of a life-friendly planet

By alkaon on June 10, 2013 No Comments



Mars rover finds hint of a life-friendly planet

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Martian rock analyzed by Nasa’s rover Opportunity contains clays formed in non-acidic water, an environment potentially suitable for the chemistry of ancient life to brew.

The solar-powered Opportunity landed on Mars in January 2004 for what was expected to be a 90-day mission to look for signs there was once water. It, and a twin rover, Spirit, which succumbed to the harsh Martian environment three years ago, had both found rocks altered by highly acidic water.
 
While acid-loving microbes exist on Earth, scientists suspect the chemical building blocks for life need more neutral conditions to evolve into life.

“The tough thing about an acid environment is that it’s very, very hard, we believe, to get pre-biotic chemistry, the kind of chemistry that can lead to the origin of life,” Cornell University’s Steve Squyres, lead scientist for the Opportunity and Spirit missions, told reporters during a conference call on Friday.

“What’s exciting about this discovery is that it points to a neutral pH at a time very, very early in Martian history,” he added.

“What we have here is a very different chemistry. This is water you can drink,” Squyres said. “This is the most powerful evidence for neutral (non-acidic) chemistry water that has been found by Opportunity,” he noted.

Opportunity took three years to reach the rim of a large impact basin called Endeavour Crater, where it examined, among other objects, a small rock called Esperance.

It took seven tries before Opportunity got itself positioned properly to scratch the rock’s surface and see what lies beneath. Unlike NASA’s follow-on Mars rover Curiosity, which landed on the opposite side of Mars in August, Opportunity has no drill or onboard chemistry lab to obtain and analyze samples.

Instead, it uses its instruments to determine basic mineralogy. Esperance, scientists determined, contains aluminum-rich clays, a telltale sign that neutral water flowed through the rock.

Likewise, Curiosity’s first analysis of powder drilled from an ancient mudstone showed signs of neutral water, plus elements needed to support microbial life. Results from the rover’s second sample analysis are pending.

Opportunity now is making its way south along the Endeavour Crater rim toward an exposed stack of rock that may provide more clues about Mars’ transition from a warm and wet world to the cold, dry, acidic desert that exists today.

Scientists are hopeful Opportunity will make it there by August 1, before the start of Martian winter in the southern hemisphere.

“We’ve been on borrowed time for a while,” said project manager John Callas, with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “How long Opportunity lasts is anyone’s guess.”-Reuters

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Mars | Earth | Life | rover |

Article source: http://www.tradearabia.com/news/MISC_237452.html

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Mars rover Opportunity examines clay clues in rock

By alkaon on May 20, 2013 No Comments

Mars rover Opportunity examined clay clues in a rock called EsperanceNASA’s senior Mars rover, Opportunity, is driving to a new study area after a dramatic finish to 20 months on “Cape York,” with examination of a rock intensely altered by water.

The fractured rock, called “Esperance,” provides evidence about an ancient wet environment possibly favorable for life. The mission’s principal investigator, Steve Squyres of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, said, “Esperance was so important, we committed several weeks to getting this one measurement of it, even though we knew the clock was ticking.”

The mission’s engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, had set this week as a deadline for starting a drive toward “Solander Point,” where the team plans to keep Opportunity working during its next martian winter.

“What’s so special about Esperance is that there was enough water not only for reactions that produced clay minerals, but also enough to flush out ions set loose by those reactions so that Opportunity can clearly see the alteration,” said Scott McLennan of the State University of New York in Stony Brook.

This rock’s composition is unlike any other Opportunity has investigated during nine years on Mars — higher in aluminum and silica, lower in calcium and iron.

The next destination, Solander Point, and the area Opportunity is leaving, Cape York, both are segments of the rim of Endeavor Crater, which spans 14 miles (22 kilometers) across. The planned driving route to Solander Point is about 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers). Cape York has been Opportunity’s home since the rover arrived at the western edge of Endeavor in mid-2011 after a two-year trek from a smaller crater.

“Based on our current solar array dust models, we intend to reach an area of 15° northerly tilt before Opportunity’s sixth martian winter,” said Scott Lever from JPL. “Solander Point gives us that tilt and may allow us to move around quite a bit for winter science observations.”

Northerly tilt increases output from the rover’s solar panels during the southern hemisphere winter. Daily sunshine for Opportunity will reach winter minimum in February 2014. The rover needs to be on a favorable slope well before then.

The first drive away from Esperance covered 81.7 feet (24.9 meters) May 14. Three days earlier, Opportunity finished exposing a patch of the rock’s interior with the rock abrasion tool. The team used a camera and spectrometer on the robotic arm to examine Esperance.

The team identified Esperance while exploring a portion of Cape York where the Compact Reconnaissance Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had detected a clay mineral. Clays typically form in wet environments that are not harshly acidic. For years, Opportunity had been finding evidence for ancient wet environments that were very acidic. The CRISM findings prompted the rover team to investigate the area where clay had been detected from orbit. There, they found an outcrop called “Whitewater Lake,” containing a small amount of clay from alteration by exposure to water.

“There appears to have been extensive, but weak, alteration of Whitewater Lake but intense alteration of Esperance along fractures that provided conduits for fluid flow,” Squyres said. “Water that moved through fractures during this rock’s history would have provided more favorable conditions for biology than any other wet environment recorded in rocks Opportunity has seen.”

Article source: http://www.astronomy.com/~/link.aspx?_id=cf15546d-57ef-4bff-85c1-33bf5d31c456

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NASA’s Mars Rover Opportunity Breaks Record For Off-Planet Driving By A US …

By alkaon on May 20, 2013 No Comments

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NASA’s relentless solar-powered Mars rover Opportunity has now set a new record — greatest distance traveled by a US made vehicle on another world. The Opportunity rover was originally scheduled only for a three-month mission that began back in January 2004, but the solar-powered rover has shown itself to be quite tough and long-lasting — greatly outlasting the original mission.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State University

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State University

The new record set by Opportunity eclipses a record set more than 40 years ago by the Apollo moon buggy. Opportunity has traveled 22.220 miles on the Red Planet. The previous record was 22.210 miles, held by the Apollo 17 moon rover, which was driven by the astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt across the lunar surface in December 1972. The new US record is still about a mile under the world record — 23 miles — held by the Soviet Union’s Lunokhod 2 rover, which landed on the Moon in 1973.

“The record we established with a roving vehicle was made to be broken, and I’m excited and proud to be able to pass the torch to Opportunity,” Cernan said a few days ago in a conversation with Opportunity team member Jim Rice, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., space agency officials said.

The Mars rover Opportunity, along with its twin, Spirit, began their mission on Mars in order to look for evidence of past water activity on the planet, which thy both found.

Spirit, while lastly greatly linger than was originally expected, did finally give out in 2010, ceasing communication, and being declared “dead” by NASA. Opportunity, though, is still going strong. the Mars rover is currently on exploring the rim of Mars’ Endeavour Crater.

“Opportunity had been working at a section of the rim dubbed ‘Cape York’ since the middle of 2011. But this week it began trekking toward an area called Solander Point, which lies 1.4 miles away.”

So it’s looking very likely that Opportunity will soon surpass Lunokhod 2′s record, taking the record for overall off-planet driving as well.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

“I want to beat that record,” John Callas, Opportunity’s project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told SPACE.com last year, at a time when the rover’s odometer read 21.35 miles (34.4 km).

It’s possible though that the Mars rover Curiosity may be able to surpass both records, though that may not be for awhile…

Nathan (676 Posts)

For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts; for all is vanity. – Ecclesiastes 3:19

Article source: http://planetsave.com/2013/05/19/nasas-mars-rover-opportunity-breaks-record-for-off-planet-driving-by-a-us-made-vehicle/

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NASA Loans Mars Rover Replica To Sacramento Museum

By alkaon on May 6, 2013 No Comments



SACRAMENTO (CBS13) – A little bit of history is now staying at a Sacramento museum, giving space lovers an up close look at a Mars rover.

Sacramento’s Discovery Museum Science Space Center is unveiling a full-size NASA mock-up of the Mars rover Opportunity. It’s on loan from NASA and is exactly the same in every detail to the active rover on the red planet.

“This particular rover was designed to look for mineralogical evidence that there was once water on the surface of Mars. It’s also proving the rovers’ ability to drive around and navigate on their own,” said Challenger Learning Center Flight Director Bernta Bechler said.

Opportunity — about the size of a golf cart — landed on Mars more than nine years ago for a three-month mission. But — even to its designers’ surprise — it’s still running and sending back data.

NASA Loans Mars Rover Replica To Sacramento Museum

Article source: http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2013/05/05/nasa-loans-mars-rover-replica-to-sacramento-museum/

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Mars Rover draws a penis on red planet – Recombu

By alkaon on April 26, 2013 No Comments

Men can be a bit childish sometimes, but that juvenile streak isn’t limited to low-IQ-having Joe Bloggs. Some of the greatest minds in the world revealed even they are partial to a bit of peurile humour when Nasa staff, tasked with controlling the Mars Exploration Rover, used the space car to draw a penis on the surface of Mars.

The six-wheeled US$2.5 billion Mars Exploration Rover is designed to go about the surface of the red planet looking for signs of alien life – you know, sensible stuff – but not today. Suffice to say, man’s glorious immaturity has been cemented on an unprecedented and inter-planetary scale.

It’s not clear whether the NASA scientists and engineers drew the gentleman’s sausage inadvertantly, whether they did it to blow off some steam, or whether this is part of some Top Gear-esque publicity stunt, but there’s no disputing the outcome: a cock. On mars. Our greatest achievement. For all the universe to see.

The phallus photo was originally posted on Reddit alongside the rather brilliant caption: “Mars Rover = $800m. Team to operate = $1bn. Drawing a penis on the surface of another planet: priceless.”

Once out in the wild, Nasa’s servers soon struggled to cope with the sheer demand of eager Reddit-goers who wanted to have a gander. Keen to please the masses (or embrace the embarrassment), NASA responded by uploading a higher resolution image, suggesting the space pioneer was aware of the joke. It has, however, yet to comment officially.

The image is on NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory website, so we at least know the source of the picture. Whether it was Photoshopped for a joke, though, it’s difficult to say. All we know is…. penis.

Image: NASA 

Article source: http://recombu.com/cars/articles/news/mars-rover-draws-a-penis-on-red-planet

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Mars Rover Draws Penis In The Red Planet, The Internet Notices – The Inquisitr

By alkaon on April 25, 2013 No Comments

Looks like the folks at NASA operating the Mars Rovers get bored from time to time, just like everyone else. One Redditor pointed out that a rover had apparently drawn a penis on the planet’s surface, seen in an image that made the official NASA website.

If you really like space stuff and are super interested in the Mars Rover project, you can jog on over to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory website and read about all of the behind-the-scenes fun that makes the Mars Rovers project what it is.

If that’s a little over your head, then your eyes are likely to wander like Redditor aggrazel’s did, to an image of a Mars Rover’s tread marks shaped conspicuously like a giant dong.

Aggrazel put the image on Reddit with the caption “”Mars Rover = $800M, Team to Operate = $1B. Drawing a penis on the surface of another planet = Priceless,” and it has been upvoted into the stratosphere.

From the comments, it appears as though NASA’s JPL page became so popular from the post that it experienced errors and even periodic blackouts. There’s even talk on one thread of an inadvertent DDOS attack which replaced the entire page with the image of the Mars Rover’s penis drawing, but we were unable to see that for ourselves, beyond the before-and-after link provided.

What do you think of the Mars Rover’s penis drawing? Intentional, accidental, awkward? Sound off below!

Article source: http://www.inquisitr.com/633427/mars-rover-draws-penis-in-the-red-planet-the-internet-notices/

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Nasa Mars Rover Makes Second ‘Accidental’ Marking On Red Planet

By alkaon on April 24, 2013 No Comments

Following news that Nasa’s $800 million Mars Rover had accidently drawn a penis on the surface of the Red Planet, a fresh image released by the space agency on Wednesday morning has revealed a second unexpected mark – the name of ‘Ed Balls’.

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A Nasa spokesperson told the HuffPost UK that the daubing of the name of the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer for Great Britain and Northern Ireland is “certainly one of the more unusual events in the history of human space exploration” but he remained adamant the tracks were made at random by the rover as it searched for signs of ancient water.

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/04/24/nasa-mars-rover-penis-ed-balls_n_3145312.html?utm_hp_ref=uk

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NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity discovers never-before-seen rock on Red Planet

By alkaon on March 24, 2013 No Comments

Hydrated Minerals on Mars

Since landing on the Red Planet back in August of last year, NASA’s Mars rover, Curiosity, has steadily been amassing a wealth of discoveries, pointing to, among other things, the existence of water in Mars’ past.

Having been stationed at the depression within the Gale Crater known as Yellowknife Bay, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) undertook its first drilling operation on the Red Planet’s surface, revealing recently the existence of Martian clay obtained from the drill samples of the rock known as John Klein (named after a deceased mission scientist). The existence of clay clearly pointed towards the existence of water at some point in Mars’ past and neutral water at that, as earlier finds had pointed to the presence of acidic water. This discovery followed an earlier find of an ancient water way, but now the rover has discovered yet more evidence of water, as images revealed by NASA show a unique white rock, which hints at hydrated minerals.

Presenting the pictures at the 44th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in The Woodlands, Texas, NASA scientists revealed that back in January the rover had driven over a piece of rock, dubbed “Tintina”, breaking it to reveal the startling white interior, something conspicuous on the volcanic red of the planet. Though uncertain of the composition of the rock, the rover’s mast camera, which uses neutrons to detect the presence of hydrogen and thus water in rocks sampled, detected “a very strong hydration signal.”

Melissa Rice, of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), explains, “This is one of the brightest and whitest things we’ve seen with the Mastcam at the Gale Crater site. This rock, Tintina, has a very strong hydration signal that corresponds to all that white material we see inside the rock. But that hydration signal doesn’t show up anywhere else in the image. What Mastcam is seeing is water that is bound in the mineral structure of the rocks. This water is left over from a previous wet era and is now trapped and preserved in these hydrated minerals.”

NASA mission scientists also revealed that Curiosity was experiencing yet another computer glitch. The rover had previously experienced an error in its software that prompted it to go into “safe mode,” suspending activity. The researchers said that the present glitch had sent it into “safe mode” again and that NASA was trying to resolve the issue.

Article source: http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/14271109-nasa-mars-rover-curiosity-discovers-never-before-seen-rock-on-red-planet

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Mars Science by Curiosity Rover Hits New Snag

By alkaon on March 23, 2013 No Comments

A new glitch on NASA‘s Mars rover Curiosity has forced the vehicle to stay in safe mode longer than planned, stalling science operations for another couple of days, scientists said today (March 18).

The Curiosity rover had paused in its scientific investigation of the Red Planet in late February, when corrupted memory files forced engineers to switch the rover’s main operations from its “A-side” computer to its “B-side” backup.

Just as the computer switch was sorted out, though, mission managers decided to put the rover back in standby mode on March 5 to protect it from possible radiation that could be released by a major solar flare pointed toward Mars. Curiosity had come out of safe mode following that scare, but normal science operations had not yet resumed.

Now, a computer file error has forced the rover into safe mode again.

“This is not something which is rare or extraordinary,”Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger said today at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas. “It does mean that science has to stand down for a couple more days.”

The latest issue has to do with some of the rover’s files that were scheduled for deletion. One of those files was connected to a file still in use by the spacecraft, so the deletion process prompted an error that sent the rover into safe mode again, preventing the rover from resuming science as planned. [Curiosity Rover's Latest Amazing Mars Photos]

“If not for the latest safing, we would have been back in action today,” Grotzinger said. “The expectation is, it’s going to take a couple of sols [Martian days] to resolve this one.”

Despite these technical setbacks, though, Curiosity’s team of scientists has been forging ahead with analysis of the wealth of data collected by the rover so far. Those measurements allowed the researchers to declare last week the mission had found proof that a spot on ancient Mars would have provided habitable conditions to microbes, had they been present during the planet’s past.

New research discussed today at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference elaborates on that finding, suggesting that those habitable conditions extended beyond the particular site named last week, which lies in an area called Yellowknife Bay.

While the first evidence of past habitability came from Curiosity’s drill, which bored into rocks in Yellowknife Bay, the new findings of more widespread habitable conditions come from the rover’s Mast Camera (Mastcam), which has near-infrared filters that can detect iron-bearing rocks and hydrated (water-containing) minerals.

“With Mastcam, we see elevated hydration signals in the narrow veins that cut many of the rocks in this area,” Melissa Rice of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. “These bright veins contain hydrated minerals that are different from the clay minerals in the surrounding rock matrix.”

The scientists were able to track variations in the amount of hydrated minerals in different locations, as well as between different layers of the Martian surface.

“A very significant message from the instrument data is that we are sensitive not only to the global variations, but also to the local variations,” said Maxim Litvak of the Space Research Institute in Moscow, who is deputy principal investigator of Curiosity’s Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) instrument, which measures hydrogen on the Marian surface.

The $2.5 billion Curiosity rover, the centerpiece of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission, landed on Mars in August 2012 after launching the previous November. The rover has already accomplished its main goal, which was to determine whether the Red Planet was ever habitable to microbial life. Though the answer to that query has now been settled, the larger question of whether such life ever existed on Mars remains open. 

Follow Clara Moskowitz @ClaraMoskowitz and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebookand Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.

Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/mars-science-curiosity-rover-hits-snag-193814925.html

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Will a future Mars rover walk like a robot lizard?

By alkaon on March 22, 2013 No Comments

Traversing slippery terrain can be a tricky game for a Martian rover — or any wheeled robot, for that matter. Now, Georgia Tech researchers have built a biologically inspired robot that can speedily navigate slippery, sandy terrain.

The 2004 Mars rover Spirit discovered the disadvantages of wheeled travel the hard way when it became stuck in loose soil after six years of navigating all types of terrain. The six-legged robot, described in Friday’s edition of the journal Science, could provide a solution for such exploratory vehicles while navigating “flowable” ground.

Animals have developed fins to swim and legs to walk, but flowable terrain — think dry sand or dead leaves — presents particular challenges. Lizards and other critters, however, seem to navigate such terrain with relative ease.

So the scientists built a small robot — just about 5 inches long and weighing 150 grams — and used a 3-D printer to make legs in different shapes and see which one worked best.

The researchers found that a convex, C-shaped leg performed far better than a straight leg or a concave C-shaped leg. In fact, they achieved speeds of about 28 inches per second — not half bad for a robot being forced to traverse slippery testing ground, like poppy seeds or glass beads.

The robots did face some scientific roadblocks. If the grain sizes were about as long as their legs — relative “boulders,” from their perspective — their peculiar stride lost its edge.

Still, the researchers say the findings — and increasing understanding of what they call terradynamics, or how ground moves — could offer insight into the physical principles behind how lizards and other critters walk as well.

“We envision that, in concert with aero- and hydrodynamics, a general terradynamics of complex ground will not only advance understanding of how animals move at present and in the past, but also facilitate the development of robots with locomotor capabilities approaching those of organisms,” the authors wrote.

Follow me on Twitter @aminawrite.

Article source: http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-lizard-robot-mars-rover-slippery-leg-20130321,0,3786664.story

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NASA Image of the day

First American Woman in Space

 
On June 18, 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman to fly in space when the space shuttle Challenger launched on mission STS-7. As one of the three mission specialists on the STS-7 mission, she played a vital role in helping the crew deploy communications satellites, conduct experiments and make use of the first Shuttle Pallet Satellite. In this image, Dr. Ride sits in the aft flight deck mission specialist's seat during deorbit preparations. › Read more about Sally Ride's historic flight. Image Credit: NASA
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