Results tagged “Mars”

Caitlin Stier, contributor

(Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)

Carbonate minerals buried beneath the Martian surface could help explain the disappearance of carbon dioxide from Mars's atmosphere.

A thin, CO₂-dominated atmosphere surrounds Mars today. But in the past, it was likely much thicker, allowing liquid water to remain stable on the planet's surface. Where did that carbon dioxide go?

It may have gone towards forming carbonate minerals, which on Earth arise when oceans absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and deposit it as carbonate rock. A similar process involving liquid water may have happened on ancient Mars.

A mineral-mapping instrument aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted the minerals (shown in lighter shades) in rocks that had once been buried beneath the planet's surface but were later brought to the surface by impacts. A crater on the raised rim of an even larger, 470-metre-wide crater called Huygens reveals these iron and calcium carbonates.

James Wray of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, presented the findings this week at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas.

Seil Collins, reporter

(Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)

No, your monitor colour settings aren't wrong. This is picture of the Red Planet, snapped by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The image shows blue sand dunes covering part of the Rabe crater, a 100-kilometre-diameter impact site in the planet's southern highlands. The dunes are an accumulation of basalt sands from the crater's floor, shaped by Martian winds. This close view reveals the thumbprint-like texture of the ridges, troughs and ripples formed there. 

Caitlin Stier, contributor

(Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

Sand dunes on Mars's north pole are not static, as scientists once thought, but change with the seasons, reveal new high-resolution images.

Candice Hansen at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, and colleagues discovered changes in the dunes over the course of two Martian years after analysing images such as this one from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Their findings suggest that a springtime thaw of the dry ice that coats the dunes during winter can trigger avalanches that alter the chocolaty surfaces. The dunes' landscape, approximately the size of Texas, might be one of the most dynamic areas on the planet.

Journal reference: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1197636

Maggie McKee, space editor

(Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/JHU-APL/Brown Univ)

Light-coloured deposits (left and forefront) on the flank of an ancient volcano on the Red Planet might act like a Martian version of amber, preserving any life present at the site 3.7 billion years ago for future study.

The deposits contain the mineral hydrated silica, according to observations made by a spectrometer on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The mineral is transported and then concentrated by hot water or steam, suggesting the deposits were laid down in what was once a hydrothermal environment.

Groundwater may have been heated by magma from the erupting volcano and vented to the surface as steam, says John Mustard of Brown University in Rhode Island, a member of the team that identified the mineral.

"The heat and water required to create this deposit probably made this a habitable zone," says team leader John Skok of Brown.

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter

Melas Chasma, a huge canyon forming part of the 4000 km Valles Marineris rift valley on Mars, plunges 9 km below the surrounding plains in this image, which was taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter, making it one of the deepest depressions on the planet.

Released today by the German Aerospace Centre, the image also shows evidence that water once flowed and lakes once stood on the Martian surface.  White lines are channels cut by water and lighter-coloured regions indicate deposits of sulphate components.   Rock formations display evidence of flow textures, indicating that they were once deposited by liquid water, water ice or mud.

(Image: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum))

Jamie Condliffe, reporter

Over the course of this week, we have done our best to persuade you that becoming an astronaut is almost impossibly difficult and extremely dangerous. But if you are reading this, then you are probably not buying it. Despite all its drawbacks, many people can't wait to get into space - in fact some think it is the best way to secure humanity's future.

So that just leaves one question: where are you going to go?

Maggie McKee, physical sciences news editor

Chalk one up for the graybeards. The oldest spacecraft now operating around Mars has produced the best ever map of the Red Planet (if the map does not load, heavy traffic may have temporarily crashed the site).

NASA's Mars Odyssey reached the planet in 2001 and researchers have now stitched together 21,000 of its images into a global map. When seen as a whole, the gray-scale map isn't much to look at, but its power snaps into focus when viewers zoom in on particular features, whose details can be seen at scales as small as 100 metres across - see a 140-km-wide image of Mars's "Grand Canyon" below. (Cameras such as HiRISE on the newer Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter can spot things about 1 metre wide, but have covered only small portions of the planet.)

"The map lays the framework for global studies of properties such as the mineral composition and physical nature of the surface materials," says Odyssey scientist Jeffrey Plaut of JPL in a statement.

The new map was released just days after NASA announced that Odyssey had gone into 'standby' mode on 14 July after an electronic component responsible for moving its solar array suffered a glitch. The probe switched to a backup component and returned to work on Friday, but it was not the first sign of trouble for the ageing spacecraft, which was temporarily sidelined due to memory problems in late 2009. If the craft can hang on for another five months or so, it will smash the longevity record for a Martian spacecraft, set by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor. That probe orbited the Red Planet for a little over nine years, from September 1997 until November 2006.

(Valles Marineris canyon system image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Arizona State University)

Richard Fisher, deputy news editor

Phoenix's wings have been catastrophically clipped.

The Mars lander has lost its protruding solar panels, leading NASA to declare it officially dead.

In recent weeks, NASA has been trying to revive the lander after losing contact in November 2008 as the Martian winter approached. The likelihood of success was slim.

Now images taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show it is casting a shadow with a different shape to when it was last active. Accumulated dust can explain this in part, but mission scientists say the main reason is that the solar arrays that powered the lander have been broken off or bent, rendering Phoenix useless.
















Like wings, the panels extended out from either side of the lander. Large amounts of carbon dioxide ice probably built up on them during the winter, causing the damage.

Despite 61 fly-bys last week, the orbiter failed to hear a radio transmission from Phoenix.

(Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)

Rachel Courtland, space reporter

At last, a rough time line has emerged in the White House's new vision for space exploration: new spacecraft ready for deep space by 2025 and forays to Mars by the mid-2030s.

It has been more than two months since the White House unveiled a new plan for NASA.

The proposal, which must still be approved by Congress, calls for scrapping NASA's Constellation programme, which aims take astronauts back to the moon using a pair of new rockets. NASA administrator Charles Bolden has said the new plan maintains the ultimate goal of Constellation, to take humans to Mars. But some critics have said that the lack of a defined time line for exploration will hobble the agency.

Now Obama has revealed more about the new vision in his first speech on the plan, delivered yesterday in Florida. By 2025, the US will have readied the first spacecraft capable of carrying astronauts beyond the moon and into deep space, Associated Press reports. Trips to Mars, beginning with forays to Martian orbit and back, would begin in the mid-2030s. "I expect to be around to see it," Obama said.

Richard Fisher, deputy news editor

It's arguably the most scrutinised piece of rock ever. Now an even closer look at a meteorite from Mars suggests it may show signs of life after all.

In 1996, David McKay of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texax, and colleagues proposed that that a chunk of Mars rock found in Antarctica, called ALH 84001, contained possible signs of past life on the Red Planet, such as complex carbon-based molecules and microscopic objects shaped like bacteria

Many researchers doubt the claim, however, and various suggestions have been made for how the structures could have been created without life.

One area of disagreement centred around nanocrystal magnetites in the rock, some of which appear to have chemical and physical features identical to those produced by contemporary bacteria. Sceptics of the biological explanation suggested that the magnetites were created when carbonate decomposed under high pressures and temperatures, perhaps in the heat of the impact that ejected the meteorite 15 million years ago or deep beneath the Martian surface.

Now a fresh analysis by McKay and colleagues rules out the carbonate decomposition explanation.

Richard Fisher, deputy news editor

If you've ever hoped lunar astronauts might actually bust into Michael Jackson's moonwalk, your prayers have been answered.

Things have felt awfully serious at NASA in recent weeks, so the space agency's latest effort at outreach and education brings some welcome light relief.

NASA's "Space Your Face" application allows you to upload a portrait photo into an astronaut helmet, and then watch as your avatar throws down some moves to funky tunes on Mars or the moon.

As someone whose best dance move is something akin to the "hot potato", I felt I was able live my dream via my talented astronaut alter-ego.

Rachel Courtland, online reporter

If all goes well, a one-tonne, SUV-sized rover will make its landing on the Red Planet in 2012. The $2.2 billion beast will break multiple records, becoming the largest rover to land on Mars and the first to be powered by the heat of radioactive decay.

But what to call it? Its current moniker, Mars Science Laboratory, is functional but lacks personality, so NASA teamed up with Disney to offer students the chance to suggest a new handle.

Now the finalists are in: Sunrise, Pursuit, Journey, Perception, Curiosity, Adventure, Vision, Wonder, and ... Amelia.

Jessica Griggs, New Scientist intern

Spirit, the rover exploring Mars, has lasted twenty times longer than anyone thought it would. But this week there were signs that it's succumbing to old age.

On Sunday the Mars Exploration Rover team, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, revealed that Spirit had been behaving erratically and suffering a bout of memory loss.

When the team made contact with Spirit, on its 1800th day on the red planet, they found that even though it had received the day's driving instructions loud and clear, it had failed to budge. It also failed to record the day's main activities. "It's almost as if it had amnesia for an hour and a half," John Callas, the mission's project manager, told New Scientist.

Spirit's memory loss might be explained by incoming cosmic rays playing havoc with its electronics.

Given how fraught relationships of any kind can be under normal circumstances, I've always been fascinated by the interpersonal dynamics that can take place in "extreme" environments, like space missions. Future trips to Mars, for example, would probably last more than two years and could be a hotbed for intense crew relationships, some of which might become sexual.

Recently, the Planetary Society called for major changes in US space-exploration plans. Specifically, it recommended bypassing the Moon in favour of Mars. Harrison Schmitt (the only scientist to have walked on the Moon) resigned from the society in protest (read the Planetary Society's response here).

This actually harks back to the Planetary Society's beginnings. In its early years, the only form of manned space exploration it favoured was an (international) Mars expedition. All other ideas that involved humans in space were counterproductive and undesirable, to hear the Planetary Society tell it.

This obsession with Mars was a bad idea then, and it's a bad idea now. However, some of the reasons advanced against it strike me as poor - sufficiently poor that they weaken attempts to argue for a more systematic and balanced space effort.

As many have heard, the Mars rover Spirit is clinging to life, with its solar arrays covered with dust from a recent dust storm. Even with everything else shut down, it needs some energy to keep its electronics warm during the frigid Martian night. If it can't charge its battery sufficiently during the day, it will freeze to death overnight. (A dead battery is what killed the Mars Pathfinder lander.)

Inevitably, people are asking: why don't the rovers have some kind of wiper system to sweep dust off them? The (usually) unspoken question is, how could the rovers' designers have been so stupid as to overlook this?

Well, in fact, they thought of it. They thought hard about it. Dust accumulating on the solar arrays was clearly a big problem - that's why they could only officially promise a 90-day mission. They badly wanted to include some sort of dust-clearing system. But there were compelling reasons why they couldn't.

The Planetary Society said today that NASA should focus on sending humans to asteroids and Mars instead of first aiming for the Moon. But some say returning to the Moon is an essential stepping-stone to more distant destinations.

NASA should learn how to walk before it runs, by going to the Moon before sending humans to Mars, says Apollo 8 commander Frank Borman: "I think the difficulty there has been underestimated."

Borman spoke at a rare event: a public reunion of the Apollo 8 mission's three astronauts, held on Thursday at the Newseum in Washington, DC.

The detection of methane on Mars in 2004 raised the tantalising possibility that the cold, dry planet now harbours life in the form of subsurface, methane-producing bacteria. Now, detailed observations suggest a way to potentially find any such life.

Nature News reports that observations made over the last four years show the gas is not spread evenly around the planet but concentrated in a handful of "hotspots".

The observations were reported at a planetary sciences meeting earlier this month by Michael Mumma of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. They show that methane clouds spanning hundreds of kilometres form over these hotspots and dissipate within a year - much shorter than the 300 years it was thought to take for atmospheric methane to be destroyed by sunlight. If methane is being destroyed so quickly, it must be created at far higher rates than previously thought, Mumma said at the meeting.