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Missions to Mars


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27 minutes ago, nudge said:

Why do you think there isn't much light on Mars? The intensity of the sunlight is lower due to the greater distance from the sun, but that's really not much of an issue, especially since the atmosphere is very thin. The average lighting conditions near the equator on Mars on a clear day would be somewhat similar to northern Canada. So maybe not ideal, but definitely not unbearable. Artificial lighting will still be needed though, as the colonists will spend most of the time indoors, probably even in the excavated structures underground, so in that sense, lack of natural sunlight could be an issue.

I think isolation, remoteness, cramped conditions, hostile environment, repetitiveness of daily tasks and high levels of stress would be by far larger issues regarding mental health of Mars colonists though. Will some people struggle and reach their breaking point? I'm absolutely sure they will. But in the end, humans can adapt to whatever conditions they need to. It's also safe to say that resilience and mental fortitude will be one of the key factors in selection process, especially for the first generation of settlers; you won't just send any random unprepared people there... 

 

I thought there was about 20% of the light of earth on mars. I'm not sure if i explained it well. If you have the tecknology to get to Mars and colonise it artificial light shouldn't be an issue. Even artificial light that mimics the suns rays shouldn't be an issue.  But wouldn't humans miss seeing the real sun? Are humans just like that? Or if we had an artifical sky would that be enough?

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9 minutes ago, Gunnersaurus said:

I thought there was about 20% of the light of earth on mars. I'm not sure if i explained it well. If you have the tecknology to get to Mars and colonise it artificial light shouldn't be an issue. Even artificial light that mimics the suns rays shouldn't be an issue.  But wouldn't humans miss seeing the real sun? Are humans just like that? Or if we had an artifical sky would that be enough?

Around 44%, actually :) Less atmosphere also means less scattering of light compared to Earth though, so it's another thing to factor in. It is also interesting how human vision works - the first few days on Mars, the daylight would likely appear somewhat dimmer to us, but after a while, our eyes and brains would adjust, and we wouldn't really notice much difference! Also, the "real sun" is still there and visible anyway... the luminosity might seem lower, the colours will be different, but it's very much there... Watch these videos made from images taken by several previous Mars rovers, or just any images/videos from Perseverance - there's plenty of sunlight there. 

 

Not being able to feel it on the skin is a different issue altogether, but I think you wouldn't notice lack of sunlight as much as you think you would...

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NASA Explores a Winter Wonderland on Mars

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Cube-shaped snow, icy landscapes, and frost are all part of the Red Planet’s coldest season.


When winter comes to Mars, the surface is transformed into a truly otherworldly holiday scene. Snow, ice, and frost accompany the season’s sub-zero temperatures. Some of the coldest of these occur at the planet’s poles, where it gets as low as minus 190 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 123 degrees Celsius).

Cold as it is, don’t expect snow drifts worthy of the Rocky Mountains. No region of Mars gets more than a few feet of snow, most of which falls over extremely flat areas. And the Red Planet’s elliptical orbit means it takes many more months for winter to come around: a single Mars year is around two Earth years.

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Still, the planet offers unique winter phenomena that scientists have been able to study, thanks to NASA’s robotic Mars explorers. Here are a few of the things they’ve discovered:

Two Kinds of Snow

Martian snow comes in two varieties: water ice and carbon dioxide, or dry ice. Because Martian air is so thin and the temperatures so cold, water-ice snow sublimates, or becomes a gas, before it even touches the ground. Dry-ice snow actually does reach the ground.

“Enough falls that you could snowshoe across it,” said Sylvain Piqueux, a Mars scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California whose research includes a variety of winter phenomena. “If you were looking for skiing, though, you’d have to go into a crater or cliffside, where snow could build up on a sloped surface.”

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FULL REPORT

 

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MISSION UPDATES | March 29, 2023

Sol 3785: Tiptoeing Through the Tricky Terrain

Signs of spring are all around as most of us come on shift from various locations within the northern hemisphere today. We still have thick snow on the ground here in eastern Canada, but the sounds of melting snow and bird song are all around. Meanwhile on Mars, we may not be tiptoeing through the tulips, but we are certainly, very carefully, tiptoeing our way through the many loose blocks and sand that line the pass we are currently driving through. A further consideration is that we are rapidly nearing a flight software update, planned for next week. We therefore need to ensure that the rover is in a good location for communication with the orbiters that relay all the information to and from Curiosity.

The rover engineers did an excellent job with the previous drive, placing Curiosity in a position to be able to brush and analyze a representative bedrock block. The brushed, finely laminated and nodular “Tarilandia” target will be analyzed by APXS, MAHLI and Mastcam to document composition and texture and ChemCam and Mastcam will investigate the chemistry and texture of another bedrock block (“Inini”) within the workspace. We will acquire a number of Mastcam and RMI images of potential contacts between different units, as well as to document textures and structures within exposed bedrock.

Not to be left out, the environmental science team also planned a full set of activities to continue monitoring the atmosphere. These include a Mastcam basic tau observation, as well as a Navcam line of sight image, and dust devil and suprahorizon movies.

After we have completed all that science, Curiosity will hopefully tiptoe and zig-zag through the blocks and sand to put us in a good position for our software update and to resume science observations when we return to planning next week. Standard REMS, DAN and RAD activities round out the plan.

This is our last full plan before we wind down science activities on Friday to prepare to install a new version of the rover’s flight software next week. The engineering team has been preparing for a few years to develop the software, upload it, and now switch over to it on Mars. We will let the engineers do their jobs on Monday through Thursday of next week and if all goes well, we’ll be back up and running after that!

https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/mission-updates/9372/sol-3785-tiptoeing-through-the-tricky-terrain/

 

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Sols 3800-3802: Clouds Above, Contact Science Below
Written by Alex Innanen, Atmospheric Scientist at York University

Here in Toronto, the weather feels like summer. But in Gale Crater it’s coming towards the end of Autumn. At this time of year, we enter Aphelion Cloud Belt season, when we see regular formation of water-ice clouds. While not as striking as the twilight clouds earlier in the year, these clouds form every Mars year at around the same time and last for many months, making this the perfect opportunity to learn about martian clouds. To accomplish that, the ENV team supplements our year-round cloud observations, the zenith and suprahorizon movies (which point directly overhead, and near the horizon), and two seasonal observations, the Phase Function Sky Survey and the Cloud Altitude Observation. These can tell us about how the clouds themselves and the water-ice crystals within them behave, and all four of these observations are in this weekend’s plan.

It's not just about the clouds though this weekend. We’re still climbing through the canyon, so the plan starts out with contact science followed by another short drive, and then some remote science.

More specifically, we start with a Mastcam mosaic of the inverted channel and a ChemCam LIBS observation of ‘Kourou,’ a nearby dark float rock. After this, MAHLI is getting up close with ‘Terre Firme’, and then we’ll brush the dust off of ‘Lorenco’ and get APXS and MAHLI contact science on it. After a nap, we’ll wake up for some night time imaging of the CheMin inlet with MAHLI.

The next sol, Mastcam will have a field day imaging ‘Lorenco,’ ‘Kourou,’ ‘Owenteik,’ ‘Teotonio,’ ‘Rizere de Mana’ and a nearby vein network. Then ChemCam will take a LIBS observation of ‘Rizere de Mana’ and a mosaic of the buttes ‘Alto Alegre.’ We’ll then make our brief drive uphill.

The next sol of the plan has a small untargeted science block, where ENV will look for dust devils and characterise the amount of dust between us and the distant crater rim and ChemCam AEGIS will autonomously select a target. After that, we’ll go back to sleep but that’s not it for the weekend – we wake up early the next morning for our weekly morning ENV activities to finish up the plan.

https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/mission-updates/9383/sols-3800-3802-clouds-above-contact-science-below/

 

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NASA InSight Study Provides Clearest Look Ever at Martian Core

Here in Toronto, the weather feels like summer. But in Gale Crater it’s coming towards the end of Autumn. At this time of year, we enter Aphelion Cloud Belt season, when we see regular formation of water-ice clouds. While not as striking as the twilight clouds earlier in the year, these clouds form every Mars year at around the same time and last for many months, making this the perfect opportunity to learn about martian clouds. To accomplish that, the ENV team supplements our year-round cloud observations, the zenith and suprahorizon movies (which point directly overhead, and near the horizon), and two seasonal observations, the Phase Function Sky Survey and the Cloud Altitude Observation. These can tell us about how the clouds themselves and the water-ice crystals within them behave, and all four of these observations are in this weekend’s plan.

It's not just about the clouds though this weekend. We’re still climbing through the canyon, so the plan starts out with contact science followed by another short drive, and then some remote science.

More specifically, we start with a Mastcam mosaic of the inverted channel and a ChemCam LIBS observation of ‘Kourou,’ a nearby dark float rock. After this, MAHLI is getting up close with ‘Terre Firme’, and then we’ll brush the dust off of ‘Lorenco’ and get APXS and MAHLI contact science on it. After a nap, we’ll wake up for some night time imaging of the CheMin inlet with MAHLI.

The next sol, Mastcam will have a field day imaging ‘Lorenco,’ ‘Kourou,’ ‘Owenteik,’ ‘Teotonio,’ ‘Rizere de Mana’ and a nearby vein network. Then ChemCam will take a LIBS observation of ‘Rizere de Mana’ and a mosaic of the buttes ‘Alto Alegre.’ We’ll then make our brief drive uphill.

The next sol of the plan has a small untargeted science block, where ENV will look for dust devils and characterise the amount of dust between us and the distant crater rim and ChemCam AEGIS will autonomously select a target. After that, we’ll go back to sleep but that’s not it for the weekend – we wake up early the next morning for our weekly morning ENV activities to finish up the plan.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-insight-study-provides-clearest-look-ever-at-martian-core

 

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First close-up images of far side of Mars’s tiny moon Deimos

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United Arab Emirates space probe Hope has taken the first high-resolution images of the far side of Deimos, the 12.4-kilometre-wide moonlet which orbits Mars.

Like Earth’s Moon, Deimos is tidally locked to its host planet, meaning that observations from the Martian surface or low orbit always reveal the same side of the moonlet. Hope, formally known as the Emirates Mars Mission (EMM), performed its fly-by – the first of many planned – on March 10.......

 

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Sols 3832-3833: Remotely Waiting in Gale

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Earth planning date: Wednesday, May 17, 2023

As I’m writing this, it’s about 8:30 pm on sol 3831 in Gale crater: ~16 hours after our SAM instrument ran its EGA experiment (which Abigail described so clearly in yesterday’s blog!). While we were able to confirm the success of the Ubajara drill sample drop-off to SAM and the start of the EGA, our first communication with Earth after the EGA completed was delayed from a ground-based issue. Luckily, our downlink lead assured us that the data would be available later this evening so the SAM team can still assess the results before Friday’s next planning session. So for now, we’re still in a planning holding pattern until SAM decides if the Ubajara drill sample is tasty enough for further analysis...........

 

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NASA's Curiosity Captures Martian Morning, Afternoon in New 'Postcard'

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Lighting from two times of day was combined for a stunning view of terrain that the rover is leaving behind.


After completing a major software update in April, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover took a last look at “Marker Band Valley” before leaving it behind, capturing a “postcard” of the scene.

The postcard is an artistic interpretation of the landscape, with color added over two black-and-white panoramas captured by Curiosity’s navigation cameras. The views were taken on April 8 at 9:20 a.m. and 3:40 p.m. local Mars time, providing dramatically different lighting that, when combined, makes details in the scene stand out. Blue was added to parts of the postcard captured in the morning and yellow to parts taken in the afternoon, just as with a similar postcard taken by Curiosity in November 2021.

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The resulting image is striking. Curiosity is in the foothills of Mount Sharp, which stands 3 miles (5 kilometers) high within Gale Crater, where the rover has been exploring since landing in 2012. In the distance beyond its tracks is Marker Band Valley, a winding area in the “sulfate-bearing region” within which the rover discovered unexpected signs of an ancient lake. Farther below (at center and just to the right) are two hills – “Bolívar” and “Deepdale” – that Curiosity drove between while exploring “Paraitepuy Pass.”

“Anyone who’s been to a national park knows the scene looks different in the morning than it does in the afternoon,” said Curiosity engineer Doug Ellison of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, who planned and processed the images. “Capturing two times of day provides dark shadows because the lighting is coming in from the left and the right, like you might have on a stage – but instead of stage lights, we’re relying on the Sun.”

Adding to the depth of the shadows is the fact that it was winter – a period of lower airborne dust – at Curiosity’s location when the images were taken. “Mars’ shadows get sharper and deeper when there’s low dust and softer when there’s lots of dust,” Ellison added.

The image peers past the rear of the rover, providing a glimpse of its three antennas and nuclear power source. The Radiation Assessment Detector, or RAD, instrument, which appears as a white circle in the lower right of the image, has been helping scientists learn how to protect the first astronauts sent to Mars from radiation on the planet’s surface.

https://mars.nasa.gov/news/9415/nasas-curiosity-captures-martian-morning-afternoon-in-new-postcard/?site=msl

 

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Analysis of data from China’s Zhurong rover reveals more about early Mars weather systems

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The Zhurong Mars rover, built and operated by the China National Space Administration (CNSA), has sent back data that suggests that Martian sand dunes were produced by a shift in prevailing winds after the planet’s last ice age....

 

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Perseverance finds more evidence of life’s building blocks on Mars

NASA’s Perseverance rover has found evidence of diversity among the organic molecules on Mars.

Organic molecules are the key building blocks of life on Earth.

The findings, published in Nature, suggest a more complex geochemical cycle than previously thought existed on the planet’s distant past.....

 

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Sols 3966-3697: Light Rocks on Deck, Gray Rocks in the Hole

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Earth planning date: Wednesday, October 2, 2023

HiRISE images of Gale crater show that Curiosity is driving through a section of layered rocks on Mt. Sharp, and the layers consist of alternating bands of light and gray/dark rocks. What causes the color variation of these rocks that makes this terrain look banded from orbit?.........

 

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