Missions to Mars

[CaaC (John)]

You might like this photo @nudge  and anyone else, taken by Opportune in 2010, that was then, imagine the next ones that will be shown tomorrow and onwards, I joined this NASA sight years ago and always try and catch the Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2018 April 4 

Intrepid Crater on Mars from Opportunity 
Image Credit: NASA, JPL, Cornell, Opportunity Rover Team,

Explanation: The robotic rover Opportunity sometimes passes small craters on Mars. Pictured here in 2010 is Intrepid Crater, a 20-meter across impact basin slightly larger than Nereus Crater that Opportunity had chanced across previously. The featured image is in approximately true color but horizontally compressed to accommodate a wide angle panorama. Intrepid Crater was named after the lunar module Intrepid that carried Apollo 12 astronauts to Earth's Moon 49 years ago. Beyond Intrepid Crater and past long patches of rusty Martian desert lie peaks from the rim of large Endeavour Crater, visible on the horizon. The Opportunity rover continues to explore Mars, recently surpassing 5,000 Martian days on the red planet

[CaaC (John)]

You were right @nudge , they picked Jezero 

 

 

Science & Environment

Nasa 2020 robot rover to target Jezero 'lake' crater

By Jonathan Amos

BBC Science Correspondent

19 November 2018

The American space agency (Nasa) says it will send its 2020 Mars rover to a location known as Jezero Crater.

Nasa believes the rocks in this nearly 50km-wide bowl could conceivably hold a record of ancient life on the planet.

Satellite images of Jezero point to river water having once cut through its rim and flowed via a delta system into a big lake.

It is the kind of environment that might just have supported microbes some 3.5-3.9 billion years ago.

This was a period when Mars was much warmer and wetter than it is today.

Evidence for the past presence of a lake is obviously a draw, but Ken Farley, the Nasa project scientist on the mission, said the delta traces were also a major attraction.

"A delta is extremely good at preserving bio-signatures - any evidence of life that might have existed in the lake water, or at the interface of the sediment and the lake water, or possibly things that lived in the headwaters region that were swept in by the river and deposited in the delta," he told reporters.

Jezero's multiple rock types, including clays and carbonates, have high potential to preserve the organic molecules that would hint at life's bygone existence.

• UK industry to make new 'Hotbirds'
• Mars robot to be sent to Oxia Planum
• The jeopardy of landing on Mars

Another of the robot's key objectives will be to select and "cache" in small canisters some rock samples that could, at a later date, be collected and returned to Earth labs for analysis.

Nasa is working with the European Space Agency (Esa) on this initiative, but exactly when the sample tubes might come home is uncertain.

Planning with Esa was at an early stage, said Thomas Zurbuchen, Nasa's science chief. "Depending on how the details come out, it could be in the early 2030s," he explained.

Jezero is sited just north of Mars' equator. It is named after a town in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In some Slavic languages, the word "jezero" also means "lake".

The 500m-deep crater was chosen after a four-year consultation process with Mars scientists. In a straw-poll taken at the end of the most recent site-selection workshop, it came out the clear favourite. Nasa's administration has now endorsed the choice.

The 2020 rover is based on the one-tonne Curiosity robot that the agency landed in Gale Crater in 2012.

Instrument-wise, the new vehicle is quite a bit different, however. Yes, it will again feature cameras, a robotic arm, a drill and a laser - but there is a new suite of sensors and analysis tools, and there is even an experiment to demonstrate how future astronauts might make oxygen on the Red Planet.

The new robot will use the same "Skycrane" technology that put Curiosity down with such great precision six years ago - but with an add-on. Engineers have developed an on-the-fly mapping system called Terrain-Relative Navigation which ought to bring even greater accuracy to the landing process.

Missions to Mars can only launch inside a tight time window due to the alignment of the planets.

The 2020 venture will leave Earth in the July/August of that year and should land on 18 February 2021.

"Nasa has a long and successful track record at Mars. Since Mariner 4 flew by Mars in 1965, we've orbited, we've landed and we've roved across the surface of the Red Planet," said Lori Glaze, the acting director of Nasa's planetary science division. "And we've got another opportunity to improve our track record a week from today when we land InSight on the surface. We're all looking forward to that."

Unlike 2020 and Curiosity, Insight is a static lander. It will be the first mission dedicated to "looking inside" the planet. It will use seismometers to listen for "Marsquakes", to help build a picture of Mars' internal structure.

Esa is sending a rover to Mars in 2020 also. European scientists recently selected Oxia Planum as its destination. Satellite imagery suggests, as with Jezero and Gale, this ancient terrain came into prolonged contact with water.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46264383

 

[nudge]

Found a nice infographic on the Orion spacecraft which might be used for a manned Mars mission in the future (click on the image to enlarge to full size!):

[CaaC (John)]

Awesome, I like Orion picture "First crewed flight 2021" and a crew of 2 to 6, only 3 years away, can't wait.  

 

[CaaC (John)]

Science & Environment

InSight: Nasa's Mars mission on target for landing

By Jonathan Amos

BBC Science Correspondent

21 November 2018

The American space agency Nasa says its InSight Mars lander is on a near-perfect Thanksgiving trajectory.

The probe is due to touch down on Monday at 19:53 GMT, to begin its quest to map the Red Planet's interior.

Engineers can take the opportunity for one last course correction on Sunday to tighten the line to the bulls-eye - but they may not bother with it.

"Right now we're looking really good, and we might be able to skip it," said Nasa's Tom Hoffman.

"We'll be working on the final parameters we need over the next few days, so while everybody's off having turkey, there'll be a bunch of people at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) making sure we land successfully," the InSight project manager told reporters.

JPL in Pasadena, California, is mission control for all Nasa's planetary adventures.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46298259

[CaaC (John)]

Watch How NASA’s InSight Will Plumb the Depths of Mars | NYT - Out There

 

[CaaC (John)]

Science & Environment

InSight Diary: The silence of space

By Tom PikeImperial College London

25 November 2018

Prof Tom Pike from Imperial College London is part of the science team on the US-led InSight mission to Mars. His group has supplied tiny seismometers that will enable the Nasa lander to detect "Marsquakes", which should reveal the internal structure of the Red Planet. Here, Prof Pike tells us what happened when his team switched on its sensor system during InSight's 6-month cruise to Mars.

InSight is now just two days from Mars, closing in at more than 6,000mph. But it's not breaking a sweat.

After May's launch hurled it towards Mars, InSight has been quietly following an orbit around the Sun, an orbit selected to catch up with Mars on Monday evening (UK time).

 

On board, we have our silicon microseismometers, designed to pick up the faintest seismic activity once we land on Mars.

Our spacecraft should be one of the quietest objects in the entire Solar System, a perfect zero gravity environment.

We always wanted to turn on our microseismometers during our cruise to Mars for what should be the best possible test of their sensitivity. That's difficult to do on Earth.

Even when we took our microseismometers to one of the quietest places in Europe, deep in a mine under the Black Forest Mountains in Germany, the strongest signal came from the sea, hundreds of miles away. That signal was much larger than we're likely to see from any Marsquakes.

• Read Tom's previous post: Misty launch
• James Tuttle Keane's guide to Mars' interior
• Stage by stage guide to InSight's landing

Did we survive launch?

So, on our way we've decided to turn on our microseismometers for a few hours. It's not obvious what we will hear - nobody has measured the vibrations of an interplanetary spacecraft before with this sensitivity. We hope it's not the creaks and groans of the spacecraft itself, as it should have settled down after the launch.

There will be the occasional ping from interplanetary dust hitting the spacecraft, but we've calculated the chance of that happening while we're turned on is remote.

There's not been a sensor quite like ours sent into space before - the silicon mass and spring are designed to move freely backwards and forwards during launch and would have been bumped repeatedly between our solder stops.

Of course, we tested this, but I'm now wondering if it was such a good idea to be the first to try something this new.

We've three sensors, one to measure the vertical seismic vibrations on Mars, SP1, and two to measure in the horizontal directions, SP2 and SP3.

Only SP2 and SP3 will work in the zero gravity of space. SP1 will be pushed to the stops by its silicon springs designed for Mars.

As the first snippets of data come down, we look immediately at the voltages of the three outputs - if the sensors have survived and are operational, they should be close to zero. SP1 is high, but that's as expected. SP2 and SP3 show low voltages - they're working! But how well?

The team, Constantinos, Alex, John and Zac, get down to analysing the full data.

First, we realise just how quiet our spacecraft is. All we are detecting on both our operational sensors is a very gentle background vibration.

If we play this signal speeded up on our headphones, it's an almost imperceptible hiss.

This signal is being created by the microseismometers themselves - in space, our sensors can be heard for the first time, without the interference from any oceans.

Even better, this signal from the sensors themselves is very low, less than one billionth of the gravitational acceleration on the surface of Earth, 1g.

Our accelerometers are not only working, they're working as well as we could have possibly expected.

Bumps in the night

But as we look further at the data, we see something else - there appear to be tiny jolts, every half hour or so, about a millionth of 1g. That's still one thousand times the noise from the sensors.

The jolts are seen at the same time on both SP2 and SP3, so are unlikely to be from the sensors themselves. That is certainly a relief. Could they be dust impacts?

We double check - the jolts are far too large, even if we were going right through a comet's tail. We're starting to think it must be the spacecraft itself.

* To listen click link >> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46332684

The sound from two of the microseismometers on the way to Mars, speeded up 1,000 times. The background hiss is the noise from the sensors themselves, and the chirps are the thrusters of the spacecraft as it keeps the solar arrays pointing at the Sun.

We're travelling on a twin of the Phoenix spacecraft that delivered another lander to Mars for Nasa 10 years ago.

I know the mission well - I'd worked on the microscope station on the Phoenix lander - but had never paid much attention as to how we got to Mars.

Going through the papers, we find the Phoenix spacecraft used thrusters firing for a fraction of a second, to nudge its solar arrays to look straight at the Sun.

Although too small to see with the instruments on Phoenix, our microseismometers on InSight should be able to detect these nudges. All we need now is confirmation from the spacecraft team of when the thrusters fired.

As dawn breaks on the States, we get back a list of the firing times.

They match perfectly with the jolts we're seeing on the microseismometers. It's an unanticipated test of our sensors, and of the Imperial team.

It's been extremely valuable to be able to test our microseismometers in space.

Although landing is the riskiest part of our journey, we know they've survived the launch in perfect condition. Now there is just the small matter of getting down onto the surface of Mars in one piece.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46332684

 

1

Edited November 25, 2018 by CaaC - John

[CaaC (John)]

Science & Environment

Nasa's Mars InSight mission heads for '7 minutes of terror'

By Jonathan Amos

BBC Science Correspondent, Pasadena

2 hours ago

 

The American space agency Nasa will attempt to put another robotic probe on Mars later.

The InSight lander is being targeted at a flat plain just north of the planet's equator called Elysium Planitia.

It carries a suite of instruments - many of them from Europe - to try to determine the rocky world's internal structure.

Signals from the probe confirming its safe touchdown should be received at 19:53 GMT, give or take a minute.

As with previous surface missions, InSight must survive the "seven minutes of terror" - the time it takes for a probe entering Mars' thin atmosphere at hypersonic speed to slow to walking pace and gently put itself on the ground.

Many have tried; most have failed. "As humanity, as explorers - we're batting at less than 50%," said Nasa's science chief, Thomas Zurbuchen. "Going to Mars is really, really hard."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46333459

[CaaC (John)]

Science & Environment

Mars: Nasa lands InSight robot to study planet's interior

By Jonathan Amos

BBC Science Correspondent, Pasadena

1 hour ago

US space agency Nasa has landed a new robot on Mars after a dramatic seven-minute plunge to the surface of the Red Planet.

The InSight probe  aims to study the deep interior of Mars, and make it the only planet - apart from Earth - that has been examined in this way.

The touchdown confirmation came through shortly after 19:50 GMT.

It ended an anxious few minutes in which the robot radioed home updates on its descent.

Nasa's mission control in California erupted into cheers when it became clear InSight was safe on the ground.

The probe put down on a vast, flat plain known as Elysium Planitia, close to the Red Planet's equator. The agency had dubbed it the "biggest parking lot on Mars".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46351114

 

Edited November 26, 2018 by CaaC - John

[CaaC (John)]

Edit:

Edited November 27, 2018 by CaaC - John

[nudge]

First image from the lander probe: 

[CaaC (John)]

Mars InSight mission: What Nasa's trip to Red Planet aims to discover

Chris Graham       16 hrs ago

Nasa has touched down on Mars for the first time in six years in a mission designed to mine more information about the Red Planet. 

The US space agency's latest probe, InSight, landed on the planet at 7.55pm (UK time), having travelled for six months and 300 million miles. 

In an extremely tricky landing, the lander slowed down from 12,300mph to 5mph, the equivalent of human jogging speed, in just seven minutes after hitting Mars's atmosphere.

The mission follows in the footsteps of the Curiosity rover, which landed there in 2012, but the $1bn joint US-European mission will break new ground - literally and metaphorically. 

Here's what you need to know about the landmark mission.

What will InSight do?

Curiosity has been moving around Mars, scouring different areas. InSight, however, will be staying in one place for its two-year mission.

InSight is short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport. As its lengthy name suggests, its objective is to dig into the planet's interior.

On the surface of Mars, its 6-foot (1.8-meter) arm will remove the two main science experiments from the lander's deck and place them directly on the Martian surface. This is already uncharted territory in space exploration. 

One experiment is intended to take Mars' temperature by drilling down 16 feet (5 meters) into the planet, using a self-hammering nail. That would be a new record for such an experiment, breaking the one set nearly a half-century ago by Apollo moonwalkers, who drilled down 8 feet (2 ½meters). 

And just as those astronauts left behind instruments to measure moonquakes, InSight is bringing the first seismometers to monitor for marsquakes - if they exist.

Yet another experiment will calculate Mars' wobble, providing information about the core of the planet as the sun and its moons pull on Mars.

"It's got its own brain," said lead scientist Bruce Banerdt of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "It's got an arm that can manipulate things around. It can listen with its seismometer. It can feel things with the pressure sensors and the temperature sensors. It pulls its own power out of the sun."

With no life detectors on board, its primary objective is not to look for signs of life, past or present. But that's not to say it won't be able to provide such clues.

"When InSight drills down into the Martian soil, we'll learn more about how Mars and Earth formed. We'll know more about where we all came from, and why these two rocky worlds are so similar yet so different," Bill Nye, CEO of the nonprofit Planetary Society, said in a statement. "We may learn more about what kinds of planets can harbour life. InSight is more than a Mars mission -- it's a solar system mission."

Mars is much less geologically active than Earth, and so its interior is closer to being in its original state - a tantalizing time capsule.

InSight stands to "revolutionise the way we think about the inside of the planet," said Nasa's science mission chief, Thomas Zurbuchen.

The landing site

InSight landed on a spot called Elysium Planitia, an area that astronomers have described as "the biggest parking lot on Mars".

A sizable equatorial plain, Tom Hoffman, InSight's project manager, hoped it would be "like a Walmart parking lot in Kansas."

Nasa aimed for as flat an area as possible so the lander does not tip over and thereby kill the mission, and so the robotic arm can set the science instruments down. 

"If Elysium Planitia were a salad, it would consist of romaine lettuce and kale - no dressing," Bruce Banerdt, InSight principal investigator of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said. "If it were an ice cream, it would be vanilla."

The lander will stand close to the ground, its top deck barely a metre above the surface. Once its twin circular solar panels are open, it will take up the space of a large car.

Mr Hoffman said selecting a suitable good landing site was "a lot like picking a good home".

"It's all about location, location, location," he said. "And for the first time ever, the evaluation for a Mars landing site had to consider what lay below the surface of Mars. We needed not just a safe place to land, but also a workspace that's penetrable by our 16-foot-long (5-meter) heat-flow probe."

Communication from the Red Planet

Joining InSight for its extra-terrestrial mission are a pair of briefcase-size satellites, called MarCO.

These experimental CubeSats, dubbed WALL-E and EVE from the 2008 animated movie, provided near-live updates during the lander's descent. 

The CubeSats will remain in perpetual orbit around the sun, their technology demonstration complete.

Back on earth, people will have to be patient for results from InSight. While the first pictures of the landing site arrived shortly after touchdown, it will be at least 10 weeks before the science instruments are deployed.

Then it will be another several week for Martian thermometer to dig into Mars. In total, the mission is intended to last two years - or one full Martian year.

Gallery: NASA's InSight lands on Mars (Reuters)

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/mars-insight-mission-what-nasas-trip-to-red-planet-aims-to-discover/ar-BBQ7XhV?ocid=chromentp

[CaaC (John)]

 

NASA's Insight is already breaking records

Mark Serrels      10 hrs ago

If you're not following NASA Insight on Twitter, then I don't know what to tell you.

That thing is a delight.

It tweets in the first person like this:

Which makes me feel like Insight isn't a collection of nuts and bolts, but rather a harmless dog robot, roaming the desolate planes of Mars, doing science, furthering human knowledge and having the time of its life. Basically AIBO in space.

But here's the interesting news so far: First off, the photos keep on coming, and (for me at least) they remain jaw dropping. A stark reminder that a human-made machine is currently on Mars, doing stuff. That sensation never gets old.

Secondly, Insight has already broken a world record. It's already beaten its robot buddies in its ability to soak up energy from the sun. During its first full day on Mars, Insight generated more energy than any other vehicle on the surface of Mars, hitting 4,588 Watt-hours during. For comparison, Curiosity hit 2,806 Watt-hours and Opportunity hit 922.

"It is great to get our first 'off-world record' on our very first full day on Mars," said InSight project manager Tom Hoffman. "But even better than the achievement of generating more electricity than any mission before us is what it represents for performing our upcoming engineering tasks. The 4,588 watt-hours we produced during sol 1 means we currently have more than enough juice to perform these tasks and move forward with our science mission."

1/15 SLIDES in link vv

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/nasas-insight-is-already-breaking-records/ar-BBQpXnz?ocid=chromentp#image=BBQpXnz_1|1

[CaaC (John)]

 

Hear the wind on Mars for the first time, thanks to the InSight lander

Mallory Locklear     4 hrs ago

Since landing on Mars last week, NASA's InSight lander has been taking pictures of itself and its surroundings as it prepares to unload the scientific instruments it brought along to the planet. But the lander has also picked up something that other Mars missions never have -- audio of the planet's winds. "Capturing this audio was an unplanned treat," Bruce Banerdt, InSight's principal investigator, said in a statement. "But one of the things our mission is dedicated to is measuring motion on Mars, and naturally that includes motion caused by sound waves."

The audio was picked up by both an air pressure sensor and the seismometer aboard InSight. The air pressure sensor detected the air vibrations directly while the seismometer recorded vibrations caused by the Martian wind blowing across InSight's solar panels. Scientists estimate the wind was blowing between 10 and 15MPH.

"The InSight lander acts like a giant ear," said Tom Pike, who's part of the InSight science team. "The solar panels on the lander's sides respond to pressure fluctuations of the wind. It's like InSight is cupping its ears and hearing the Mars wind beating on it. When we looked at the direction of the lander vibrations coming from the solar panels, it matches the expected wind direction at our landing site."

You can hear the audio in the video above. NASA recommends using headphones or a subwoofer because the pitch is quite low. But the video also raises the audio two octaves to make it easier to hear. The seismometer recording is only possible during these early stages of InSight's mission because once it's placed onto the Martian surface, a dome will protect it from wind and scientists will actively filter out vibrational noise originating from the lander. That's because the seismometer's main purpose is to detect marsquakes or earthquakes on Mars.

It's incredibly cool that we can now "hear" Mars, and more audio will be on the way in the near future. When the Mars 2020 rover lands on the planet, two microphones on board will record even more Martian sounds. You can check out more detailed videos of InSight's recordings below. (link vv)

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/hear-the-wind-on-mars-for-the-first-time-thanks-to-the-insight-lander/ar-BBQETcP?ocid=chromentp

[CaaC (John)]

Nasa reveals stunning new photos from Mars

Duration: 01:04                  18 hrs ago

NASA has released several stunning new images of Mars captured by the InSight lander's robotic arm as it snapped photos of its new workspace.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/video/viral/nasa-reveals-stunning-new-photos-from-mars/vi-BBQEl3X

[nudge]

Never thought I'll hear Martian wind in my life...

[CaaC (John)]

6 minutes ago, nudge said:

Never thought I'll hear Martian wind in my life...

Sounds a bit like my tummy rumbling before I let off a silent fart!! 

[Bluewolf]

12 minutes ago, CaaC - John said:

Sounds a bit like my tummy rumbling before I let off a silent fart!! 

That's you off the list of people coming with me and Nudge then.... 

[CaaC (John)]

Live Science  >  Space

Tiny 'Blueberries' on Mars Continue to Baffle Scientists

By Meghan Bartels, Senior Writer, Space.com | December 8, 2018, 09:19 am ET

It was just a few months after NASA's Opportunity rover touched down on Mars in 2004 that it spotted a geological curiosity: tiny, iron-rich spheres scattered across the rock surface near the robot's landing site. Snack-loving scientists working with the mission dubbed these objects "blueberries," but the features were easier to name than to understand. Their recipe remains something of a puzzle.

Trying to sort out the origins of these blueberries has always involved studying similar-looking spherical formations here on Earth. New research takes its inspiration from these terrestrial analogs to offer a new idea of the chemistry that may have gone into whipping up these Martian blueberries. In turn, this research helps reveal what ancient Mars may have looked like.

The blueberries are tantalizing for more than just their whimsical name; they also constituted some of the earliest evidence we had that Mars was once incredibly wet. "No matter what the exact chemistry of these spherules was to start, the fact that they're there tells us [that] a lot of liquid water moved through these rocks over time," Briony Horgan, a planetary scientist at Purdue University in Indiana, told Space.com. 

And if scientists can parse out precisely how the blueberries formed, that may help us understand what Mars was like back when the features formed — and what sort of life could have theoretically thrived in those circumstances, Horgan said.

So, the team behind the new research traveled to two different terrestrial destinations in search of rock formations that resemble Martian blueberries: Utah and Mongolia. These formations aren't identical to those on Mars, which are about a tenth the size of the Earthly equivalents. Our planet's formations are also less orderly than the Martian versions. "They're all blobbed together. They're different sizes," Horgan said of the terrestrial features.

But it's much easier to get to Utah and Mongolia than to Mars, so scientists use these features despite the imperfect comparison. The researchers found that the formations seemed to have been built around cores of a mineral called calcite, with iron-rich material in only the outer shell. "That moment [of discovery], it was very exciting," geochemist co-authors Hidekazu Yoshida of Nagoya University and Hitoshi Hasegawa of Kochi University in Japan, wrote in an email to Space.com.

Based on those observations in the field and chemical modeling, the scientists suggested that floods of iron-rich, gently acidic water washed over the original calcite structures. Unlike the terrestrial versions, Martian blueberries seem to be made of hematite all the way through, no longer sporting any calcite heart. But that could point to a long period of overwash that ate through all the calcite, the researchers said.

The nagging details of chemical reactions that may or may not have taken place on early Mars have larger implications. First, these details are relevant to scientists' natural interest in all that water that flowed through rocks to form the blueberries. "The chemistry of water tells us about the habitability of the environment," Horgan said.

The second potential implication would relate to another long-standing debate about Mars — what happened to its once-thick atmosphere. The authors in the new study argued that this atmosphere could have gone into the carbonate ions locked in calcite precursors to the blueberries.

But that wouldn't solve the atmospheric mystery, Steve Ruff, a planetary geologist at Arizona State University who works on the Opportunity mission, told Space.com. "My sense of what we know about the area of the hematite that we can map from orbit is it's not a huge area," covering less than 1 percent of Mars' surface, he said. There just aren't enough blueberries to pack away very much atmosphere. 

https://www.livescience.com/64265-mars-blueberries-mystery.html

[CaaC (John)]

Nasa's InSight deploys 'Marsquake' instrument

By Jonathan Amos

BBC Science Correspondent

8 hours ago

The American space agency's InSight mission to Mars has begun to deploy its instruments.

The lander's robotic arm has just placed the bell-shaped seismometer package on the ground in front of it.

This suite of sensors, developed in France and the UK, will listen for "Marsquakes" in an effort to determine the internal structure of the Red Planet.

InSight touched down near the world's equator in November.

As well as the seismometer experiment, InSight is equipped with a heat probe that will burrow into the ground, and a very sensitive radio experiment that will measure how the planet wobbles on its axis.

Taken together, the probe's data should reveal the position and nature of all the rock layers below the surface of Mars - from the crust to the core.

It is information that can be compared and contrasted with Earth.

Full deployment of the instruments could take some weeks. The seismometer still needs its shroud placing on top.

This cover will protect the instrument's readings from noise introduced by the wind and temperature swings.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46632662

[CaaC (John)]

Mars: Pictures reveal 'winter wonderland' on the red planet

2 hours ago

Earth's the North Pole is famous for its snowy climes - and for hosting Santa's workshop, of course.

But as these pictures reveal, it's not the only planet with snow scenes this holiday season.

This is the Korolev crater, near the north pole of Mars, as captured by the European Space Agency (ESA)'s Mars Express mission.

The crater is 82km (50 miles) across, and filled with ice 1.8km thick.

It was named after rocket engineer and spacecraft designer Sergei Korolev, the architect of the Soviet Union's space programme.

Mr. Korolev worked on the first interplanetary missions to the Moon, Mars and Venus, and the Sputnik programme, which launched the world's first artificial satellite.

The pictures of the crater are composites made up of shots taken by the Mars Express High-Resolution Stereo Camera.

The Mars Express mission is the ESA's first venture to another planet. It was launched on 2 June 2003 and entered Mars's orbit on Christmas Day that year.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46645321

 

 

[nudge]

Looks amazing...

[CaaC (John)]

1 minute ago, nudge said:

Looks amazing...

It reminded me of the middle of a Cadburys Cream Egg 

 

 

[CaaC (John)]

Quote

Quote

Nasa's InSight mission: Mars sensor gets its protective 'hat'

By Jonathan Amos

BBC Science Correspondent

5 February 2019

The US space agency's (Nasa) InSight mission has reached a new milestone in its quest to understand the interior of the Red Planet.

The probe has spent the weeks since its landing in November positioning a seismometer instrument on the surface

Happy with the set-up, scientists have now instructed InSight to put a protective cover over the equipment.

The dome will shield the instrument from wind disturbance and swings in temperature.

It will give researchers greater confidence in the accuracy of the readings of seismic signals.

InSight expects to detect the vibrations from "Marsquakes" and meteorite impacts.

The data will be used to build a picture of the rock layers inside the Red Planet - from its core to its crust.

The instrument - known as the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS)- is led from France, but includes a package of high-frequency sensors (SEIS-SP [Short Period]) from the UK.

This British contribution was developed at Imperial College London, Oxford University and RAL Space.

With the seismometer system in position, Nasa controllers will now work on deploying InSight's heat flow probe.

This German-led experiment, called the  Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3), will be making complementary measurements to the seismometer.

HP3 incorporates a "mole" to drill down up to 5m below the surface. Its inbuilt sensors will help determine how heat moves through the ground.

It is information that will give scientists an idea of how active Mars still is.

HP3 is likely to be placed on the surface by InSight's robot arm next week.

A third experiment on InSight uses the lander's radio transmissions to very precisely determine how the planet is wobbling on its axis.

The Nasa mission landed on Mars on 26 November.

Touchdown occurred on flat terrain close to the equator in a region referred to as Elysium Planitia.

The mission's experiments will run initially for one Martian year (roughly two Earth years).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47131978

 

 

 

[nudge]

ExoMars rover has a name!