Missions to Mars

[CaaC (John)+]

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NASA sets likely funeral for silent Mars Opportunity Rover

Eric Mack

A NASA illustration shows what Opportunity would look like on Mars.

NASA appears to be convening its leadership to deliver a eulogy for its Mars rover, Opportunity. 

The space agency has scheduled a briefing Wednesday, when it will announce the results of final attempts to contact the solar-powered robot that's roamed the Red Planet since 2004.

NASA lost contact with Opportunity during a planet-wide dust storm last June and hope has slowly faded since that the bot will phone home. Because the rover is solar-powered, it would be unable to charge its batteries and operate if its solar panels have been covered by a significant amount of dust. 

Opportunity had an initial goal of covering 700 yards (640 meters) and operating for just 90 days on the surface of Mars. It exceeded expectations more than 50-fold by staying operational for over 14 years. 

Video: NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover Departs Vera Rubin Ridge (Gizmodo)

Speculation from the astronomy community online is that NASA won't be able to raise Opportunity when it makes one last attempt Tuesday night.

"Think we may be saying goodbye to the Opportunity rover," astrophysicist Gemma Lavender tweeted.

The notion that the briefing is expected to be a sad one rather than a "hey, maybe this little robot has a little longer to rove" one is bolstered by the fact that NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine will be on hand with the Mars Exploration Rover mission leadership and an engineer from the Mars 2020 rover team. I can already hear the parting words about "passing the robotic torch" to the next-generation rover set to launch next year.

Also, this highlight reel from Opportunity's career quietly appeared online Tuesday with a description that includes an awful lot of talk about the rover in the past tense. 

We won't know for sure what Opportunity's fate is until 11 a.m. PT Wednesday when NASA broadcasts the briefing live via NASA TV and YouTube (which you can access by clicking the embed below), but it's not looking good. 

We'll have more on the life, times and (likely) end of Opportunity Wednesday, so check back. 

NASA turns 60: The space agency has taken humanity farther than anyone else, and it has plans to go further.

Taking It to Extremes: Mix insane situations -- erupting volcanoes, nuclear meltdowns, 30-foot waves -- with everyday tech. Here's what happens.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/nasa-sets-likely-funeral-for-silent-mars-opportunity-rover/ar-BBTw6Yt?li=BBoPWjQ

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Edited February 13, 2019 by CaaC - John

[CaaC (John)+]

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@nudge she has came back to life!!!!   

 

NASA’s Curiosity rover is back to work after bizarre glitch

Mike Wehner

© Provided by Penske Media Corporation pia22960-16

NASA has had an interesting start to 2019 when it comes to its Mars rovers. Just days after having to declare the Opportunity rover dead due to a dust storm the year prior, NASA’s last functional Mars rover, Curiosity, entered “safe mode” due to an unexplained glitch. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory called the glitch a “hiccup” at the time, but now it seems everything is back to normal.

In a new blog post, NASA explains that Curiosity is back at work and is currently examining a large rock in an area of Mars known as Midland Valley. Things seem to be going well, but some big questions still remain about the status of the rover itself.

While the team gets back to work and begins to examine the location that it just recently arrived at, they’re still working to determine what prompted the rover to enter its safe state, to begin with.

“The engineering team is working hard to understand the issue that occurred on sol 2320, and upcoming plans will be dedicated to diagnostic activities,” NASA explains. “We will update you as we learn more, and in the meantime, the new observations from Midland Valley will keep us scientists busy!”

The safe mode glitch resulted in a computer reset but Curiosity began to function normally after it was back up and running. That’s good news for NASA, but determining why the rover entered safe mode, to begin with, is still extremely important.

© AP This image provided by NASA, assembled from a series of January 2018 photos made by the Mars Curiosity rover, shows an uphill view of Mount Sharp, which Curiosity has been climbing. Spanning the center of the image is an area with clay-bearing rocks that scientists are eager to explore; it could shed additional light on the role of water in creating Mount Sharp. On Thursday, March 2, 2018, NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity marked 2,000 days on the red planet by Martian standards. A Martian sol, or solar day, is equivalent to 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds. So 2,000 days on Mars equal 2,055 days here on Earth. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS via AP)

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory noted that it was attempting to limit the commands it sent to the rover in the hopes that it could preserve a log of whatever errors may have been saved in the robot’s memory. The group will continue to monitor the rover and study the data in the hopes of finding the cause. As NASA’s only currently functional rover on Mars, losing Curiosity would be a huge blow, and NASA would like to avoid that if at all possible.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/nasas-curiosity-rover-is-back-to-work-after-bizarre-glitch/ar-BBUhboO?li=AAnZ9Ug

 

 

[nudge]

 

3 hours ago, CaaC - John said:

@nudge she has came back to life!!!!   

For a moment there you got me all excited thinking that it's the Opportunity that came back to life after being officially pronounced dead!  

[CaaC (John)+]

NASA Plans To Fly This Helicopter On Mars

 

 

[CaaC (John)+]

 

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Curiosity Rover Detected Methane on Mars in 2013, a New Analysis Confirms

George Dvorsky

(VIDEO GeoBeats: >>https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/curiosity-rover-detected-methane-on-mars-in-2013-a-new-analysis-confirms/ar-BBVvLKJ?ocid=chromentp)

NASA’s Curiosity rover shook the science community six years ago when it apparently detected traces of methane—an important chemical linked to life—on Mars. Researchers failed to confirm these results in the years that followed, but that’s now changed thanks to a re-analysis of data collected from orbit.

New research published today in Nature Geoscience confirms that NASA’s Curiosity rover detected a methane spike on June 15, 2013, while exploring Gale Crater on Mars. The new paper, led by Marco Giuranna from the Institute for Space Astrophysics and Planetology in Rome, Italy, doesn’t explain how methane came to exist on the Red Planet, but the independent confirmation is a potential sign that Mars once featured conditions suitable for life during its ancient past. More radically, it suggests microbial life once existed on Mars, producing the smelly gas that’s now escaping from the planet’s bowels.

© Image: NASA, JPL-Caltech, MSSS NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars.

That methane might exist on Mars is an issue of considerable debate. Methane is a key requirement of habitability, and possibly even a signature of life itself. The trouble with methane, however, is that it doesn’t last long in the atmosphere. Any methane that is detected would therefore have been released relatively recently. For Mars, this means the gas is likely venting up from beneath the surface. What’s more, the sporadic, intermittent nature of these apparent methane spikes suggests the methane is being released at irregular intervals. 

Proving that methane exists on Mars would be a huge deal, so scientists have been extra careful to avoid any missteps in this area. The Curiosity detection from 2013 was intriguing, but because the observation could not be corroborated by other instruments, such as in-orbit satellites, it could not be definitively confirmed.

Confirmation of the Curiosity measurement has now happened owing to a re-analysis of data collected by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter at the time. Specifically, data collected by the spacecraft’s Planetary Fourier Spectrometer on June 16, 2013, when it was above Gale Crater, are in accordance with measurements taken by Curiosity the day before. It’s the first time that measurements made on the ground have been confirmed by a spacecraft in orbit, according to an ESA statement.

Giuranna and his colleagues confirmed the Curiosity observation by looking at 20 months of data collected by Mars Express, and also by developing a new technique that allowed the researchers to scour through hundreds of measurements made over a single area. Interestingly, Mars Express detected no other methane spikes during the observational period aside from the one detected by Curiosity.

“In general we did not detect any methane, aside from one definite detection of about 15 parts per billion by volume of methane in the atmosphere, which turned out to be a day after Curiosity reported a spike of about six parts per billion,” said Giuranna in a statement “Although parts per billion in general means a relatively small amount, it is quite remarkable for Mars—our measurement corresponds to an average of about 46 tonnes of methane that was present in the area of 49,000 square kilometres observed from our orbit.”

At the time of the Curiosity observation, scientists figured the methane originated north of the rover and was carried to the Gale Crater by southerly winds. The new interpretation presented in the new study offers a different scenario. The quantity of methane detected, along with the geology of the area, suggests the methane spike occurred within Gale Crater itself. Two independent analyses were used to reach this conclusion, including computer simulations that assessed the probability of methane emissions from the Martian surface, and the identification of geological features within Gale Crater consistent with the associated methane spike.

© Image: ESA The hypothesized methane cycle on Mars, showing how the gas is created and destroyed.

This kind of thing happens on Earth, typically along tectonic faults and at natural gas deposits. Something similar may be happening on Mars, in this case, along the faults of the Aeolis Mensae region. 

“We identified tectonic faults that might extend below a region proposed to contain shallow ice,” study co-author Giuseppe Etiope from the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology said in the ESA statement. “Remarkably, we saw that the atmospheric simulation and geological assessment, performed independently of each other, suggested the same region of provenance of the methane.”

The researchers theorize that the methane detected on Mars is being caused by small, transitory geological events, rather than a process in which the gas is constantly being replenished in the Martian atmosphere. There’s still much to learn about this process, however, such as how the gas is being removed from the atmosphere, and the nature of the Aeolis Mensae site.

Importantly, the methods used in this new study could lead to the discovery of other methane-producing sites on Mars, which in turn could lead to spots that once, quite possibly, hosted life.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/curiosity-rover-detected-methane-on-mars-in-2013-a-new-analysis-confirms/ar-BBVvLKJ?ocid=chromentp

 

 

[nudge]

NASA announced top three designs in the competition for future Mars habitats.

 

[CaaC (John)+]

9 minutes ago, nudge said:

NASA announced top three designs in the competition for future Mars habitats.

I like them in this order  

 

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[CaaC (John)+]

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So where did the Mars methane go?

The mystery of methane on Mars just got a whole lot more complicated.

The gas, which on Earth is produced in large part by living things, has previously been detected on the Red Planet by remote observation, and on the ground by Nasa's Curiosity rover.

But the most sensitive search at Mars so far, undertaken by a joint European-Russian satellite, has drawn a blank.

And this Trace Gas Orbiter, as it's called, is capable of seeing methane at fantastically low levels.

Even when the concentration is only a few tens of molecules in every trillion molecules of Martian air, the TGO should still to be able to identify the presence of CH4, if it's there.

The fact that the satellite couldn't when probing the atmosphere in April to August last year raises some difficult questions and some fascinating possibilities.

Inevitably, some people will argue that the earlier detections were mistaken, but Oleg Korablev from the Space Research Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow will not be among them.

"We prefer not to criticise others' results; we can only claim the accuracy of our results," the TGO scientist told BBC News.

"We just report the data and leave it up to the theoreticians to try to explain what is going on."

Curiosity's sampling in 2013 in equatorial Gale Crater found spikes of methane in the air at a few parts per billion.

This was ostensibly confirmed by concurrent observations from orbit by another satellite, Europe's Mars Express spacecraft.

So, if it's accepted that the methane really was there in 2013 and that TGO is the gold standard at Mars today - it requires scientists now to identify a hitherto unrecognised process that can rapidly remove CH4 from the atmosphere in a very short space of time.

This is the working hypothesis, says Dr Manish Patel, another TGO scientist from the UK's Open University.

"If we take the previous measurements at face value, and we obviously believe our own results - then there's something going on in the atmosphere between those two points in time, and it's something we don't predict.

"We expect methane to hang around in the atmosphere of Mars for hundreds of years. It's destroyed by sunlight, but it's destroyed over relatively long time-scales in terms of human observation. Whatever was there before should still be there today, even if at a diluted level."

It's as if we now have a double puzzle.

People had been debating from where on the planet methane could emerge, with the tantalising prospect that CH4-producing microbes might be the source. Now, they will have to debate where the methane is going; what might be its "sinks".

Some sort of chemical interaction would be one answer, but Håkan Svedhem, the European Space Agency's project scientist on TGO, says people shouldn't be downhearted about the prospects for life on the planet if methane is eventually determined not to be present.

"We've got a bit fixated by methane because on Earth we all know that more than 95% of the methane comes from biological sources. But there are abundant forms of life that do not produce methane," he told BBC News.

The Trace Gas Orbiter arrived at the Red Planet in October 2016, but then took a further year to manoeuvre itself into its proper science orbit at an altitude of 400km above the surface.

Staring in April last year, it began its systematic search of the atmosphere, using the onboard spectrometers NOMAD and ACS.

These measure the constituents of Martian air by looking through the atmosphere towards the Sun. Different molecules absorb the light in characteristic ways.

The precision of this solar occultation method enables TGO to set an upper limit for the methane at just 12 parts per trillion. In other words, if the methane is there, it has to have a lower concentration than this.

The mission team is reporting its latest observations here at the here at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly

The group also has some papers being published in the journal Nature and in the the Proceedings of the Russian Academy of Science.

Other results include an exquisite description of how water was taken high into the atmosphere during the recent global dust storm on the planet; and a new map of sub-surface water derived from the satellite's neutron spectrometer.

This map has greater resolution than any survey before it and, aside from the obviously water-rich permafrost of the polar regions, detects some previously unknown "wet" regions at the equator.

These could be important to future surface robots looking for evidence of present-day microbial life, and for astronauts in need of local water resources.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47878138

 

 

[nudge]

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Back on Earth, China's Mars simulation base greets first visitors

JINCHANG, China (Reuters) - About 100 excited Chinese teenagers completed a five-hour tour of a space colony against a desolate backdrop not unlike the desert planet of Tatooine, the home world of Luke Skywalker.

They were not on the set of Star Wars, but at a Chinese-built Mars simulation base in the barren, windswept hills of Gansu province.

The facility - comprising several interconnected modules including a greenhouse and a mock decompression chamber - opened its doors to the public on Wednesday.

Mars Base 1 Camp, covering an area about one-fifth of an American football field, is the brainchild of a media company and officials in Gansu, a poor province in northwest China.

Officials hope the camp, about 40 km (25 miles) from the township of Jinchang, will boost tourism and allow visitors to feel as though they are on the red planet.

A plan to invest 2.5 billion yuan ($374 million) will expand the site to 67 sq km (26 square miles) and attract 2 million visitors a year by 2030.

“I am very excited to be here,” said a 13-year-old student from Jinchang. “We saw the monolith, a crater and a cave. It’s better than the Mars that I had imagined.”

In the 1968 science fiction film “2001: A Space Odyssey”, a mysterious black monolith appears before a tribe of man-apes in the African savannah in one of the most memorable scenes in Western movie history.

China’s space program has fired up imaginations and public appetite for science and science fiction.

In January, a Chinese space probe touched down on the far side of the moon for the first time, a feat viewed with pride among ordinary Chinese people.

China is developing powerful rockets to help realize a more ambitious dream of sending a probe to Mars in 2020. After that, scientists hope to explore asteroids and even land on one.

“A nation needs people who look up at the stars,” said Bai Fan, CEO of Jinchang Star Universe Culture & Tourism Investment Co, the media company that co-developed the base.

“We hope the bases will let them feel the spirit of space exploration, and not just experience the technology behind it.”

Apart from being a tourist attraction, the camp has collaborated with the Astronauts Center of China (ACC) to eventually turn the facility into an astronaut-training center.

The camp is not the only Mars-themed site in China. On the neighboring Qinghai-Tibet plateau, China unveiled its first Mars “village” in March.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-exploration-china-mars/back-on-earth-chinas-mars-simulation-base-greets-first-visitors-idUSKCN1RT11S

 

 

So cool.

[Bluewolf]

1 hour ago, nudge said:

 

So cool.

It's like we are already there.... bagsy bunk 5 in case we get an alien sneaking in, they always go for the first bunk, and my freshly awoken comrades screams will give me chance to get away... also fancy some light duties ( watering plants ) in the botanical section and get myself on the exploration team asap... 

Just for a second there I had a flash of a potential Alien story but naa!! been done to death, doubt I could add a new twist to that theme.. 

[nudge]

5 minutes ago, Bluewolf said:

It's like we are already there.... bagsy bunk 5 in case we get an alien sneaking in, they always go for the first bunk, and my freshly awoken comrades screams will give me chance to get away... also fancy some light duties ( watering plants ) in the botanical section and get myself on the exploration team asap... 

Just for a second there I had a flash of a potential Alien story but naa!! been done to death, doubt I could add a new twist to that theme.. 

I'm sure you could come up with quite a story though  

Some more video footage:

 

[Bluewolf]

1 hour ago, nudge said:

I'm sure you could come up with quite a story though  

Some more video footage:

 

It is very cool though as you say... especially given the landscape around it, makes it feel like the real thing...

[nudge]

2 minutes ago, Bluewolf said:

It is very cool though as you say... especially given the landscape around it, makes it feel like the real thing...

Would definitely like to visit it... 

I also like their approach. Part scientific research, part tourist attraction, focuses on kids and teenagers in particular to get them interested in space, can be transformed into a fully functional taikonaut training base later on.

[Bluewolf]

1 hour ago, nudge said:

Would definitely like to visit it... 

I also like their approach. Part scientific research, part tourist attraction, focuses on kids and teenagers in particular to get them interested in space, can be transformed into a fully functional taikonaut training base later on.

Definitely a good way to get the kids interested in space.. they could maybe do a summer camp type experience for a week where they have to achieve certain objectives in a certain amount of time and sort out a leader and assign duties to help run the base properly during their stay.. Then they could let them pick an area to explore and they could go out in a rover or something... make it fun for them

[nudge]

20 minutes ago, Bluewolf said:

Definitely a good way to get the kids interested in space.. they could maybe do a summer camp type experience for a week where they have to achieve certain objectives in a certain amount of time and sort out a leader and assign duties to help run the base properly during their stay.. Then they could let them pick an area to explore and they could go out in a rover or something... make it fun for them

Could they do such a summer camp for over 30s as well?... 

[Bluewolf]

1 hour ago, nudge said:

Could they do such a summer camp for over 30s as well?... 

Ha ha ha.. I have run out of positive reps for the day... 

[CaaC (John)+]

Nasa's InSight lander 'detects first Marsquake'

The American space agency's InSight lander appears to have detected its first seismic event on Mars.

The faint rumble was picked up by the probe's sensors on 6 April - the 128th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.

It is the first seismic signal detected on the surface of a planetary body other than the Earth and its Moon.

Scientists say the source for this "Marsquake" could either be movement in a crack inside the planet or the shaking from a meteorite impact.

Nasa's InSight probe touched down on the Red Planet in November last year.

It aims to identify multiple quakes, to help build a clearer picture of Mars' interior structure.

Researchers can then compare this with Earth's internal rock layering, to learn something new about the different ways in which these two worlds have evolved through the aeons.

Interestingly, InSight's scientists say the character of the rumble reminds them very much of the type of data the Apollo sensors gathered on the lunar surface.

The vibrations picked up by InSight's sensors are made audible in this video, and record three different types of signal. (1) The wind on Mars; (2) the reported 6 April event; and (3) the movement of the probe's robot arm as it takes photos.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Astronauts installed five seismometers that measured thousands of quakes while operating on the Moon between 1969 and 1977.

InSight's seismometer system incorporates French (low-frequency) and British (high-frequency) sensors. Known as the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), the instrument was lifted on to the Martian surface by the probe's robotic arm on 19 December.

Both parts of the system observed the 6 April signal, although it wasn't possible to extract any information to make a more definitive statement about the likely source or the distance from the probe to the event.

"It's probably only a Magnitude 1 to 2 event, perhaps within 100km or so. There are a lot of uncertainties on that, but that's what it's looking like," said Prof Tom Pike, who leads the British side of the seismometer package.

Dr Bruce Banerdt is Nasa's chief scientist on the InSight mission. He added: "This particular Marsquake - the first one we've seen - is a very, very small one. In fact, if you live in Southern California like I do, you wouldn't even notice this one in your day-to-life. But since Mars is so quiet, this is something that we're able to pick up with our instrument."

The team is investigating three other signals picked up only by the low-frequency sensors - on 14 March (Sol 105), 10 April (Sol 132) and 11 April (Sol 133). However, these were even smaller than the Sol 128 event, and the InSight scientists do not have the confidence yet to claim them as real seismic events.

The probe's prime mission is set to run for two Earth years - a little more than one Martian year.

Given the time taken to make this first detection, it might suggest InSight should record another dozen or so seismic signals in the initial operating period, explained Prof Pike.

"When you've got one, you don't know whether you were just lucky, but when we see two or three we will have a better idea," the Imperial College London researcher told BBC News.

"Of course, if the other three are confirmed then we could be looking at quite a large number of detections over the next two years."

SEIS was developed and provided for InSight by the French space agency (CNES).

The UK Space Agency funded the £5m British involvement. Sue Horne, the UKSA's head of space exploration, commented: "Thanks to the Apollo missions of the 1960s we know that Moonquakes exist. So, it's exciting to see the Mars results coming in, now indicating the existence of Marsquakes which will lead to a better understanding of what's below the surface of the Red Planet."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48031975

 

Edited April 24, 2019 by CaaC - John

[CaaC (John)+]

@nudge @Bluewolf Just listening to the Martian Winds and the noise of the Robotic Arm sent shivers down my spine. 

 

The vibrations picked up by InSight's sensors are made audible in this video, and record three different types of signal. (1) The wind on Mars; (2) the reported 6 April event; and (3) the movement of the probe's robot arm as it takes photos.

 

[CaaC (John)+]

A Tremor on Mars Confirms a Lasting Suspicion

Marina Koren

 

Because we’ve been sitting on the same rock for thousands of years, sometimes our language can tend to be a little Earth-centric. The word earthquake, for example, feels universal, as if it can be applied to any shaking ground. But zoom out beyond our tectonic plates, and the vocabulary shifts.

Mars, for instance, has marsquakes.

They sound too silly to be real as if a Netflix show about future Mars settlements made up a scary natural disaster. But tremors on Mars are a thing, and right now scientists believe they have detected a quake on Mars for the first time.

© NASA /JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona / Texas A&M

Scientists know this because they sent a seismometer to our planetary neighbour. The instrument arrived last year, on board a NASA lander called InSight. The seismometer, small and dome-shaped, has sat on the brick-coloured surface since, waiting for hints of movement below the surface. On April 6, it caught something, a “quiet but distinct” signal, scientists said. A rumble from the depths.

“We’ve been waiting months for our first marsquake,” Philippe Lognonné, a geophysicist at the Institute of Earth Physics of Paris who leads the seismometer team, said in a statement this week.

Scientists have suspected for decades that they’d find this phenomenon if they had the right tools to look. Unlike Earth, Mars lacks tectonic plates that glide over its mantle, jostling the ground when they touch. But like Earth, Mars has three distinct layers—a rocky crust, a mantle, and a metal core—and it’s still cooling from its fiery formation out of a primordial cloud of cosmic dust. Even now, billions of years later, heat radiates from its centre and can be strong enough to crack the surface and escape. The fracturing sends seismic waves streaming in all directions.

© Thomson Reuters An electric 4WD vehicle designed to represent a vehicle used for an imagined Mars exploration drives near the C-Space Project Mars simulation base in the Gobi Desert outside Jinchang, Gansu Province, China, April 18, 2019. REUTERS/Thomas Peter

Marsquakes can help scientists study the interior of the planet. Seismic waves move like beams of light in a hall of mirrors; as they propagate throughout the planet, they bounce around. Different materials redirect the waves in different ways. Data from seismometers allow scientists to track the zigzagging of the waves and determine the composition of the stuff they strike.

While scientists are thrilled about the detection, they wish the rumble were stronger. The quake measured about 2.5 on the Richter scale, too weak to draw a path within the depths. If a tremor like that happened on Earth, you wouldn’t feel it. If you were standing next to the InSight lander at the moment of detection, you wouldn’t know either. “We are waiting for the big, big one,” says David Mimoun, a scientist at France’s Higher Institute of Aeronautics and Space and a member of the seismometer team. Researchers expect to detect dozens more, some as powerful as 5.5 magnitude.

The marsquake provided some information about the lander’s surroundings, though. It lasted 15 minutes, a relatively long time for such a weak rumble. This suggests that the ground beneath the InSight lander doesn’t have much water, which is known to exist on Mars mostly as ice. “When there is water, it dampens the quake,” Mimoun says.

© Thomson Reuters An electric 4WD vehicle designed to represent a vehicle used for an imagined Mars exploration drives near the C-Space Project Mars simulation base in the Gobi Desert outside Jinchang, Gansu Province, China, April 18, 2019. REUTERS/Thomas Peter

Some of the earliest missions to Mars sought to find evidence of marsquakes. A pair of Viking landers touched down on the surface in the 1970s with seismometers in tow. But the instruments were mounted on the spacecraft rather than set on the ground, and only one actually worked. Under these circumstances, it was difficult to tell whether rumblings originated from the depths or from the hardware shuddering against a strong wind. In 1976, a seismometer on one of the landers felt some shaking on a not-too-windy day. But the spacecraft recorded measurements of the wind speed only 20 minutes before the mysterious rumbling and 45 minutes after. Scientists couldn’t rule out a wind gust in that missing window.

This time, they’re more certain. With the seismometer firmly on the ground, it’s easier to pick out the gusts from the tremors. “We’ve seen a lot of wind previously, and we know that this is something different,” says Ingrid Daubar, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a member of the InSight team.

© Thomson Reuters An installation representing a cave on Mars is seen at the C-Space Project Mars simulation base in the Gobi Desert outside Jinchang, Gansu Province, China, April 17, 2019. REUTERS/Thomas Peter

While scientists have ruled out the wind as a potential cause, they haven’t fully investigated the possibility of a meteor impact, which can cause the surface to rumble. Daubar says the team will compare images of the InSight lander’s surroundings from before and after the detection and look for evidence of any fresh craters.

Earth and Mars share their shaky properties with another celestial body: the moon. During the 1970s, seismometers placed on the lunar surface by Apollo astronauts detected hundreds of moonquakes. Some reached a magnitude of 5.5. Scientists suspect several sources, including churning in the moon’s interior caused by Earth’s gravitational tug.

First, there’s a low, steady hum, the voice of the wind sweeping across the surface. Then, something higher pitched and urgent—the quake. At the end, the whirring of the lander’s robotic arm, manoeuvring to take pictures of the scene.

The sound of the quake is the big draw here. But it’s the noise of the robotic arm, a hollow cooing, that is my favourite. To hear the vibrations of a quake on another planet is a beguiling experience. But the sound of the delicate movements of the machine that captured them, that humankind somehow managed to dream up and deliver to Mars in one piece, is somehow a little sweeter.   

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/a-tremor-on-mars-confirms-a-lasting-suspicion/ar-BBWlb3A?li=AAnZ9Ug

[CaaC (John)+]

Solar Wind at Martian Moon Could Impact Future Missions

Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos. Both are small, airless bodies with irregular shapes. Because they lack protective atmospheres and magnetospheres, Phobos and Deimos are directly exposed to the solar wind for part of their orbits. Now, a study from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center suggests that the solar wind creates a complex electrical environment around Phobos, giving its night side and shadowed craters a static electric charge. This could impact plans for future robotic and human explorers to study the moons of Mars.

https://www.nasa.gov/topics/moon-to-mars/videos

[CaaC (John)+]

How do you learn to drive on Mars?

VIDEO

Time is of the essence. It's now little more than a year until the Rosalind Franklin rover is sent to Mars.

Engineers across Europe and Russia are busy assembling this scientific vehicle, and the hardware that will both carry it to the Red Planet and put it down safely on the surface.

In parallel to all this are the ongoing rehearsals.

These are needed to ensure controllers can easily and efficiently operate the robot from back here on Earth.

The videos on this page show the latest locomotion verification tests that have been conducted at the RUAG company in Switzerland.

How will the rover stand up on its landing platform and roll down the ramps that take it on to the dusty, rocky terrain of Mars?

How will it negotiate any boulders at the targeted equatorial touchdown location of Oxia Planum?

And how will Rosalind Franklin cope with steep slopes?

These questions have to be answered now, before the rover’s rocket blasts off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in July/August next year.

The robot is a joint project of the European and Russian space agencies. It will roam an ancient terrain, looking for evidence of past – perhaps even present – life.

Key to this search will be a drill that will pull up rocky samples from up to 2m below the surface. It's underground – away from radiation - that we think life might have a chance on Mars.

VIDEO

Those samples will be delivered to a sophisticated suite of instruments that live inside a sterile box known as the Analytical Laboratory Drawer.

The ALD has just gone through its own test programme in Turin, Italy, and is now sitting in a cleanroom at Airbus in Stevenage, UK, waiting to be bolted on to Rosalind Franklin. Integration of the ALD will likely take place next week.

Engineers at Stevenage have a deadline of July/August to assemble all the robot's components and get the finished vehicle out the door.

Significant outstanding items sill to be attached include the bogey system (the locomotion chassis and wheels) and the British camera system (PanCam) that will survey Oxia Planum. This equipment will sit atop a mast.

From southern England, the completed rover will travel to southwest France, to Toulouse, where it will be "shaked and baked" at another of Airbus's facilities. This “environmental testing” will demonstrate the robot can handle the vibrational and temperature extremes it will experience on the flight to Mars.

From Toulouse, Rosalind Franklin will travel across France to Cannes. It's on the Côte d'Azur that the Franco-Italian aerospace company Thales Alenia Space will do the all-important final fit-check, bringing together the rover, its Russian "Kazachok" landing system (built by NPO Lavochkin), and its German cruise vehicle (from OHB-System) which will manage the journey from Earth to Mars.

Assuming all that goes off without a hitch, everything heads to Baikonur and launch preparations.

Fourteen months really is no time at all

In 1952, Rosalind Franklin was at King's College London (KCL) investigating the atomic arrangement of DNA, using her skills as an X-ray crystallographer to create images for analysis.

One of her team's pictures, known as Photo 51, provided the essential insights for Crick and Watson to build the first three-dimensional model of the two-stranded macromolecule.

It was one of the supreme achievements of 20th Century science, enabling researchers to finally understand how DNA stored, copied and transmitted the genetic "code of life".

Crick, Watson, and KCL colleague Maurice Wilkins received the 1962 Nobel Prize for the breakthrough.

Franklin's untimely death meant she could not be considered for the award (Nobels are not awarded posthumously). However, many argue that her contribution has never really been given the attention it deserves and has even been underplayed.

 

VIDEO

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48230277

 

Edited May 19, 2019 by CaaC - John

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Mars: The box seeking to answer the biggest question

VIDEO

Is it possible? Is there life on Mars?

Ever since the Mariner 4 probe made the first successful visit to the Red Planet - a flyby in July 1965 - we've sent a succession of missions that have given us all sorts of fascinating information about Earth's near neighbour - but not the answer to the only question that really matters.

So, take a look at the technology that may finally change the game.

This is the Analytical Laboratory Drawer, or ALD - a sophisticated three-in-one box of instruments that will examine rock samples for the chemical fingerprints of biology.

On Thursday, it was gently lifted by crane and lowered into the  ExoMars "Rosalind Franklin" rover the six-wheeled buggy that will carry it across the Oxia plain of Mars in 2021.

The 300kg robot, which is being developed jointly by the European and Russian space agencies, will have a drill that can dig up to 2m below the planet's dusty surface.

The tailings pulled up by this tool will be handed through a door to the ALD, where the various mechanisms inside will then crush and prepare powders that can be dropped into small cups for analysis.

It will be a forensic examination, looking at all aspects of the samples' composition.

All previous rovers have skirted the big question. They've essentially only asked whether the conditions on Mars today or in the past would have been favourable to life - if ever it had existed.  They haven't actually had the necessary equipment to truly detect biomarkers.

Rosalind Franklin will be different. Its 54kg ALD has been built specifically to look for those complex organic molecules that have their origin in life processes.

Thursday's integration was slow and deliberate, understandably: the ALD is in many ways the key element of the Rosalind Franklin mission.

"It is wonderful to see the heart of the rover has now been installed," said Sue Horne, the head of space exploration at the UK Space Agency.

"The Analytical Laboratory Drawer is the key location for Martian sample testing on the rover, allowing us to understand the geology and potentially to identify signatures of life of Mars. I can't wait to see what discoveries lie in store for this British-built rover."

Engineers at Airbus UK are now working three shifts a day to get the rover finished.

Although it doesn't look much like a vehicle at the moment, virtually all the components have now arrived at the Stevenage factory.

They're sitting on shelves around the edge of the cleanroom in bags, waiting their turn in the assembly sequence.

There are one or two outstanding items, however, including the rover's British "eyes".

This is the camera system, or PanCam, which will sit atop a mast and guide the robot on its trail of investigation.

"We've just held the delivery review board this week and PanCam should be coming to us in the next few days," said Chris Draper, the flight model operations manager at Airbus.

"We know everything will go together; that's the beauty of systems engineering. Every single part of the rover has been modelled in 3D, and everyone works to interface control drawings. Assuming we all do that then we know the ALD, for example, will fit perfectly into the rover."

The Stevenage team has a hard deadline of the beginning of August to get the finished Rosalind Franklin rover out the door.

It has to go to the company's Toulouse facility for a series of tests that will ensure the design is robust enough to cope with the severe shaking experienced on a rocket ride to Mars.

Further fit-checks then follow in France before shipment to the launch site at the famous Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Lift-off has to occur in July/August next year. This date is immovable: you only go to Mars when it's aligned with Earth and the windows of opportunity have an interval of 26 months.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20323384

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Rosalind Franklin: Mars rover control centre opens

The control centre that will run day-to-day operations during the Rosalind Franklin rover's exploration of Mars in 2021 has been inaugurated in Turin.

The Italian facility will be where engineers sit and communicate with the robot vehicle via a satellite that is already in orbit around the Red Planet.

Rosalind Franklin is a joint venture between the European and Russian space agencies (Esa and Roscosmos).

Its mission is to drill into Mars to see if life has ever been present.

Esa's director-general, Jan Wörner, said of the new Rover Operations Control Center (ROCC): "This is the crucial place on Earth from where we will listen to the rover's instruments, see what [Rosalind Franklin] sees and send commands to direct the search for evidence of life on and under the surface."

The ROOC is located on the premises of Altec, an engineering and logistics services company set up by the Italian Space Agency and Thales Alenia Space (TAS).

TAS is the industrial prime contractor engaged by Esa to develop the rover and all its systems.

Assembly of the vehicle itself has been subcontracted to another of Europe's major aerospace companies, Airbus.

Final integration of the six-wheeled scientific machine is nearing completion in a cleanroom in Stevenage, UK.

Three rovers are actually being constructed as part of the mission.

The first, called the "Structural Thermal Model" (STM), was used to prove the design.

This STM went through a tough testing regime to check that the robot that does eventually launch to Mars - the "Flight Model" now in Stevenage - will be able to cope with the stresses of working on another planet.

The third model, also not quite finished, is called the "Rover Ground Test Module".

This is essentially the copy of Rosalind Franklin that will be kept on Earth at the ROOC to troubleshoot any problems.

If engineers need to re-write a piece of software to overcome some glitch on the Flight Model, the patch can be trialled first in the Turin Test Module before being sent up to the Red Planet.

Some problems may be more physical in nature, such as an obstacle like a sand trap or large boulder.

Again, the ROOC's engineers will be able to practise avoidance and escape manoeuvres with a dummy rover model in a large sandpit before asking the real robot on Mars to follow the same movements.

Rosalind Franklin is due to launch to the Red Planet in July/August next year and land in March 2021.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48465050

Edited May 30, 2019 by CaaC - John
Spelling corrections

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Opportunity: NASA Rover Completes Mars Mission

Drive along with the NASA’s Opportunity Mars rover and hear the voices of scientists and engineers behind the mission. Designed to run for 90 days, the exploration spanned more than 15 years from 2004 to 2019. Along the way, it discovered definitive proof of liquid water on ancient Mars and set the off-world driving record. For more information on the Mars Exploration Rovers and all of NASA’s Mars missions, visit mars.nasa.gov. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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@nudge @Bluewolf   

 

NASA spots "Star Trek" Starfleet logo on Mars

Sophie Lewis

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has spotted an unusual symbol on the surface of Mars — the iconic "Star Trek" Starfleet logo. The MRO captured a series of strange chevron symbols on a Martian sand dune in the southeast Hellas Planitia region.

The MRO HiRISE (High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera team at the University of Arizona highlighted the discovery Wednesday, though the image was acquired by the team April 22.

"Enterprising viewers will make the discovery that these features look conspicuously like a famous logo," the camera team behind the MRO HiRise image said.

According to the team, the shapes on the red planet were created by wind, lava and dunes. They began as large, crescent-shaped dunes that were surrounded by lava after an eruption before solidifying. As wind blew over the dunes, it displaced much of the sand, and eventually left behind "footprints," also called "dune casts," that record the presence of dunes that were surrounded by lava.

 Latest shots from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

The MRO has been exploring Mars from orbit since 2006, capturing some of the most detailed images of its surface. Hopefully, it finds some aliens sporting Vulcan salutes next.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/nasa-spots-star-trek-starfleet-logo-on-mars/ar-AACR14W?MSCC=1560497143&ocid=chromentp