A view of a memorial to victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center towers was taken on Mars yesterday, on the 10th anniversary of the attacks.
The memorial, made from aluminum recovered from the site of the twin towers in weeks following the attacks, serves as a cable guard on a tool on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity and bears an image of the American flag. The memorial is on the rover’s rock abrasion tool, which was being made in September 2001 by workers at Honeybee Robotics in lower Manhattan, less than a mile from the World Trade Center.
September 13th, 2011
Memorial Image Taken on Mars on September 11, 2011
September 9th, 2011
9/11 tributes reach all the way to space, to Mars and back collectSPACE
Ten years after the September 11 terrorist attacks, tributes to the thousands who lost their lives have extended into space, from Earth’s orbit to the surface of Mars.
Mementos were carried into space for the families of the victims, flags were flown as memorials to the fallen first responders and metal recovered from Ground Zero, the site of the World Trade Center buildings in New York, was incorporated into rovers sent to explore the Red Planet.
American astronauts have also radioed down from space their own tributes, starting the day of the attacks to this week, pausing to remember those who died on the tenth anniversary of their loss.
“It’s gratifying knowing that a piece of the World Trade Center is up there on Mars,” Stephen Gorevan, founder and chairman of Honeybee Robotics that built the rovers’ rock abrasion tools, said. “That shield on Mars, to me, contrasts the destructive nature of the attackers with the ingenuity and hopeful attitude of Americans.”
September 3rd, 2011
Mars Rover Discovery Elates NASA The New York Times
It has been driving on and off for more than seven years, but now it has reached its new destination. Opportunity, a small exploratory rover that landed on Mars in 2004, has trundled to a crater called Endeavour. And the first rock it looked at has already opened a new chapter in the study of Mars, NASA scientists said Thursday. On a telephone news conference, mission scientists giddily described that rock: full of zinc and bromine, elements that, at least for rocks on Earth, would be suggestive of geology formed with heat and water.
“This rock doesn’t look like anything else we’ve seen before” on Mars, said Steven W. Squyres, a professor of astronomy at Cornell and principal investigator of the rover mission.
June 28th, 2011
Rover may tackle Kilimanjaro-sized mound on Mars The New Scientist
Talk about a tough road to climb. On 24 June, mission scientists endorsed two landing sites for NASA’s next Mars rover from a shortlist of four. One of the two would see Curiosity tackle a mound of rocks nearly as high as mount Kilimanjaro. Where to land the $2.5 billion robot, due to blast off in November, has been debatedMovie Camera for years. NASA will now mull over the mission scientists’ recommendations but is not obliged to follow either of them.
June 20th, 2011
Heat is on: Huge shield must protect Mars rover
When NASA’s newest Mars rover dives into the Martian atmosphere next year, it will be cocooned in the largest “beat the heat” system ever sent to the Red Planet.
To ensure that the nuclear-powered rover — called the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), or “Curiosity” for short — survives its fiery entry and reaches a pinpointed landing spot, it will have a huge heat shield and back shell that together form a protective aeroshell.
June 2nd, 2011
NASA Says A Final Goodbye To Plucky Mars Rover
NASA has pulled the plug on one of its two Mars rovers. Spirit hasn’t been heard from in more than a year, and now the space agency says it’s abandoning hope that it will hear from the rover again.
Any disappointment that Spirit’s mission has come to an end has to be tempered by the fantastic success of the robotic explorer. Intended to last 90 days, Spirit operated in Gusev Crater on Mars for more than six Earth years.
January 7th, 2011
NASA Mars Rover High-definition 360 Video (Lion King) iPodNo1.com
This HD video is of a 360-degree panorama taken by Nasa Mars Rover, ‘Opportunity’ in April 2004. It was taken on the rim of the Eagle Crater in the Meridiani Plains. NASA entitled it ‘Lion King’. It consists of 558 pictures taken over two solar days. This video is a capture of a program called HD Panorama running at 1280×720 resolution.
December 30th, 2010
Mars Rover to Celebrate New Year’s Eve at Big Crater
NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity has its plans for New Year’s Eve all sorted out — it will be poking around a football-field-size crater called Santa Maria.
Opportunity made it to Santa Maria, which is about 295 feet (90 meters) wide, on Dec. 16. It will spend a few more weeks examining rocks exposed at the crater, checking out minerals that likely formed in the presence of water billions of years ago, researchers said. The Santa Maria stop marks a slight detour for Opportunity, which is making its slow, steady way to a giant crater called Endeavour.
December 22nd, 2010
Mars Movie: I’m Dreaming of a Blue Sunset
A new Mars movie clip gives us a rover’s-eye view of a bluish Martian sunset, while another clip shows the silhouette of the moon Phobos passing in front of the sun.
America’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, carefully guided by researchers with an artistic sense, has recorded images used in the simulated movies.
These holiday treats from the rover’s panoramic camera, or Pancam, offer travel fans a view akin to standing on Mars and watching the sky.
“These visualizations of an alien sunset show what it must have looked like for Opportunity, in a way we rarely get to see, with motion,” said rover science team member Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, College Station. Dust particles make the Martian sky appear reddish and create a bluish glow around the sun.
September 22nd, 2010
Driving Sustainability: How NASA’s Mars rovers could improve your next electric car AutoblogGreen
How far would you go for a better electric car? The ends of the earth? The moon? Ari Jónsson’s answer is further than either of these places. He can help find a better electric car on Mars.
Jónsson’s, of Reykjavík University, spoke at the 2010 Driving Sustainability conference in Reykjavík, Iceland last weekend on the topic “Ultimate Sustainability.” In this case, ultimate isn’t an understatement. Jónsson helped NASA develop the electric rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, that were sent to the Red Planet in 2003 and performed way beyond anyone’s expectations since arriving in the harsh, harsh environment. Think Nissan is being careful with the cold weather package for the Leaf? Try getting a battery ready for temperatures that can drop to -50 or -80 C at night. Then try powering these batteries from the sun in a place that gets less solar energy (Mars is further from the sun than the Earth) and where the sky is often covered by dust storms – and that dust can come to rest on the solar panels. In short, try building an electric vehicle (EV) for the worst possible scenario and make is 100 percent sustainable. It’s not easy, but the lessons learned have Earthbound applications.