A new look at ancient craters on Mars finds five that are arrayed along an arc that’s part of a giant circle around the planet. The circle may have been Mars’ equator long ago. The craters might all have been formed when one giant asteroid broke apart, its fragments slamming into the planet at different times and locations around the then-equator, says Jafar Arkani-Hamed of McGill University in Montreal. If the analysis is right, it has implication for where water might lurk beneath the Martian surface today.
March 22nd, 2005
Crater count led Mars historians astray New Scientist
The method used by planetary scientists to estimate the ages of various regions of Mars is flawed. “This really changes things,” says Nadine Barlow of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. For instance, the findings will significantly change our understanding of when Mars may have been volcanically active. To estimate the age of any region on Mars, geologists count the number of meteor craters they can see in images of the area. The idea is that the older a surface, the more craters should have accumulated over time. Crater counts give an indication of the relative age of different Martian regions.
March 14th, 2005
Dust devils caught on Mars
Even though Mars’ atmosphere is only about 1 percent as dense as Earth’s, there’s still enough air to whip up whirlwinds known as dust devils. NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor has tracked the mini-tornadoes from orbit, but they’ve never been spotted from ground level. Until now. Last week, after more than a year of watching, the Spirit rover captured a couple of wisps making their way across the desolation of Gusev Crater, said a member of the rover science team, Geoffrey Landis of NASA’s Glenn Research Center. “In some of the navigation camera images, we actually spotted two dust devils, and one of those dust devils was visible in the rear hazcam,” Landis said.
March 8th, 2005
NASA Simulates Small Martian ‘Dust Devils’ and Wind in Vacuum Tower
Befitting the powerful Roman god of war for which Mars was named, the red planet’s ‘dust devils’ can be as lofty as five miles (eight kilometers) tall. A dust devil is a wind-generated vortex, or whirlpool in the atmosphere. Nearly every child has seen small whirlwinds that spin dust or leaves in spirals on Earth. Besides large ‘dust devils,’ the martian environment, from time to time, spawns huge dust storms that may cover nearly the entire planet. Both martian winds and dust devils, big and little, are constantly changing the planet’s environment. To expand knowledge of dust devils and the red planet’s feisty winds, NASA is simulating both of them in a laboratory at NASA Ames Research Center, located in California’s Silicon Valley.
February 21st, 2005
Mars pictures reveal frozen sea
A huge, frozen sea lies just below the surface of Mars, a team of European scientists has announced.
Their assessment is based on pictures of the planet’s near-equatorial Elysium region that show plated and rutted features across an area 800 by 900km.
February 21st, 2005
‘Pack ice’ suggests frozen sea on Mars New Scientist
A frozen sea, surviving as blocks of pack ice, may lie just beneath the surface of Mars, suggest observations from Europe’s Mars Express spacecraft. The sea is just 5
February 17th, 2005
Water Spread Across Much of Ancient Mars, Creating Conditions for Life
Water was common across a vast region of ancient Mars, creating habitable conditions for long stretches of time billions of years ago, scientists said Thursday. New data reveal water in the Meridiani Planum region of Mars extended across hundreds of thousands of square miles, at least as groundwater and possibly as shallow lakes or seas. The work significantly expands the amount of surface area on Mars known to have once been water-laden, and it extends the period of time that the water was present.
January 31st, 2005
Night-side Glow Detected at Mars
Like Earth and Venus, the night side of Mars emits a subtle glow, scientists reported last week in the journal Science. The night-side air glow at the red planet, elusive until now, was detected by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter. In an interview with Astrobiology Magazine, Jean-Loup Bertaux, principal investigator for the Mars Express SPICAM instrument, explains what lights up the martian evening sky, and why our understanding of that process could aid future missions to Mars.
November 19th, 2004
The Case for Methane Expands, but Theories of Abundance and Source Diverge The Planetary Society
The case for the presence of methane in Mars’ atmosphere expanded, but the theories about its abundance and source floated in different directions as Vladimir A. Krasnopolsky, of Catholic University of America, and Michael J. Mumma, of NASA, updated their previous findings at the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) annual meeting held in Louisville, Kentucky last week. Using Earth as the analogue, Krasnopolsky maintained that the methane is uniformly distributed in the atmosphere of Mars, and took the hypothetical leap that living bacteria under the surface are “a plausible source” of the odorless and colorless gas. Mumma, on the other hand, reported the methane to be significantly “enhanced” in some areas, and veered out of the (Earth) box, suggesting that distinctly Martian processes may be in play.
November 12th, 2004
Mars Gullies Likely Formed By Underground Aquifers
The revelation in 2000 that gully features have been spotted on Mars sparked numerous ideas as to how the geological features were formed. A study team is analyzing images of gullies captured by the Mars Global Surveyor