As the midsummer Sun beats down on the southern mountains of Mars, bringing daytime temperatures soaring up to a balmy 25ºC (77ºF), some of their slopes become darkened with long, rusty stains that may be the result of water seeping out from just below the surface. These dark lines, called recurring slope lineae (RSL) by planetary scientists, are some of the best visual evidence we have of liquid water existing on Mars today – although if RSL are the result of water it’s nothing you’d want to fill your astro-canteen with; based on the first appearances of these features in early Martian spring any water responsible for them would have to be extremely high in salt content.
April 6th, 2015
Team Returning Orbiter to Duty After Computer Swap Product Design & Development
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, at Mars since 2006, made an unplanned switch on Wednesday from one main computer to a redundant one onboard, triggering a hiatus in planned activities.
Sensing the computer swap, the orbiter put itself into a precautionary safe standby mode. It remained healthy, in communication and fully powered. The mission’s operations team expects the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to resume full duty within a few days, including communication relays and science observations.
The orbiter has experienced this type of unplanned computer swap six times previously, starting in 2007 and including two occasions in 2014.
February 10th, 2015
Unsung hero: NASA Orbiter spends decade circling Mars 40,000 times The Space Reporter
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter completed its 40,000th orbit of the planet of February 7.
The orbiter has orbited the planet for the last 9 years, well beyond the two-year scope for its original mission. During that time its has sent 247 terabits of data about Mars atmosphere, surface and subsurface of Mars. That’s more than all other vessels that has visited other planets combined.
MRO circles the planet around 12 times a day, crossing near the poles at a height of 186 miles above the surface. Among its other impressive feats, there’s also the fact that the orbiter has traveled nearly twice as far in circling Mars 40,000 times than it did getting to Mars.
The data provided by the orbiter’s 40,000 and counting passes paints a picture of Mars’ evolution. Observations of the planets oldest craters by the MRO found minerals indicative of long-gone bodies of water. Passes of the poles found evidence of water moving around the planet as a gas, traveling between polar ice caps and ice deposits further down.
November 11th, 2014
Newest NASA Mars Orbiter Demonstrates Relay Prowess
The newest node in NASA’s Mars telecommunications network — a radio aboard the MAVEN orbiter custom-designed for data links with robots on the surface of Mars — handled a copious 550 megabits during its first relay of real Mars data.
MAVEN’s Electra UHF radio received the transmission from NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover on Nov. 6, using an adaptive data rate as the orbiter passed through the sky over the rover. The data that MAVEN relayed to NASA’s Deep Space Network of large dish antennas on Earth included several images of terrain that Curiosity has been examining at the base of Mars’ Mount Sharp. The test also included relaying data to Curiosity from Earth via MAVEN.
November 7th, 2014
Mind-blowing Meteor Shower on Mars During Comet Flyby, Say NASA Scientists Universe Today
“Thousands of meteors per hour would have been visible — truly astounding to the human eye.” That’s Nick Schneider’s description of what you and I would have seen standing on Mars during Comet Siding Spring’s close flyby last month. “It would have been really mind-blowing,” he added. Schneider is instrument lead for MAVEN’s Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS). He and a group of scientists who work as lead investigators for instruments on the MAVEN and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft shared the latest results from the comet flyby during a media teleconference earlier today. There were many surprises. Would we expect anything less from a comet?
September 24th, 2014
Mars Robotic Spacecraft Population Reaches New High IEEE Spectrum
September has shaped up to be a very exciting month in the annals of Mars exploration. Two new spacecraft, NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission and India’s first interplanetary mission, the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), have now entered orbit around the Red Planet.
The new arrivals bring the population of active Mars missions to seven—a record high, confirms Bruce Betts of The Planetary Society, a space advocacy organization. On the ground now are Opportunity, which landed in 2004, and NASA’s Curiosity rover, which recently entered its third year of operation.
MAVEN and MOM join a complement of three orbiters: NASA’s 13-year-old Mars Odyssey spacecraft, the European Space Agency’s 11-year-old Mars Express spacecraft, and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which arrived in 2006.
June 24th, 2014
Aluminum-Bearing Site on Mars Draws NASA Visitor
With its solar panels their cleanest in years, NASA’s decade-old Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is inspecting a section of crater-rim ridgeline chosen as a priority target due to evidence of a water-related mineral.
Orbital observations of the site by another NASA spacecraft, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, found a spectrum with the signature of aluminum bound to oxygen and hydrogen. Researchers regard that signature as a marker for a mineral called montmorillonite, which is in a class of clay minerals called smectites. Montmorillonite forms when basalt is altered under wet and slightly acidic conditions. The exposure of it extends about 800 feet (about 240 meters) north to south on the western rim of Endeavour Crater, as mapped by the orbiter’s Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM).
“It’s like a mineral beacon visible from orbit saying, ‘Come check this out,'” said Opportunity Principal Investigator Steve Squyres, of Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
June 19th, 2014
Comet’s Brush With Mars Offers Opportunity, Not Danger University of Maryland
Comet Siding Spring will brush astonishingly close to Mars later this year – close enough to raise concerns about the safety of three spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet. But after observing Siding Spring through a satellite-mounted telescope, University of Maryland comet experts found that it poses little danger to the Mars craft. The NASA spacecraft will be able to get an unprecedented close look at the changes happening to this “fresh” comet as it nears the sun – as well as any changes its passing may trigger in the Martian atmosphere.
Fresh comets like Siding Spring, which have never before approached the sun, contain some of the most ancient material scientists can study. The UMD astronomers’ observations are part of a two-year-long research campaign to watch how the comet’s activity changes during its travels.
May 24th, 2014
Mars Weathercam Spots Big New Crater
Before and after shots taken by a Mars-orbiting satellite have detected a newly created impact crater half the size of a football field near the planet’s equator.
NPR’s Joe Palca says that while objects are striking Mars all the time (with big chunks surviving until impact, thanks to the Red Planet’s thin atmosphere), this is the first time scientists have been able to determine the exact day a meteor struck – in this case, sometime on March 28, 2012.
But it wasn’t noticed until two months ago.
March 19th, 2014
NASA Orbiter Finds New Gully Channel on Mars
A comparison of images taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in November 2010 and May 2013 reveal the formation of a new gully channel on a crater-wall slope in the southern highlands of Mars. Gully or ravine landforms are common on Mars, particularly in the southern highlands. This pair of images shows that material flowing down from an alcove at the head of a gully broke out of an older route and eroded a new channel. The dates of the images are more than a full Martian year apart, so the observations did not pin down the Martian season of the activity at this site. Before-and-after HiRISE pairs of similar activity at other sites demonstrate that this type of activity generally occurs in winter, at temperatures so cold that carbon dioxide, rather than water, is likely to play the key role.