It’s not every day you get to watch a planetary ice cap melt, but this month you can. All you need are clear skies, a backyard telescope, and a sky map leading to Mars. Actually, you won’t need the sky map because Mars is so bright and easy to find. Just look south between midnight and dawn on any clear night this month. Mars is that eye-catching red star, outshining everything around it. It’s getting brighter every night as Earth and Mars converge for a close encounter on August 27th.
July 30th, 2003
A New Form of Life
Mark Twain didn’t think much of California’s Mono Lake. “It lies in a lifeless, treeless, hideous desert,” he wrote in his 1872 travelogue, Roughing It. “This solemn, silent, sailless sea–this lonely tenant of the loneliest spot on earth–is little graced with the picturesque.” Astrobiologist Richard Hoover of NASA’s National Space Science and Technology Center (NSSTC) in Huntsville, Alabama, has a different view: “It’s beautiful,” he says.
July 9th, 2003
Mars Dust
Something is happening on Mars and it’s so big you can see it through an ordinary backyard telescope. On July 1st a bright dust cloud spilled out of Hellas Basin, a giant impact crater on Mars’ southern hemisphere. The cloud quickly spread and by the Fourth of July was 1100 miles wide–about one-fourth the diameter of Mars itself.
May 2nd, 2003
Instant Glider–Just add Light
Tomorrow a high-altitude balloon will rise to the edge of space, bringing with it a small glider. Under the space-black sky 100,000 feet above Earth, the glider will sprout a pair of inflatable wings from its sides. Ultraviolet rays from the Sun will harden them to flight readiness. It’s a scenario that may someday be used to send a winged planetary explorer to Mars. If so, some of the more than 40 students at the University of Kentucky who have designed and developed this glider just might have a hand in making it happen.
October 21st, 2002
How Astronauts Get Along
Astronauts have a cool demeanor and good people-skills, but six months in a tiny spaceship with the same crewmates can drive anyone to distraction. Once, I was evaluating astronaut applicants,” says psychiatrist Nick Kanas. “I asked them to give me some examples of things that might cause stress.” One applicant, a test pilot, recalled the time he was flying an experimental aircraft and it spun out of control. As the plane spiraled down, he took out his manual, calmly thumbed through it, and figured out how to pull the plane to safety. “His ability to temporarily control his emotions was very striking,” laughs Kanas.
September 3rd, 2002
Space Power
Scientists ponder the question, “What advances in power technology are required to send human and robotic explorers throughout the solar system?” Human missions beyond Earth’s neighborhood will require power not only for onboard systems, but also for propulsion and for systems to support humans when they arrive wherever they’re going. “To pursue ambitious human missions across the solar system, perhaps returning to the Moon, perhaps going on to Mars, will require hundreds to a thousand kilowatts on the surface and hundreds to thousands of kilowatts for transportation systems,” says John Mankins, chief technologist for the Advance Systems Program at NASA headquarters. You can’t just plug into the nearest electrical outlet, he added. You have to bring your own power source. Ideally, you’d like to find something that could provide power for both propulsion and operations.
August 9th, 2002
To Distill Some Water
This fact-filled science fiction tale, based on Jack London’s “To Build a Fire,” describes an astronaut’s urgent search for something to drink on Mars.
May 28th, 2002
Found it! Ice on Mars
Using instruments on NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft, surprised scientists have found enormous quantities of buried treasure lying just under the surface of Mars — enough water ice to fill Lake Michigan twice over. And that may be only the tip of the iceberg. “This is really amazing,” says William Boynton of the University of Arizona. “This is the best direct evidence we have of subsurface water ice on Mars.” Indeed, he added, “what we have found is much more ice than we ever expected.” “It may be better to characterize this layer as dirty ice rather than as dirt containing ice,” notes Boynton. The amount of hydrogen detected corresponds to 20% to 50% ice by mass in the lower layer. Because rock has a greater density than ice, this amount is more than 50 percent water ice by volume. This means that if one heated a full bucket of this ice-rich polar soil it would result in more than half a bucket of liquid water.
March 12th, 2002
Once Upon a Water Planet
Today the Red Planet is dry and barren, but what about tomorrow? New data suggest that the long story of water on Mars isn’t over yet. Mars was once wet, but now it is dry. Spacecraft photos of Mars reveal signs of ancient rivers, lakes and maybe even an ocean. They might have been filled with water billions of years ago, but something happened — no one knows what — and the planet became a global desert. Wherever the moisture went, new data suggest it might not be gone for good. Indeed, water may have flowed on Mars literally as recent as “yesterday or last year,” declares James Garvin, Chief Scientist for Mars exploration at NASA headquarters. Evidence is mounting that water lies beneath the Martian terrain, he says. Furthermore, every few centuries weather conditions might become clement enough for that water to “come and go” on the surface as well.
October 24th, 2001
The USA Returns to Mars
The United States returned to Mars last night as NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey fired its main engine at 7:26 p.m. Pacific time on Oct. 23rd (0226 UT on Oct. 24th) and was captured into orbit around the red planet. At 7:55 p.m. Pacific time, flight controllers at the Deep Space Network station in Goldstone, Calif., and Canberra, Australia, picked up the first radio signal from the spacecraft as it emerged from behind the planet Mars.