Flight controllers for NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft report the martian radiation environment experiment began gathering science data today after their troubleshooting efforts successfully reestablished communications with the instrument. Engineers have been working since late February, trying a variety of techniques to communicate with the instrument, which stopped working in August. The results of their tests indicate the problem may be related to a memory error in the onboard software of the radiation instrument.
March 11th, 2002
Students Get the Best from JPL
Ray Garcia had to stay after school, but not to clean blackboards. Garcia is an engineer at JPL who returned to his grade school, Albion Elementary in Los Angeles, 44 years after he left, to involve students in a balloon rocketry experiment. The December 2001 visit was part of a collaboration between JPL and the Los Angeles Unified School District
March 7th, 2002
Student Navigators Drive Mars Rover Testbed
Intense discussion, various viewpoints, chairs being scooted around, slightly raised voices, and eventual consensus: just a typical meeting of scientists in the lab; in this case a rover lab at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The difference, though, was that this group was composed of students from four countries around the world who were planning simulated scientific tasks for exploring the surface of Mars. One of the targets they chose for analysis was a rock that they nicknamed “Pebbles.” Only this rock isn’t on the red planet; it is located in the JPL Mars Yard, an outdoor test facility that approximates Mars terrain located away from the rover lab. And after the mission, the students were able to visit “Mars” and actually see the rover used to conduct the exercise and “Mars rocks”.
March 1st, 2002
Mars Odyssey’s First Science Briefing
Mission managers are ready to publicly share the first images and science results from NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey, which is currently in orbit around the red planet. A briefing is scheduled for 2 p.m. EST Friday, March 1, at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, California.
March 1st, 2002
Nasa’s Mars Odyssey Spacecraft Unveils Early Science Results
Initial science data from NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft, which began its mapping mission last week, portend some tantalizing findings by the newest Martian visitor, including possible identification of significant amounts of frozen water. “We are delighted with the quality of data we’re seeing,” said Dr. Steve Saunders, Odyssey project scientist at JPL. “We’ll use it to build on what we’ve learned from Mars Global Surveyor and other missions. Now we may actually see water rather than guessing where it is or was. And with the thermal images we are able to examine surface geology from a new perspective.” “These preliminary Odyssey observations are the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of the science results that are soon to come, so stay tuned,” said Dr. Jim Garvin, lead scientist of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
February 14th, 2002
Human Skin Gets Oxygen from Air, Not Blood
According to new research, our skin actually gets its oxygen from the atmosphere, not the blood. Air supplies the top 0.25 – 0.4 mm of the skin with oxygen, says dermatologist Markus St
January 16th, 2002
UMass researchers find environment on Earth that mimics Mars geochemically and supports ancient life form
Deep below the surface of the Beverhead Mountains of Idaho, a research team led by Derek Lovley, head of the microbiology department at the University of Massachusetts, and Francis H. Chappelle of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), has found an unusual community of microoganisms that may hold the key to understanding how life could survive on Mars. Their findings are spelled out in the Jan. 17 issue of the journal Nature (vol. 415). “The microbial community we found in Idaho is unlike any previously described on Earth,” said Lovley. “This is as close as we have come to finding life on Earth under geological conditions most like those expected below the surface of Mars.
January 10th, 2002
Ice Explorer Conceived for Other Worlds Gets Arctic Test
Robots that melt their way through ice may one day explore below frozen surfaces of other worlds, based on a pioneering version that successfully bored into an Arctic glacier in an adventurous field test. NASA teamed with the Norwegian Polar Institute and Norwegian Space Center to use the ice-penetrating robot, or Cryobot, for the first time on a glacier on the island of Spitsbergen, far above the Arctic Circle in the Norwegian-administered international territory of Svalbad. A mission proposal called Cryoscout will compete with other Mars Scout proposals to be chosen by NASA for a 2007 launch to Mars. Cryoscout is one of 10 Mars Scout concepts selected last year for further study. It proposes using a Cryobot to descend through Mars’ polar ice cap. “If you want to learn about the climate history of Mars, which is important in the search for life, you want to examine the layers of the polar caps, and this is how you can do it,” said Scott Anderson, a geophysicist on the Cryobot field-test team.
January 9th, 2002
Robotic Construction Crew Rolls Up Its Sleeves
The first construction workers on Mars may not need hardhats. NASA researchers successfully demonstrated the first use of multiple rovers that work tightly in sync to perform tasks such as coordinated grasping, lifting and moving of an extended payload, while navigating through obstacles on natural terrain. “The Robotic Work Crew behaves a lot like its human counterpart might during a home construction project. Consider the challenge two people face when transporting a long, heavy board through a busy worksite,” said Dr. Paul Schenker, supervisor of the Mechanical and Robotics Technologies Group and principal investigator for the project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
December 27th, 2001
Mars Odyssey Mission Status
Flight controllers of NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey mission report that the aerobraking phase is proceeding right on schedule and should be completed in early January. During the aerobraking phase of the mission, the spacecraft is controlled so it skims the upper reaches of the martian atmosphere on each orbit, to reduce the vehicle’s speed. Today, Odyssey’s orbital period is three hours and 15 minutes, compared with the initial 18-and-a-half hours when the spacecraft first entered orbit in October. The orbital period is the time required to complete one revolution around the planet.