Genetically modified plants growing in a mini greenhouse on Mars could provide vital information about the quality of the soil, says a US team. Detailed information about soil conditions on the Red Planet is essential if a human colony is ever to be established, say the researchers.
March 28th, 2001
Spiders eyes for Mars robots New Scientist
The vibrating eyes of jumping spiders have inspired a new breed of vision sensors that could give the next generation of Mars rovers sharper eyesight, say researchers in California. As a result, the roving robots will need less computing power, so they’ll be much lighter and will use less electricity.
March 24th, 2001
When Will Television Invade Mars New Scientist
If you like TV, you’ll love the Mars Channel. Take your seats for the network premiere of interplanetary telly. When you watched Neil Armstrong walking on the Moon, it was like watching a TV show shot through someone’s nylons,” recalls Bill Foster. Yet, he admits, those blurred shots fired the public’s passion for space travel. Now, 32 years on, Foster plans to reignite those flames with footage so clear and crisp you could be scaling the mountains of Mars from your sofa.
February 21st, 2001
Learning tricks from bears could help prevent muscle wasting in astronauts New Scientist
Bears hardly lose any muscle when they hibernate, say zoologists at the University of Wyoming. Their finding could lead to new treatments for muscle wasting in humans, or ways to conserve muscle tissue during space flight. Henry Harlow and his colleagues made the discovery after analysing muscle biopsies from sedated bears at the start and end of hibernation. They believe the bears have evolved a way of conserving muscle so that if disturbed by predators, such as wolves or mountain lions, they could instantly fight or flee.
January 13th, 2001
Drilling for Martians New Scientist
Engineers have developed a new tool to help them hunt for signs of life on Mars. Their metre-long, white-hot spear can melt its way through soil and rocks to depths where evidence of past life may be lurking. If life ever existed on Mars, harsh conditions on the surface could mean the only remaining traces may be buried more than a kilometre down. But conventional drilling is unlikely to unearth them. “The soil is a mixture of sand, dust and rocks cemented together with salt minerals,” says John Bridges, who studies Martian geology at London’s Natural History Museum. “For the most part, it’ll be like digging in a sandpit.”
January 8th, 2001
Space Fission New Scientist
A rocket powered by thin films of nuclear material could get to Mars in as little as two weeks, according to scientists in Israel. With conventional engines, the journey would last almost a year, they say. The new engine, proposed by Yigal Ronen and Eugene Shwageraus at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva, Israel, uses films of a radioactive material called americium which are less than a micron thick.
July 1st, 2000
Fount of life New Scientist
THERE was great excitement last week when news leaked out that a spacecraft has seen signs that water might have recently flowed on Mars’s surface. But experts are puzzled by how water could be liquid in the frigid Martian climate and warn that concrete proof will be hard to come by. “If these results prove true, that there is water on Mars near the surface, it has profound implications for the possibility of life on Mars,” NASA’s associate administrator for space science Ed Weiler told a press conference in Washington DC last week. “Just about any place biologists find liquid water, organic molecules and energy, they find life, whether it’s on the surface of the Earth or 10 000 feet below.”
April 29th, 2000
NASA Is Designing A Black Box Flight Data Recorder For Its Mars Missions New Scientist
NASA is preparing for disaster. The space agency is taking a leaf out of the airline industry’s book and is designing a “black box” flight data recorder for all its future Mars missions. The hope is that a lot of the guesswork can be taken out of any inquiry into a future failed mission.
January 28th, 2000
Gliding into orbit New Scientist
It sounds like a recipe for frying a spacecraft to a crisp, but scientists in Illinois reckon orbiting space probes will one day be able to fly into and out of a planet’s atmosphere just like an aircraft–without burning up.