A spindly radar antenna with the ambitious aim of revealing any water or ice buried below the Martian surface is set to be deployed Monday aboard the orbiting spacecraft Mars Express. MARSIS (Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding) is the seventh and final instrument on the European Space Agency probe to be switched on since it arrived in December, and will take 10 days to set up. Its main antenna, composed of two 20-metre segments, will act as a 40-metre-long divining rod that will scout for water as deep as a few kilometres below ground.
April 21st, 2004
‘Weird’ meteorite may be from Mars moon New Scientist
A unique meteorite that fell on a Soviet military base in Yemen in 1980 may have come from one of the moons of Mars. Several meteorites from the Red Planet have been found on Earth, but this could be the only piece of Martian moon rock. Andrei Ivanov, who is based at the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry in Moscow, Russia, spent two decades puzzling over the fist-sized Kaidun meteorite before he decided that it must be a chip off Phobos, the larger of the two Martian moons.
April 21st, 2004
Fire-fighting fluid leaves computers intact New Scientist
Fires in computer centres, museums and libraries could be quenched with minimal damage by a liquid that leaves electronic equipment and books dry and unharmed even after they have been flooded with it. Tyco Fire & Security of Boca Raton, Florida, US, has launched a fire suppression system called Sapphire that detects smoke and then spritzes the affected room with the liquid, which is known as Novec 1230.
April 5th, 2004
Nuclear-powered drone aircraft on drawing board New Scientist
The US Air Force is examining the feasibility of a nuclear-powered version of an unmanned aircraft. The USAF hopes that such a vehicle will be able to “loiter” in the air for months without refuelling, striking at will when a target comes into its sights. Instead of a conventional fission reactor, the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is focusing on a type of power generator called a quantum nucleonic reactor. This obtains energy by using X-rays to encourage particles in the nuclei of radioactive hafnium-178 to jump down several energy levels, liberating energy in the form of gamma rays. A nuclear UAV would generate thrust by using the energy of these gamma rays to produce a jet of heated air.
March 29th, 2004
Methane on Mars could signal life New Scientist
Methane has been detected on Mars by three independent groups of scientists. And this could be a sign of life – indicating methane-producing bacteria. But scientists are advocating caution when interpreting the results, saying that the instruments looking for chemical signatures in the Martian atmosphere are not yet good enough to conclusively detect methane. Even if methane exists on Mars, the gas could be a product of non-biological processes such as active volcanoes.
March 25th, 2004
Life on Mars – but ‘we sent it’ New Scientist
There is life on Mars, a researcher has announced at a conference – unfortunately it is just spaceship-borne contamination.
“I believe there is life on Mars, and it’s unequivocally there, because we sent it,” Andrew Schuerger of the University of Florida told the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas, recently. He has been granted funding from NASA’s planetary protection office to help develop better sterilisation techniques for future missions.
March 17th, 2004
‘Blueberries’ are answer to key Mars puzzle New Scientist
The Mars rover Opportunity has now solved the key puzzle it was sent to the Meridiani Planum to figure out: where is the hematite that was spotted in the area by the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter? The answer is in the “blueberries”, the tiny mineral spheres that litter the rover’s landing site.
March 12th, 2004
Mars rover finds crater a little depressing New Scientist
The Mars rover Spirit has finally reached its destination, a 200-metre wide impact basin called Bonneville crater, after a month-long odyssey across the rock strewn plain of Gusev.
NASA scientists hoped the crater would provide a “window” into the rocks below the surface, but initial views suggest a big disappointment. Spirit may instead quickly head off to the hills.
March 8th, 2004
Beagle 2 may have sped to its death New Scientist
The missing Beagle 2 lander may have crunched into the Martian dust after plummeting through an unexpectedly thin atmosphere. New measurements from the spacecraft’s mothership, Mars Express, suggest the upper atmosphere can be far less dense than anyone thought. This could have been fatal for the lander because it relied on the atmosphere’s braking effect to trigger the release of its parachute.
February 12th, 2004
Mars Express stares down throat of giant volcano New Scientist
Europe’s Mars Express orbiter has stared down the throat of the Solar System’s largest volcano, Olympus Mons, to produce the best ever images of the giant peak. The images, released on Wednesday, were taken with the orbiter’s High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) from a height of 273 kilometres and reveal details as small as 12 metres across.