Peculiar spots, fan-like markings, and spider-shaped features on Mars’ southern ice cap are seasonal formations, researchers announced today. The shapes are formed by thin layers of dark dusty material that are sprayed by roaring jets of carbon dioxide that erupt through the ice cap. This dusty material may also be the reason that the southern ice cap doesn’t reflect much light. The mystery markings, generally 50 to 150 feet wide, appear every southern spring as the Sun rises over the red planet’s ice cap. They last about three to four months.
July 26th, 2006
Genesis-1: Reaching Escape Velocity From Red Tape
The orbiting of the privately-bankrolled Genesis-1 expandable spacecraft by Bigelow Aerospace is a step forward in the company’s vision to provide a low-cost, low Earth orbit human-rated space complex that is accessible to the commercial sector. The general concept for “inflatable” space habitats was initially developed by NASA for use in a proposed mission to Mars, hence the name, “Transit Habitat” or “TransHab” as it was commonly referred to. That work was curtailed in 2000, falling victim to NASA budget cuts. Since that time, Bigelow Aerospace took the basic concept, redefined it, moved the technology generations ahead and in many different directions, and ultimately brought the idea to fruition in the form of the Genesis-1 Pathfinder vessel.
July 6th, 2006
NASA Advised to Revamp Mars Plans
NASA needs to rethink its Mars exploration plans after 2010 given new understandings about the red planet and likely funding levels in the coming years, according to a report just out from a panel of outside experts. By adding to a reworked mix of future missions—for example, a geophysical/meteorological network as well as a sample return mission—the space agency would garner a greater scientific impact at Mars, the panel concludes. Moreover, the space agency must fortify its ability to analyze the data streaming in from Mars. That research can help flesh out a safe and scientifically productive role for humans on Mars.
June 30th, 2006
New Way Suggested to Search for Life on Mars
A shiny coating found on rocks in many of Earth’s deserts suggest a new way to search for signs of life on Mars, scientists said today. The coating, known as desert varnish, binds traces of DNA, amino acids and other organic compounds to desert rocks over the eons. Desert varnish has been found in the Atacama desert in Chile, the Mojave desert in California and Canyonlands National Park in Utah. Prehistoric people carved the varnish away, revealing lighter-colored rock underneat to create petroglyphs. The logic is simple: Samples of Martian desert varnish could perhaps show whether there has been life on Mars at any time during its 4.5-billion-year history.
June 14th, 2006
Hawking Says Humans Must Colonize Space
The survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there’s an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy the Earth, world-renowned scientist Stephen Hawking said Tuesday. The British astrophysicist told a news conference in Hong Kong that humans could have a permanent base on the moon in 20 years and a colony on Mars in the next 40 years. “We won’t find anywhere as nice as Earth unless we go to another star system,” added Hawking, who arrived to a rock star’s welcome Monday. Tickets for his lecture planned for Wednesday were sold out. “It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species,” Hawking said. “Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of.”
June 1st, 2006
Landing Sites Debated for Next Mars Rover
When NASA’s next wheeled robot—the Mars Science Laboratory—rockets skyward in 2009, the mega-rover will carry the largest, most sophisticated array of science gear ever shot to the martian surface. Far more robust and powerful than those smaller robotic look-alikes now laboring on Mars—Spirit and Opportunity—the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is intended to turn a new page in planetary exploration. But here’s the issue at hand: Where to land the hunk of high-tech machinery; deciding the ideal spot that’s safe but also maximizes the rover’s chances to help figure out if Mars ever was—or is today—an abode for life.
May 19th, 2006
Mars rover closes in on biggest crater yet
Those “never say die” robots on Mars — NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity — continue to chalk up science at their respective exploration sites.
Looming large for the Opportunity rover at Meridiani Planum is Victoria Crater — a grand bit of territory that’s roughly half a mile (800 meters) in diameter. That’s about six times wider than Endurance Crater, a feature that the rover previously surveyed for several months in 2004, gathering data on rock layers there that were affected by water of long, long ago.
May 12th, 2006
MRO: Delicate Dips into the Martian Atmosphere
NASA’s newest mission to the red planet—the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)—is working well as it shaves off altitude in order to swing into active science-gathering duties later this year.
The initial capture by Mars’ gravity put the spacecraft into a very elongated, 35-hour orbit.
May 11th, 2006
Race the Red Planet: Production Begins on Mars Mission Mini-Series
Astronauts are stomping around Mars without ever leaving Earth in Canada, where filming is underway for an ambitious new documentary and mini-series that blur the line between science fact and fiction.
Clad in spacesuits on sets awash in red dust, actors are portraying future astronauts in the television mini-series Race to Mars, a Discovery Channel docu-drama aimed at realistically depicting a manned mission to the red planet. The three-hour program, a six-part documentary Mars Rising, and a related Internet site Mars Interactive are set to debut in Fall 2007 on the Discovery Channel and its broadcast partners.
April 5th, 2006
Phoenix Mars Lander: Getting Down and Dirty On the Red Planet
The next Mars lander is undergoing assembly and testing, being readied for departure next year to explore the martian arctic. This probe is equipped to dig deep, quite literally, into an ongoing mystery—the history of water on Mars and the planet’s potential as an extraterrestrial address for life.
NASA’s Phoenix Mars mission is the first in the space agency’s Scout series, a class of spacecraft designed to be inventive but relatively low-cost in furthering Mars exploration.