Russia has begun some ambitious space projects, including a new system to protect spacecraft from space junk and a nuclear-powered engine for future spaceships, according to Russian news reports.
The space debris protection system is designed to safeguard future outposts on the moon and Mars, officials at Russia’s Central Research Institute of Machine Building said, the Russian Ria Novosti newspaper has reported.
November 24th, 2010
Russia Wants Nuclear-Powered Spaceships and Space Debris Shields
October 22nd, 2010
Mars or Bust! One-Way Trip to the Red Planet Could Kick-start Colonization
The vast plains of Mars may be the most promising place beyond Earth for human colonization, but is it enough for a one-way trip to the Red Planet? Two researchers seem to think so.
In an article published this month in the Journal of Cosmology, environmental scientist Dirk Schulze-Makuch and physicist Paul Davies argue that a manned one-way mission to Mars would not only make economical sense, but mark the beginning of long-term colonization of the planet.
The researchers contend that while a manned flight to Mars and back is technically feasible now, the steep financial and political costs make such a mission unlikely to launch anytime soon. And since the greatest portion of expenses would be incurred by the safe return of the crew and spacecraft to Earth, the authors conclude that a manned one-way mission to Mars would both cut costs and help initiate Martian colonization.
October 7th, 2010
New Mars Orbiter to Investigate Case of the Lost Atmosphere
NASA has approved a new unmanned mission to Mars, one aimed at explaining exactly how the Red Planet lost most of its atmosphere.
A spacecraft is scheduled to launch in late 2013 and begin orbiting around Mars about 10 months later for a yearlong study. Scientists suspect that the sun has been stealing off Martian air for eons, and they expect the new probe to put that theory to the test.
NASA has given the $438 million project, which was first proposed in 2008, a heady name: the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission. Scientists are calling it “Maven” for short. “Maven will examine all known ways the sun is currently swiping the Martian atmosphere, and may discover new ones as well,” said Joseph Grebowsky, the mission’s project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., in a statement.
October 7th, 2010
Robot Airplanes Could Unlock Mars Mysteries
Various orbiters, landers and rovers that have explored Mars in the past three decades have revealed tantalizing evidence of the conditions for life, from frozen water at the planet’s North Pole to methane plumes in the atmosphere. For atmospheric scientist Joel Levine, the evidence has made the case for flying an airplane over Mars stronger than ever.
Levine champions the ARES Mars airplane mission at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. He believes that a robotic, rocket-powered airplane is the perfect platform for unraveling the Red Planet’s biggest mysteries.
Soaring at an altitude of 1.6 kilometers, an airplane could cover hundreds of kilometers, gathering visual images and remote sensing data that it transmits back to Earth.
October 2nd, 2010
New Evidence Suggests Icebergs in Frigid Oceans on Ancient Mars
Ancient Mars once had surprisingly frigid primeval oceans complete with their own icebergs, new evidence suggests.
There are currently two leading ideas for what the climate of ancient Mars might have been like.
One is that it was cold and dry, contending that valley networks and other geological features suggestive of liquid water in Mars’ past were essentially results of bursts of heat confined in space and time, suggesting that Mars could not have sustained oceans. The other is that Mars was once warm and wet, implying that it could once have supported lakes, seas and rainfall for long periods.
September 14th, 2010
Building Blocks for Life on Mars Possibly Seen By Viking Probes, Study Suggests
Samples of Mars dirt collected by NASA’s Viking Mars landers back in the 1970s may have contained carbon-based chemical building blocks of life as we know it, a new study suggests.
During their missions, the two Viking landers vaporized Martian dirt and scrutinized the samples for signs of organic – or carbon-based – molecules that could serve as the raw ingredients for life. At the time, all they found were chlorine compounds attributed to contamination, but the new research suggests the Viking probes’ heat-treatment may have generated these chlorine compounds from naturally occurring Martian organics, destroying them in the process.
“This doesn’t say anything about the question of whether or not life has existed on Mars, but it could make a big difference in how we look for evidence to answer that question,” study co-author Chris McKay, of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., said in a statement.
August 27th, 2010
Young Mars Crater Contains Water Ice, Photo Shows
A fresh crater on Mars has revealed a hidden cache of frozen water in some of the latest photos from a powerful NASA spacecraft.
A recent false color image from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter clearly shows a patch of Mars water ice at the bottom of a 20-foot (6-meter) wide crater in the Martian surface. The photo came from the orbiter’s high-resolution HiRISE camera.
August 27th, 2010
Photos Show Strange Elongated Martian Crater
Photos just released by the European Space Agency give an up-close look at the strange, elongated Martian crater known as Orcus Patera.
The crater lies near the equator in Mars’ eastern hemisphere, between the volcanoes Elysium Mons and Olympus Mons. It’s big, measuring 380 km (236 miles) long, 140 km (87 miles) wide and about 2.3 km (1.5 miles) from rim to floor.
August 15th, 2010
New Mars Orbiter Will Be a Super-Sniffer
The first joint U.S.-European mission to Mars now has a plan for its toolkit.
Scheduled for launch in 2016, the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter will study the chemical composition of Mars’ atmosphere with a suite of instruments specially suited to the task. These instruments are expected to take measurements 1,000 times more sensitive than those by previous Mars orbiters.
“To fully explore Mars, we want to marshal all the talents we can on Earth,” said European Space Agency scientist David Southwood. Traveling around Mars in a circular path, the ExoMars spacecraft will record spectra of the sun as its telescope picks up the light that reaches it through orbital sunrise and sunset. Depending on the composition of gas in the atmosphere, sunlight will pass through it differently.
“If you take the spectra fast,” said NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory researcher Geoffrey Toon, “you can measure the gas abundance at many different heights above the planet — 70 measurements as the sun rises, and 70 as it sets.”
August 5th, 2010
New Mars Orbiter Will Be a Super-Sniffer
The first joint U.S.-European mission to Mars now has a plan for its toolkit.
Scheduled for launch in 2016, the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter will study the chemical composition of Mars’ atmosphere with a suite of instruments specially suited to the task. These instruments are expected to take measurements 1,000 times more sensitive than those by previous Mars orbiters.
“To fully explore Mars, we want to marshal all the talents we can on Earth,” said European Space Agency scientist David Southwood.