A trio of planets converging in the night sky this week and for several nights will give casual skywatchers the perfect chance to easily see and identify worlds they might not normally notice. The event, building up to a super celestial snuggle in early August, is also a chance to watch and grasp orbital mechanics in action.
Venus, Mars and Saturn will gradually, night after night, move into a tight triangular grouping in the early evening sky. (This graphic shows where to look to spot the planetary triangle on Aug. 5.)
July 28th, 2010
Check It Out: Planetary Triangle Forming in the Evening Sky
July 20th, 2010
To Researchers, Space Samples Are Well Worth The Cost of Fetching
If a Japanese space capsule that recently returned to Earth is found to have collected particles from a billion-year-old space rock, it will join the short history of lucrative sample-return missions.
Retrieving samples from space is considered more complicated, potentially more costly, and riskier than conducting remote or robotic expeditions, but successful retrievals can confirm or disprove theories more accurately and can fuel or accelerate decades of scientific research.
As researchers and mission scientists await an analysis of what the plucky Hayabusa asteroid probe has brought back from space, they say previous sample-return missions have proven their usefulness. And, with improvements in technology and in methods of cleaning and sterilizing storage facilities, future missions to retrieve samples from Mars and beyond could provide even more valuable insights into the unknowns of our solar system.
July 15th, 2010
NASA Launches Contest for Inflatable Space Houses
NASA has launched a summer contest for students to design the best inflatable loft for life in space or on another world. A cash reward and a field test of the winning design are up for grabs.
Three awards of up to $48,000 each will be granted to the university student teams that produce the best loft-like inflatable space habitats that can be attached to a hard-shell NASA structure. The winner of a head-to-head competition of the modules’ performance in the Arizona desert will earn another $10,000, NASA officials said in an announcement. The X-Hab contest, short for “eXploration Habitat,” follows in the tradition of NASA’s Lunabotics program and the space-related X Prize awards offered by the non-profit X Prize Foundation to spur interest in aerospace fields.
July 11th, 2010
Future Mars Rover Gets New Set of Wheels
NASA’s next Mars rover just got a new set of wheels and an innovative suspension system in preparation for its journey to the red planet.
The Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity, a robot car is scheduled to launch in 2011 and reach Mars soil in August 2012. Each of its six new wheels is about 20 inches (about half a meter) in diameter.
The ambitious rover is designed to collect samples and conduct tests on rocks across the Martian surface in order to dissect the planet’s geological history.
June 19th, 2010
Next Mars Rover’s Landing Site Narrowed to 4 Choices
The latest Mars robot may be dead, but NASA scientists have plenty to keep them busy as they scout out four potential stomping grounds for an ambitious new rover pegged to be the next red planet explorer.
NASA declared the Phoenix Mars lander – its youngest Mars probe – officially dead in late May after photos taken of it from orbit revealed substantial damage from its environment in the Martian arctic. Those photos came from the same powerful orbiter that has been searching for the ultimate drop zone for NASA’s new Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) which is currently set for a November 2011 launch.
The new roving robot lab, known as Curiosity, is expected to determine whether Mars is or was ever habitable to microbial life. The rover’s combination of technical improvements should make any potential landing sites more scientifically rich than anywhere Mars landers have gone before.
June 9th, 2010
Extreme Life on Earth Could Survive on Mars, Too
A new discovery of bacterial life in a Martian-like environment on Earth suggests our neighboring red planet could also be hospitable to some form of microbial life.
Researchers found methane-eating bacteria that appear to be thriving in a unique spring called Lost Hammer on Axel Heiberg Island in the extreme north of Canada.
This spring is similar to possible past or present springs on Mars, the scientists say, so it hints that microbial life could potentially exist there, too. There is no firm evidence that Mars does or ever did host life, however.
May 20th, 2010
NASA Rovers Set New Record for Longest Mission on Mars
NASA’s long-lived twin Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity have set a new endurance record on Mars, with Opportunity hot on the heels of its sister robot for the title of longest-running mission on the Martian surface.
Opportunity today matched the Mars mission lifespan of NASA’s iconic Viking 1 lander, which spent six years and 116 days (for a total of 2,245 days) working on the red planet in the mid 1970s and early 80s.
If Opportunity survives three weeks longer than its older robotic twin Spirit, which has been silent for weeks but may actually be hibernating, the rover will take the all-time record for the longest mission on Mars. The two solar-powered rovers recently experienced their fourth Martian winter solstice – the day with the least amount of sunlight at their respective spots on Mars – on May 12.
May 11th, 2010
Crew Takes Shape for Record-Breaking Mock Mars Mission
An ‘astronaut’ crew of two Europeans, three Russians and one Chinese citizen will walk into a fake spaceship and seal the hatch, but it’s no joke. The team is ready for a record-breaking Mars mission simulation this summer and the European members are already set.
Europeans Romain Charles and Diego Urbina have committed to spend almost a year and a half of their lives living like Mars-bound astronauts as part of the Mars500 experiment, the European Space Agency announced Monday.
The two Europeans and their crewmates will seal themselves inside isolation modules set up at Russia’s Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow. The mock spaceship also includes an interplanetary vehicle, a Mars lander and base, as well as an area carefully sculpted to simulate the red planet’s landscape.
April 26th, 2010
Mars Rovers Set to Break Red Planet Record
A historic milestone could be made on Mars this week.
On Thursday, NASA’s beleaguered Spirit rover could become the longest-running mission on the surface of Mars, surpassing the Viking 1 lander’s record of six years and 116 days of operation on the Martian surface — if it’s still alive, that is.
Spirit fell silent on Mars on March 31, when it skipped a planned communications session with Earth. It may be hibernating through the harsh Martian winter. But even if Spirit doesn’t survive, its robotic twin Opportunity is poised to break the Mars mission record in early May. Beating Viking’s record, which NASA set in the 1980s, would be a major feat for a rover the size of a golf cart that was only supposed to last for three months and spent the past year stuck in Martian sand. The milestone would also be a welcome surprise to the team of scientists and engineers that have been commanding Spirit for these past six years.
April 17th, 2010
Long-Silent Mars Lander Appears to Be Officially Lost
It looks like it really is the end for NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander, which spent five months digging in the Martian arctic before succumbing to the icy winter conditions that set in at the end of its mission.
The third and final attempt to listen for any signs of survival from the lander, conducted last week, didn’t turn up a peep.
Phoenix landed on Mars on May 25, 2008, and operated successfully in the Martian arctic for about two months longer than its planned three-month mission, which confirmed the presence of water ice under the Martian surface. But once the sun and temperatures dropped and winter set in, the spacecraft didn’t have enough power to keep going. The lander went silent in November 2008.