MarsNews.com

February 2nd, 2022

Helicopters Flying at Mars May Glow at Dusk

This is an artist’s concept of a glow surrounding a drone at Mars during flight. The glow, exaggerated for visibility, might happen if the drone’s spinning rotor blades generate an electric field that causes electric currents to flow in the Martian air around the craft. Although the currents generated by the drone in the atmosphere are small, they might be large enough to cause the air around the blades and other parts of the craft to glow a blue-purple color.
Credits: NASA/Jay Friedlander

The whirling blades on drones flying above Mars may cause tiny electric currents to flow in the Martian atmosphere, according to a NASA study. These currents, if large enough, might cause the air surrounding the craft to glow. This process occurs naturally at much larger scales on Earth as a corona or electrical glow sometimes seen on aircraft and ships in electrical storms known as Saint Elmo’s Fire.

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Posted by tourdemars to: Airplane, Mars 2020, Planetology

February 1st, 2022

Waste to Base Materials Challenge: Sustainable Reprocessing in Space

Help NASA improve future space missions by proposing approaches to permit efficient reprocessing/recycling/repurposing of onboard resources.

This challenge is all about finding ways to convert waste into base materials and other useful things, like propellant or feedstock for 3D printing. We are looking for your ideas for how to convert different waste streams into useful materials that can then be made into needed things and cycled through multiple times – and we are looking for ideas to convert waste into propellant. Eventually, we would like to integrate all the different processes into a robust ecosystem that allows a spacecraft to launch from Earth with the lowest possible mass. For now, we are asking you to share your ideas for waste management/conversion in several specific categories:

Trash
Fecal waste
Foam packaging material
Carbon dioxide (CO2) processing

Winning ideas in each category will each receive a prize of $1,000. Additionally, judges will recognize “best in class” ideas, awarding each a prize of $1,000. A total prize purse of $24,000 will be awarded.

Timeline
Open to submissions January 18, 2022

Submission deadline March 15, 2022 @ 5pm ET

Judging March 15 – April 19, 2022

Winners Announced April 26, 2022

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Posted by tourdemars to: Humans To Mars, Technology

January 29th, 2022

Op/Ed: Humans, Mars and the Solar Ecosystem

Shutterstock – Thammanoon Khamchalee

It is sometimes said that the human settlement of other planets would be an act of arrogance. Consider instead that believing we should not go may actually be the more arrogant presumption. Is our wisdom greater than that primeval drive of life itself to proliferate and prevail? Do we have the right to intercede?

If we establish a sustainable and scalable presence on Mars this century, we will almost certainly do the same on other worlds within the next thousand years. Whether we terraform or develop advanced habitats, we will bring flora and fauna with us. As thousands of years turn to millions, and millions to billions, the subsequent potential for life to spread and blossom in the solar system (and perhaps beyond) could be vast beyond our imagining.

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Posted by tourdemars to: Humans To Mars, Mars Society, Terraforming

January 25th, 2022

Motion capture is guiding the next generation of extraterrestrial robots

Dr. Frankie Zhu with AXEL rover in the extreme robotics lab at NASA JPL

“How do we build robots that can optimally explore space?” is the core question behind Dr Frances Zhu’s research at the University of Hawai’i. One part of the answer is, “with motion capture”.

“It is my hope that my research contributes to the way extraterrestrial robots move and make decisions on other planets,” explains Zhu (main image), an assistant researcher and deputy director at the University’s Hawai‘i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology.

That research is in its early stages, but NASA has seen the value in it and awarded Zhu an EPSCoR grant by the name “Autonomous Rover Operations for Planetary Surface Exploration using Machine Learning Algorithms”.

Specifically, Zhu’s project focuses on robots that explore extreme terrain on lunar and planetary surfaces. “There are a few questions that I want to answer,” she says.

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Posted by tourdemars to: General News, Technology

January 25th, 2022

Rabbids Are Heading To Mars Via Netflix In February

Ubisoft’s mischievous Rabbids, also known as Raving Rabbids, are getting ready to take a trip to Mars in the upcoming Netflix special, Rabbids Invasion: Mission to Mars. The hour-long animated feature will release next month on the streaming website.

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Posted by tourdemars to: Entertainment, Terraforming

January 17th, 2022

Earth and Mars were formed from inner solar system material

The four terrestrial planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. Credit: NASA/Lunar and Planetary Institute

Earth and Mars were formed from material that largely originated in the inner solar system; only a few percent of the building blocks of these two planets originated beyond Jupiter’s orbit. A group of researchers led by the University of Münster (Germany) report these findings today in the journal Science Advances. They present the most comprehensive comparison to date of the isotopic composition of Earth, Mars and pristine building material from the inner and outer solar system. Some of this material is today still found largely unaltered in meteorites. The results of the study have far-reaching consequences for our understanding of the process that formed the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. The theory postulating that the four rocky planets grew to their present size by accumulating millimeter-sized dust pebbles from the outer solar system is not tenable.

Approximately 4.6 billion years ago, in the early days of our solar system, a disk of dust and gasses orbited the young sun. Two theories describe how, in the course of millions of years, the inner rocky planets formed from this original building material. According to the older theory, the dust in the inner solar system agglomerated to ever larger chunks gradually reaching approximately the size of our moon. Collisions of these planetary embryos finally produced the inner planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. A newer theory, however, prefers a different growth process: Millimeter-sized dust “pebbles” migrated from the outer solar system towards the sun. On their way, they were accreted onto the planetary embryos of the inner solar system, and step by step, enlarged them to their present size.

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Posted by tourdemars to: General News, Meteorites, Planetology

January 13th, 2022

Study nixes Mars life in meteorite found in Antarctica

The meteorite labeled ALH84001 sits in a chamber at a Johnson Space Center lab in Houston, Aug. 7, 1996. Scientists say they’ve confirmed the meteorite from Mars contains no evidence of ancient Martian life. The rock caused a splash 25 years ago when a NASA-led team announced that its organic compounds may have been left by living creatures, however primitive. Researchers chipped away at that theory over the decades. A team of scientists led by Andrew Steele of the Carnegie Institution published their findings Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

A 4 billion-year-old meteorite from Mars that caused a splash here on Earth decades ago contains no evidence of ancient, primitive Martian life after all, scientists reported Thursday.

In 1996, a NASA-led team announced that organic compounds in the rock appeared to have been left by living creatures. Other scientists were skeptical and researchers chipped away at that premise over the decades, most recently by a team led by the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Andrew Steele.

Tiny samples from the meteorite show the carbon-rich compounds are actually the result of water — most likely salty, or briny, water — flowing over the rock for a prolonged period, Steele said. The findings appear in the journal Science.

During Mars’ wet and early past, at least two impacts occurred near the rock, heating the planet’s surrounding surface, before a third impact bounced it off the red planet and into space millions of years ago. The 4-pound (2-kilogram) rock was found in Antarctica in 1984.

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Posted by tourdemars to: Life on Mars, Meteorites

January 10th, 2022

Assessing Perseverance’s Seventh Sample Collection

Debris in Perseverance’s Bit Carousel: Pebble-sized debris can be seen in the bit carousel of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover in this Jan. 7, 2022, image. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

On Wednesday, Dec. 29 (sol 306) Perseverance successfully cored and extracted a sample from a Mars rock. Data downlinked after the sampling indicates that coring of the rock the science team nicknamed Issole went smoothly. However, during the transfer of the bit that contains the sample into the rover’s bit carousel (which stores bits and passes tubes to the tube processing hardware inside the rover), our sensors indicated an anomaly. The rover did as it was designed to do – halting the caching procedure and calling home for further instructions.

This is only the 6th time in human history a sample has been cored from a rock on a planet other than Earth, so when we see something anomalous going on, we take it slow. Here is what we know so far, and what we are doing about it.

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Posted by tourdemars to: Mars 2020, Sample Return, Technology

January 5th, 2022

China Releases Amazing Photos of Tianwen-1 Probe Above Mars

China’s National Space Administration published four photos taken by its Tianwen-1 Mars mission, including the first full photo of the orbiting probe over the Red Planet.

The full-color photos show the Tianwen-1 orbiter above Mars as well as the ice cover on the planet’s north pole. According to the China National Space Administration (CNSA), the photos were taken by a camera that was released by the orbiter so that it could get a full view of the probe. The Tianwen-1 spacecraft is now about 350 million kilometers (about 217 million miles) from Earth.

According to the South China Morning Post, China is currently working on another mission, likely to be named Tianwen-2, that will aim to collect rock samples from Mars and return them to earth in 2030.

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Posted by tourdemars to: China Mars 2020, Sample Return

December 20th, 2021

SpaceX’s towering Starship aims to get humans to Mars

SpaceX successfully launched and landed Starship SN15 at the company’s Starbase spaceport in Boca Chica, Texas, on May 5, 2021. Photograph: Spacex/UPI/REX/Shutterstock

The largest and most powerful rocket ship ever is fully recyclable and may be the first vehicle to land humans on Mars

It’s been an eventful month for Elon Musk. The world’s richest man and founder of Tesla and SpaceX was, controversially, named Time’s person of the year; became embroiled in a Twitter spat over his taxes with a politician he branded “Senator Karen” and got a bizarre new haircut after splitting with his girlfriend, the pop singer Grimes.

Next month, however, or perhaps a few weeks beyond if the attendant gremlins of spaceflight choose to play with the launch schedule, could come an achievement to surpass anything Musk has done before.

The first orbital test launch of the largest and most powerful rocket ship ever to leave Earth – SpaceX’s towering Starship, from its Starbase headquarters in Texas – is seen by many as a pathway back to the moon for the first time in half a century and maybe the first vehicle to eventually land humans on Mars.

The project that began life in Musk’s overactive mind more than a decade ago is every bit as ambitious as his pronouncement this week that: “I’ll be surprised if we’re not landing on Mars within five years.”

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Posted by tourdemars to: Humans To Mars, Technology