MarsNews.com

December 17th, 2021

A one-way phone call at Mars

ESA Mars Express relays data from CNSA Zhurong rover

Landers and rovers on Mars gather data that help scientists answer fundamental questions about the geology, atmosphere, surface environment, history of water and potential for life on the Red Planet.

To get these insights to Earth, they first transmit the data up to spacecraft in orbit around Mars. These orbiters then use their much larger, more powerful transmitters to ‘relay’ the data across space to Earth.

“Normally, an orbiter like ESA’s Mars Express first sends down a hail signal to a rover as a ‘hello’,” says James Godfrey, Mars Express Spacecraft Operations Manager.

“The rover then sends back a response to establish stable communications and begin the two-way exchange of information. But this relies on the rover’s radio system being compatible with the orbiter’s.”

As Mars Express transmits its ‘hello’ signal using communication frequencies that are different from those the Chinese Zhurong Mars rover receives, two-way communication is not possible.

But in the other direction, Zhurong can transmit a signal using a frequency that Mars Express can receive.

The relay radio on Mars Express has a mode that allows this one-way communication – communication ‘in the blind’ where the sender can’t be sure if their signal is being received – but until now, the technique hadn’t been tested on the spacecraft.

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Posted by tourdemars to: China Mars 2020, Interplanetary Internet, Mars Express, Technology

December 16th, 2021

ExoMars discovers hidden water in Mars’ Grand Canyon

Mars Express took snapshots of Candor Chasma, a valley in the northern part of Valles Marineris, as it was in orbit above the region on 6 July 2006.
ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum), CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter has spotted significant amounts of water at the heart of Mars’ dramatic canyon system, Valles Marineris.

The water, which is hidden beneath Mars’ surface, was found by the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO)’s FREND instrument, which is mapping the hydrogen – a measure of water content – in the uppermost metre of Mars’ soil.

While water is known to exist on Mars, most is found in the planet’s cold polar regions as ice. Water ice is not found exposed at the surface near the equator, as temperatures here are not cold enough for exposed water ice to be stable.

Missions including ESA’s Mars Express have hunted for near-surface water – as ice covering dust grains in the soil, or locked up in minerals – at lower latitudes of Mars, and found small amounts. However, such studies have only explored the very surface of the planet; deeper water stores could exist, covered by dust.

“With TGO we can look down to one metre below this dusty layer and see what’s really going on below Mars’ surface – and, crucially, locate water-rich ‘oases’ that couldn’t be detected with previous instruments,” says Igor Mitrofanov of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, Russia; lead author of the new study; and principal investigator of the FREND (Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector) neutron telescope.

“FREND revealed an area with an unusually large amount of hydrogen in the colossal Valles Marineris canyon system: assuming the hydrogen we see is bound into water molecules, as much as 40% of the near-surface material in this region appears to be water.”

The water-rich area is about the size of the Netherlands and overlaps with the deep valleys of Candor Chaos, part of the canyon system considered promising in our hunt for water on Mars.

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Posted by tourdemars to: ExoMars, Humans To Mars, ISRU, Mars Express, Planetology

December 15th, 2021

An Absolutely Bonkers Plan to Give Mars an Artificial Magnetosphere

A torus of charged particles could give Mars a magnetic field. Credit: Ruth Bamford

Terraforming Mars is one of the great dreams of humanity. Mars has a lot going for it. Its day is about the same length as Earth’s, it has plenty of frozen water just under its surface, and it likely could be given a reasonably breathable atmosphere in time. But one of the things it lacks is a strong magnetic field. So if we want to make Mars a second Earth, we’ll have to give it an artificial one.

The reason magnetic fields are so important is that they can shield a planet from solar wind and ionizing particles. Earth’s magnetic field prevents most high-energy charged particles from reaching the surface. Instead, they are deflected from Earth, keeping us safe. The magnetic field also helps prevent solar winds from stripping Earth’s atmosphere over time. Early Mars had a thick, water-rich atmosphere, but it was gradually depleted without the protection of a strong magnetic field.

As the study points out, if you want a good planetary magnetic field, what you really need is a strong flow of charged particles, either within the planet or around the planet. Since the former isn’t a great option for Mars, the team looks at the latter. It turns out you can create a ring of charged particles around Mars, thanks to its moon Phobos.

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Posted by tourdemars to: Humans To Mars, Planetology, Technology, Terraforming

December 14th, 2021

NASA Begins Testing Robotics to Bring First Samples Back From Mars

A NASA-led Sample Retrieval Lander launches to Mars in the mid 2020s, carrying with it an ESA-led sample fetch rover and a NASA-led Mars rocket. The lander would touch down close to Perseverance’s landing location, Jezero Crater, and deposit the fetch rover.
Lead: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Engineers are developing the crucial hardware needed for a series of daring space missions that will be carried out in the coming decade.

Testing has already begun on what would be the most sophisticated endeavor ever attempted at the Red Planet: bringing rock and sediment samples from Mars to Earth for closer study.

The multi-mission Mars Sample Return campaign began when NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars this past February to collect Martian rock samples in search of ancient microscopic life. Out of Perseverance’s 43 sample tubes, four have been filled with rock cores and one with Martian atmosphere. Mars Sample Return seeks to bring select tubes back to Earth, where generations of scientists will be able to study them with powerful lab equipment far too large to send to Mars.

Getting those samples into terrestrial labs would take a decade and involve European partners and multiple NASA centers. ESA (the European Space Agency) is developing a rover for the effort, with engineers at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, designing its wheels. The rover would transfer samples to a lander, being developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, that would use a robotic arm (developed by ESA) to pack the samples into a small rocket, called a Mars Ascent Vehicle, being designed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

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Posted by tourdemars to: Sample Return, Technology

December 13th, 2021

Time 2021 Person of the Year : Elon Musk

Photograph by Mark Mahaney for TIME

The richest man in the world does not own a house and has recently been selling off his fortune. He tosses satellites into orbit and harnesses the sun; he drives a car he created that uses no gas and barely needs a driver. With a flick of his finger, the stock market soars or swoons. An army of devotees hangs on his every utterance. He dreams of Mars as he bestrides Earth, square-jawed and indomitable. Lately, Elon Musk also likes to live-tweet his poops.

“He is a humanist—not in the sense of being a nice person, because he isn’t,” says Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society, who met Musk in 2001, when the young, newly minted dot-com millionaire sent a large unsolicited check to the organization. “He wants eternal glory for doing great deeds, and he is an asset to the human race because he defines a great deed as something that is great for humanity. He is greedy for glory. Money to him is a means, not an end. Who today evaluates Thomas Edison on the basis of which of his inventions turned a profit?”

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Posted by tourdemars to: General News, Humans To Mars, Mars Society, Technology

December 9th, 2021

ESA’s Mars Express unravels mystery of martian moon using ‘fake’ flybys

Infographic: ‘Fake’ flybys help solve Phobos mystery

By performing a series of real and ‘fake’ flybys, ESA’s Mars Express has revealed how Mars’ largest moon, Phobos, interacts with the solar wind of charged particles thrown out by the Sun – and spotted an elusive process that has only been seen at Phobos once before.

The solar wind streams out from our star, filling the Solar System with energetic particles. Earth’s Moon reflects these particles continuously, and the same ‘backscattering’ is expected at Mars’ moon Phobos given the similarities between the two (both are rocky, lack a magnetic field and atmosphere, and orbit terrestrial planets in the inner Solar System). However, ESA’s Mars Express has only seen this backscattering once (in 2008), despite coming close to Phobos many times.

Researchers now report the second successful detection of reflected solar wind particles at Phobos, spotted during a flyby of the moon in January 2016.

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Posted by tourdemars to: Mars Express, Planetology

December 8th, 2021

NASA names 10 new astronaut candidates for future space missions

NASA’s 23rd class of astronaut candidates pose with NASA leaders and congressional officials at Ellington Field, near Johnson Space Center, in Houston, Texas, at the conclusion of their announcement ceremony on Monday, Dec. 6, 2021. (collectSPACE)

NASA revealed the members of its new astronaut candidate class who may someday help establish a sustainable presence on the moon.

The four women and six men named on Monday (Dec. 6) comprise the U.S. space agency’s 23rd group of astronaut candidates since the Mercury 7 were chosen in 1959 and the first to be recruited since the start of NASA’s Artemis moon program. The new class of 10 was narrowed from a pool of more than 12,000 applicants after an extended recruitment process that began in March 2020 and was delayed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The astronaut candidates, or “ascans” for short, were announced at a ceremony held at Ellington Field, NASA’s base for flight operations, located near Johnson Space Center in Houston.

To be eligible, the new ascans had to be U.S. citizens with a masters degree from an accredited institution in a science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) field with at least three years of related experience, or at least 1,000 hours of pilot-in-command time in jet aircraft. The candidates also had to pass the NASA physical for long-duration spaceflight.

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Posted by tourdemars to: General News, Humans To Mars

December 6th, 2021

Mars Society Appoints New Full-Time Executive Director

James Burk

The Mars Society is very pleased to announce that James L. Burk has been appointed as the organization’s new full-time Executive Director, supervising the group’s world-wide efforts to promote the human exploration and settlement of the planet Mars.

In this role, James will oversee the organization’s fundraising efforts and high-level networking, lead and coordinate volunteers and chapters, both in the U.S. and around the world, and coordinate any organizational involvement in informing government representatives about humans-to-Mars.

Commenting on his new position, James said, “It’s a great honor to be chosen to serve as our new Executive Director. In my new role, I’ll seek out new opportunities, funding, and ideas; I’ll be approachable and responsive to our members and partners; and I’ll bring an engineer’s rigor to our strategic planning and execution. I’ll do everything I possibly can to accelerate the day that human beings are living and working on Mars in a sustainable and responsible way.”

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Posted by tourdemars to: Mars Society

April 22nd, 2021

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Just Turned Martian CO2 Into Oxygen

Image by NASA

A toaster-sized scientific instrument attached to NASA’s Perseverance rover just sucked up a bit of carbon dioxide from the surrounding Martian atmosphere and converted it into oxygen.

It’s a groundbreaking first that could lead to a future in which space travelers are not only able to generate air to breathe, but rocket fuel to get them back to Earth as well — while still on Mars.

The instrument, called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE), is a technology demonstration that could eventually be scaled up to produce enough propellant to enable a crew of astronauts to take off from the surface of the Red Planet.

“This is a critical first step at converting carbon dioxide to oxygen on Mars,” said Jim Reuter, associate administrator of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD), in a statement. “MOXIE has more work to do, but the results from this technology demonstration are full of promise as we move toward our goal of one day seeing humans on Mars.”

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Posted by tourdemars to: Humans To Mars, ISRU, Mars 2020, Technology

April 19th, 2021

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Succeeds in Historic First Flight

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter captured this shot as it hovered over the Martian surface on April 19, 2021, during the first instance of powered, controlled flight on another planet. It used its navigation camera, which autonomously tracks the ground during flight.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Monday, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter became the first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet. The Ingenuity team at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California confirmed the flight succeeded after receiving data from the helicopter via NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover at 6:46 a.m. EDT (3:46 a.m. PDT).

“Ingenuity is the latest in a long and storied tradition of NASA projects achieving a space exploration goal once thought impossible,” said acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk. “The X-15 was a pathfinder for the space shuttle. Mars Pathfinder and its Sojourner rover did the same for three generations of Mars rovers. We don’t know exactly where Ingenuity will lead us, but today’s results indicate the sky – at least on Mars – may not be the limit.”

The solar-powered helicopter first became airborne at 3:34 a.m. EDT (12:34 a.m. PDT) – 12:33 Local Mean Solar Time (Mars time) – a time the Ingenuity team determined would have optimal energy and flight conditions. Altimeter data indicate Ingenuity climbed to its prescribed maximum altitude of 10 feet (3 meters) and maintained a stable hover for 30 seconds. It then descended, touching back down on the surface of Mars after logging a total of 39.1 seconds of flight. Additional details on the test are expected in upcoming downlinks.

Ingenuity’s initial flight demonstration was autonomous – piloted by onboard guidance, navigation, and control systems running algorithms developed by the team at JPL. Because data must be sent to and returned from the Red Planet over hundreds of millions of miles using orbiting satellites and NASA’s Deep Space Network, Ingenuity cannot be flown with a joystick, and its flight was not observable from Earth in real time.

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Posted by tourdemars to: Airplane, Mars 2020