Posts tagged Mars
Given all the evidence presently available, we believe it entirely reasonable that Mars is inhabited with living organisms and that life independently originated there
The conclusion of a study by the National Academy of Sciences in March 1965, after 88 years of surveying the red planet through blurry telescopes. Four months later, NASA’s Mariner 4 spacecraft would beam back the first satellite images of Mars confirming the opposite.
After Earth and Mars were born four and a half billion years ago, they both contained all the elements necessary for life. After initially having surface water and an atmosphere, scientists now believe Mars lost it’s atmosphere four billion years ago, with Earth getting an oxygenated atmosphere around half a billion years later.
According to the chief scientist on NASA’s Curiosity mission, if life ever existed on Mars it was most likely microscopic and lived more than three and a half billion years ago. But even on Earth, fossils that old are vanishingly rare. “You can count them on one hand,” he says. “Five locations. You can waste time looking at hundreds of thousands of rocks and not find anything.”
Video: Mars Science Laboratory time lapse.
This time lapse video shows the first 282 days of the Curiosity Rover on Mars, condensed down into one minute, which is still too long for my attention span.
Tens of thousands apply for one-way trip to Mars.
Mars One opened applications for their Astronaut Selection Program two weeks ago, with hopes to start sending humans one-way to Mars in 2023.
The company has revealed that 78,000 people from over 120 countries have already applied. Applications are still being accepted for another three months, here.
Opportunity breaks NASA’s distance record.
The Mars rover Opportunity has clocked up 22.22 miles since arriving on Mars, breaking NASA’s previous record for distance covered on another planet which was previously set in 1972 when two astronauts drove 22.21 miles on the surface of the Moon.
The international record is still held by the Russians, however. In 1973 the then Soviet Union’s remote-controlled Lunokhod 2 rover traveled 23 miles (37 kilometers) on the surface of the Moon.
Oh grow up, Mars rovers.
The tracks shown are from both the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, in this image released by NASA.
NASA invites you to send a haiku to Mars.
NASA is inviting members of the public to submit their names and a personal message online for a DVD to be carried aboard a spacecraft that will study the Martian upper atmosphere.
The DVD will be in NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, which is scheduled for launch in November. The DVD is part of the mission’s Going to Mars Campaign coordinated at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.
The DVD will carry every name submitted. The public also is encouraged to submit a message in the form of a three-line poem, or haiku. However, only three haikus will be selected. The deadline for all submissions is July 1. An online public vote to determine the top three messages to be placed on the DVD will begin July 15.
Submit your entry here.
Mars One opens ‘Astronaut Selection Program’.
Mars One plan to start sending people to Mars, one way, in 2023. Apply here!
Image: Mars in 3D
Left and right eyes of the Navigation Camera (Navcam) in NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover took the dozens of images combined into this stereo scene of the rover and its surroundings. The component images were taken during the 166th, 168th and 169th Martian days, or sols, of Curiosity’s work on Mars (Jan. 23, 25 and 26, 2013).
The scene appears three dimensional when viewed through red-blue glasses with the red lens on the left. It spans 360 degrees, with Mount Sharp on the southern horizon.
Curiosity collects first ever drilling sample.
This image from NASA’s Curiosity rover shows the first sample of powdered rock extracted by the rover’s drill. The achievement is significant as it is the first sample ever collected from the interior of a rock on another planet - no rover has ever drilled into a rock beyond Earth and collected a sample from its interior.
The rock was selected for the first sample drilling because it may hold evidence of wet environmental conditions long ago. The rover’s laboratory analysis of the powder may provide information about those conditions.
In planned subsequent steps, the sample will be sieved, and portions of it delivered to the Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument and the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument.
The scoop is 1.8 inches (4.5 centimeters) wide.
The image was obtained by Curiosity’s Mast Camera on Feb. 20, or Sol 193, Curiosity’s 193rd Martian day of operations.
Image: A Living Mars.
Kevin Gill’s rendering of Mars shows what the planet could (or might have once) look like if it had oceans, clouds, and life.
This is a view of the Western hemisphere with Olympus Mons on the horizon beyond the Tharsis Montes volcanoes and the Valles Marineris canyons near the center. The height of the clouds and atmosphere are largely arbitrary and set for the sake of appearance and coverage over the exaggerated terrain elevations (~10 times elevation exaggeration). The eye is about 10,000 km (~6,200 miles) from the surface.
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