NASA's Mars' 'Curiosity Mission' Live Today -- Weather & Water Search Update

NASA's Mars' 'Curiosity Mission' Live Today -- Weather & Water Search Update
NASA's Mars' 'Curiosity Mission' Live Today -- Weather & Water Search UpdateThe Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel: Sci, Space, TechFollow the Daily Galaxy  « The Oldest Star in the Universe? --"Closest to the Big Bang in Composition" |Main| "Self-Awareness" --New Insights into How Human Brain Constructs a Sense of Self »

August 22, 2012 NASA's Mars' 'Curiosity Mission' Live Today -- Weather & Water Search Update

 

          

 

NASA will hold a televised news conference at 11:30 a.m. PDT (2:30 p.m. EDT) today Wednesday, Aug. 22, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., to update on the progress of its Curiosity rover mission focusing on weather and the search for signs of water.

"Curiosity has begun shooting neutrons into the ground," said Igor Mitrofanov of Space Research Institute, Moscow, principal investigator for this instrument, called the Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons, or DAN. "We measure the amount of hydrogen in the soil by observing how the neutrons are scattered, and hydrogen on Mars is an indicator of water."

The most likely hydrogen to be found in shallow ground of Gale Crater, near the Martian equator, is in hydrated minerals. These are minerals with water molecules, or related ions, bound into the crystalline structure of rocks. They can tenaciously retain water from a wetter past after all free water has gone.

The news conference will be broadcast live on NASA TV and online at: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv and http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl.

This full-resolution image below shows part of the deck of NASA's Curiosity rover taken from one of the rover's Navigation cameras looking toward the back left of the rover.

On the left of this image, part of the rover's power supply is visible. To the right of the power supply can be seen the pointy low-gain antenna and side of the paddle-shaped high-gain antenna for communications directly to Earth. The rim of Gale Crater is the lighter colored band across the horizon. The effects of the descent stage's rocket engines blasting the ground can be seen on the right side of the image, next to the rover.

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has been investigating the Martian weather around it and the soil beneath it, as its controllers prepare for the car-size vehicle's first drive on Mars.

The rover's weather station, provided by Spain, checks air temperature, ground temperature, air pressure, wind and other variables every hour at the landing site in Gale Crater. On a typical Martian day, or "sol," based on measurements so far in the two-week old mission, air temperatures swing from 28 degrees to minus 103 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 2 to minus 75 Celsius). Ground temperatures change even more between afternoon and pre-dawn morning, from 37 degrees to minus 132 degrees Fahrenheit (3 to minus 91 Celsius).

"We will learn about changes from day to day and season to season," said Javier Gómez-Elvira of the Centro de Astrobiología, Madrid, Spain, principal investigator for the suite of weather sensors called the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS).

Within a week or so, daily Mars weather reports from Curiosity will become available at: http://cab.inta-csic.es/rems/marsweather.html or http://bit.ly/RzQe6p.

One of the two sets of REMS wind sensors is not providing data. "One possibility is that pebbles lofted during the landing hit the delicate circuit boards on one of the two REMS booms," said Curiosity Deputy Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We will have to be more clever about using the remaining wind sensor to get wind speed and direction."

An instrument provided by Russia is checking for water bound into minerals in the top three feet (one meter) of soil beneath the rover. It employs a technology that is used in oil prospecting on Earth, but had never before been sent to another planet.

Curiosity will soon have a different patch of ground beneath it. Today, the six-wheeled rover wiggled its four corner wheels side to side for the first time on Mars, as a test of the steering actuators on those wheels. This was critical preparation for Curiosity's first drive on Mars.

"Late tonight, we plan to send Curiosity the commands for doing our first drive tomorrow," said Curiosity Mission Manager Michael Watkins of JPL.

 

          

Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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That link to Gale Crater takes you to somewhere on Earth. Here is a correct Goolge Maps link for Mars http://www.google.com/mars/#lat=-11.523087&lon=-52.03125&zoom=2&q=Gale

Posted by:Steven |August 22, 2012 at 09:20 AM

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Image of the Day: NASA's 1st Major 'Curiosity' Discovery?

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Image of the Day: Mystery of NASA's Odd 'Curiosity' Photo --"Is It the Galactic Equivalent of the Zapruder Film?"

Image of the Day: Mystery of NASA's Odd 'Curiosity' Photo --"Is It the Galactic Equivalent of the Zapruder Film?"
Image of the Day: Mystery of NASA's Odd 'Curiosity' Photo --"Is It the Galactic Equivalent of the Zapruder Film?" The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel: Sci, Space, TechFollow the Daily Galaxy  « Hidden Supermassive Black Holes of the Universe |Main| Curiosity Rover to Get a "Brain Transplant" for Upcoming Science Tasks »

August 10, 2012 Image of the Day: Mystery of NASA's Odd 'Curiosity' Photo --"Is It the Galactic Equivalent of the Zapruder Film?"

 

          

 

A photo of Mars taken by Curiosity shows what might be the NASA rover's spacecraft crash-landing in the distance. If so, it 'would be an insane coincidence,' one engineer says. Scott Gold of the The Los Algeles Times asks "Did Curiosity capture the galactic equivalent of the Zapruder film when it landed on Mars?"

Seconds after the NASA robot's landing Sunday night, Curiosity managed to squeeze off a handful of fuzzy, black-and-white photographs. One, taken with a device on its rear known as a Hazcam, captured the pebble-strewn ground beneath the rover and one of its wheels - and a blotch, faint but distinctive, on the horizon. The images were relayed by a passing satellite. Two hours later, the satellite passed overhead again.

This time, Curiosity sent home a new batch of higher-resolution photos. They showed the same horizon. The blotch was gone. Space junkies raced onto the Internet with giddy speculation about the difference between the photos.

Curiosity, the largest spacecraft ever sent to another planet, had just sailed through deep space for almost nine months and more than 350 million miles. It landed on its own, meaning scientists had no control over where, exactly, it would wind up, what direction it would be pointed in nor when it would snap its first images.

After all of those variables, the space junkies insisted, Curiosity had somehow snapped a photo of its chariot crash-landing a safe distance away, as planned. The camera shutter had been open for 200 milliseconds. The blotch did look like a billowing plume of some sort, erupting from the horizon.

But the image "would be an insane coincidence," one engineer said. Most dismissed the chatter as wild-eyed speculation and a statistical impossibility. It was just dirt on the lens, some said - maybe a dust devil swirling in the distance, but nothing more than

Yet a pesky fact remained. In the first photo, the blotch is there. "And then it's not," said Sarah Milkovich, a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge and a leader of the team responsible for delivering images documenting the mission. Early Tuesday morning, JPL engineers received a new image of the landing zone, taken by another satellite. With tongue in cheek, this photo was labeled the "crime scene" photo, because it not only showed Curiosity on the ground, but all of the pieces of spacecraft that the rover had discarded on the way down.

To the southwest was the supersonic parachute that had taken Curiosity out of free-fall, and was then jettisoned so it wouldn't land on top of the rover and smother it. To the southeast was the heat shield, which soared to temperatures as high as 3,800 degrees and was then ditched so that Curiosity could turn on its radar to navigate its landing. And to the northwest was the spacecraft that had deposited Curiosity on the surface. Known as the "sky crane," it was the remnants of the final stage of the rover's intricate descent.

Minutes before landing, Curiosity had been contained in an experimental "backpack" that lowered itself to the ground using powerful rocket engines. The engines could have kicked up so much dust that it suffocated the rover. So, just 66 feet above the ground, the backpack spat out Curiosity, leaving the rover dangling by three ropes.

The hovering spacecraft lowered Curiosity to the ground and was then cut loose. Once free, the crane throttled up its engines and arched across the Martian sky. The crime scene photo showed that the sky crane had crash-landed, as designed, about 2,000 feet away - and in the direction Curiosity's rear was pointed toward when it snapped the first photo showing the blotch.

The new photo also showed that the sky crane, when it crash-landed, kicked up a violent wave of dirt that had scarred the surface of Mars. The impossible, it seemed, was possible. "I don't think you can rule it out," Curiosity mission manager Michael Watkins said Tuesday. "It bears looking into."

Although the coincidence would be of little scientific value, "it would be incredibly cool. ... A crazy, serendipitous thing," Watkins said. Justin Maki, a JPL engineer and scientist who led the team that developed the Hazcams, shorthand for hazard-avoidance cameras, said further review had suggested that the photograph might not be as crazy as it sounded initially. Between the front and rear Hazcams, the cameras covered 240 degrees of the horizon, or about two-thirds. And the material the sky crane kicked up when it crashed could have hung in the air for a minute or two, he said - Mars' gravity is 38 percent as strong as Earth's - which could have increased the chances of capturing the image.

 "Something was out there," he said. New images scheduled to arrive in the next two weeks will give engineers a higher-fidelity understanding of the landing and the orientation of the pieces on the ground. But there's a chance that the mystery of the photograph may never be solved - it was a one-time event, over in seconds, and there will never be new images of that moment.

"It's circumstantial evidence - but it's pretty good circumstantial evidence," said Emily Lakdawalla, senior editor at the Planetary Society, a nonprofit Pasadena organization that advocates for space research and exploration. "It looks like we may actually have seen it, but it's hard to know."

Also Tuesday, engineers began turning on components of Curiosity's roving geochemistry laboratory, including a high-gain antenna that will permit a higher-bandwidth conversation between the rover and scientists back home. *An on-board radiation detector, officials said, had already begun sending home data. Understanding Mars' radiation environment is important to Curiosity's central mission - determining whether the Red Planet was ever capable of fostering life - and to potential human exploration of Mars.

The Daily Galaxy via (c) 2012 Los Angeles Times

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Image of the Day --NASA's Gale Crater Mars Landing Site for Tomorrow's 'Search-for-Life' Mission

Image of the Day --NASA's Gale Crater Mars Landing Site for Tomorrow's 'Search-for-Life' Mission
Image of the Day --NASA's Gale Crater Mars Landing Site for Tomorrow's 'Search-for-Life' MissionThe Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel: Sci, Space, TechFollow the Daily Galaxy  « NASA Countdown: "The Conditions for the Emergence of Life Were Present on Mars" (Weekend Feature) |Main| Ancient Mars: "The Water Planet"? --'Curiosity' Mission May Provide Proof (Weekend Feature) »

August 04, 2012 Image of the Day --NASA's Gale Crater Mars Landing Site for Tomorrow's 'Search-for-Life' Mission

 

        

 

This computer-generated view based on multiple orbital observations shows Mars' Gale crater as if seen from an aircraft north of the crater. Because of its history, 96-mile wide Gale Crater crater landing site, with its strangely sculpted mountain --three times higher than the Grand Canyon is deep--is the ideal place for Curiosity to conduct its mission of exploration into the Red Planet's past. Researchers plan to use Curiosity to study layers in the mountain that hold evidence about wet environments of early Mars.

"This may be one of the thickest exposed sections of layered sedimentary rocks in the solar system," said Joy Crisp, MSL Deputy Project Scientist from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "The rock record preserved in those layers holds stories that are billions of years old -- stories about whether, when, and for how long Mars might have been habitable."

Gale crater is 96 miles (154 kilometers) in diameter and holds a layered mountain rising about 3 miles (5 kilometers) above the crater floor. The ellipse superimposed on this image indicates the candidate landing area, 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) by 15.5 miles (25 kilometers). The portion of the crater within the landing area has an alluvial fan likely formed by water-carried sediments. The lower layers of the nearby mountain -- within driving distance for Curiosity -- contain minerals indicating a wet history. The candidate landing site is at 4.5 degrees south latitude, 137.4 degrees east longitude.

This view was created using visible-light imaging by the Thermal Emission Imaging System camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter and three-dimensional information from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter, which flew on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor orbiter. Color information is generalized from color imaging of portions of the scene by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The vertical dimension is not exaggerated.

In a prime mission lasting one Martian year -- nearly two Earth years -- after landing, researchers will use the rover's tools to study whether the landing region has had environmental conditions favorable for supporting microbial life and for preserving clues about whether life existed.

New NASA research that lays out the optimal depths and locations to probe for organic molecules like those that compose living organisms as we know them, could help the newest Mars rover scout for evidence of life beneath the surface and within rocks. The results suggest that, should Mars harbor simple organic molecules, NASA's prospects for discovering them during Curiosity's explorations are better than previously thought, said Alexander Pavlov of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, lead author of the study.

An instrument on Curiosity can check for any water that might be bound into shallow underground minerals along the rover's path. Today the Red Planet is a radiation-drenched, bitterly cold, bleak world. Enormous dust storms explode across the barren landscape and darken Martian skies for months at a time. But data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter suggest that Mars once hosted vast lakes and flowing rivers.

While simple molecules could provide evidence of ancient Martian life, they could also stem from other sources like meteorites and volcanoes. Complex organic molecules could hint more strongly at the possibility of past life on the planet. These molecules, made up of 10 or more carbon atoms, could resemble known building blocks of life such as the amino acids that make up proteins.

Although complex carbon structures are trickier to find because they're more vulnerable to cosmic radiation that continuously bombards and penetrates the surface of the Red Planet, the new research by Pavlov and his colleagues provides suggestions for where to start looking. The amounts of radiation that rock and soil is exposed to over time, and how deep that radiation penetrates – an indicator of how deep a rover would have to sample to find intact organic molecules – is a subject of ongoing research.

The scientists report that chances of finding these molecules in the first 2 centimeters (0.8 inches) of Martian soil is close to zero. That top layer, they calculate, will absorb a total of 500 million grays of cosmic radiation over the course of one billion years – capable of destroying all organic material. A mere 50 grays, absorbed immediately or over time, would cause almost certain death to a human.

However, within 5 to 10 centimeters (2 to 4 inches) beneath the surface, the amount of radiation reduces tenfold, to 50 million grays. Although that's still extreme, the team reports that simple organic molecules, such as a single formaldehyde molecule, could exist at this depth – and in some places, specifically young craters, the complex building blocks of life could remain as well.

"Right now the challenge is that past Martian landers haven't seen any organic material whatsoever," Pavlov said. "We know that organic molecules have to be there but we can't find any of them in the soil."

As Mars revolves around the Sun, it is constantly bombarded by very small meteors and interplanetary dust particles, which have plenty of organic compounds in them, Pavlov said. Therefore, over time they would have accumulated at the Martian surface.

The Mars Science Laboratory is the newest and largest of NASA's Martian landers. Curiosity doesn't have a shovel but, equipped with drilling technology, it will collect, store, and analyze samples of Martian material down to 5 centimeters below the surface of rock and soil. Past Martian rovers have only collected loose soil atop the surface that has been directly exposed to cosmic radiation, making the possibility for detecting organic molecules exceedingly slim.

When evaluating how deep organic molecules might persist beneath the surface, previous studies have mainly focused on the maximum depth, approximately 1.5 meters (5 feet), that cosmic radiation reaches because beyond that point organic molecules could survive, unharmed, for billions of years, Pavlov said. However, drilling to 1.5 meters or deeper is currently too expensive to engineer for a Martian rover.

So the team focused on more attainable depths – the first 20 cm (8 in) below the surface. They modeled the complex scenario of cosmic ray accumulation and its effects on organic molecules using a collection of important variables, including Martian rock and soil composition, changes in the planet's atmospheric density over time, and cosmic rays' various energy levels.

In addition to the finding that some simple carbon-containing molecules could exist within 10 cm (4 in) depth, the scientists emphasize that certain regions on Mars may have radiation levels far lower than 50 million grays near the surface – and so more complex molecules like amino acids could remain intact.

In order to find these molecules within the rover's drilling range (1 to 5 cm), the scientists found the best bet is to look at "fresh" craters that are no more than 10 million years old, unlike past expeditionary sites that mainly sampled from landscapes undisturbed for billions of years.

Compared to Martian landscapes undisturbed for one billion years or more, relatively young craters exhibit freshly exposed rock and soil that was once deeper beneath the surface. The new research indicates that this material will have been near the surface for a short enough period of time that it's overall exposure to harmful radiation would not have been enough to wipe out organic molecules.

"When you have a chance to drill, don't waste it on perfectly preserved (landscapes)," Pavlov said. "You want to go to fresh craters because there's probably a better chance to detect complex organic molecules. Let Nature work for you."

"The next logical step," said Lewis Dartnell, a postdoctoral researcher at the University College London in the U.K, "is to actually experiment and have a radiation source hit amino acids with radiation of similar energies as cosmic rays and determine how quickly those amino acids are destroyed because models can only do so much."

Curiosity is set to land in the same crater where the Spirit rover landed in 2004. Whether this 3.5-billion-year-old crater has fresher craters within it is uncertain. However, Pavlov hopes that his team's findings will at least help guide NASA on where to drill once the rover has landed and influence where future generations of rover landers will touch down.

The Daily Galaxy via NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/MSSS

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Can we please get some information on where the first bases and industry will be initiated. Is it true that a low gravity moon base with a industrial capacity to build a launch capability to Mars is the first step to a Colony there? How is the progress on 1G accelerated space flight to make human transportation to Mars possible in one week going? What is the status on the lack of Earth's magnetic field on human health which is very important to understand for human health during human space flight.

Posted by:Lee |August 04, 2012 at 02:55 PM

They need to explore the Cydonia complex to verify if there are really pyramids on Mars. Also search for abandoned cities nearby.

Posted by:Pete |August 04, 2012 at 03:17 PM

Pete, no they don't.

Posted by:Ruth Mc |August 04, 2012 at 04:07 PM

I hope a perfect landing... crossing fingers... I wish this rover will be the one that finds conclusive evidence of extraterrestial life.

Posted by:rob |August 04, 2012 at 05:19 PM

I don't see any protesters picketing, maybe that should answer the question finally.

Posted by:Ed Gould |August 04, 2012 at 09:12 PM

@ Pete... You do realize that when we took the original photos of Cydonia (revealing those faces) that our camera equipment was of very low resolution (compared to today's). Newer footage in high detail reveal it simply as being a hill will slight indentations in places.

Here, read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_%28region_of_Mars%29

Posted by:Relentless |August 05, 2012 at 12:00 AM

Pete

My secrets shall be buried for many years to come.

Posted by:Cydonia |August 05, 2012 at 07:41 AM

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Image of the Day --"The Kepler 5" --NASA's Short List of Potential Habitable Exoplanets

Image of the Day --"The Kepler 5" --NASA's Short List of Potential Habitable Exoplanets
Image of the Day --"The Kepler 5" --NASA's Short List of Potential Habitable ExoplanetsThe Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel: Sci, Space, TechFollow the Daily Galaxy  « 1st Known Spiral Galaxy in Universe Discovered --Billions of Years Older than Expected |Main| New Singularity in Space-Time Found »

July 20, 2012 Image of the Day --"The Kepler 5" --NASA's Short List of Potential Habitable Exoplanets

 

        

New data suggest the confirmation of the exoplanet Gliese 581g and the best candidate so far of a potential habitable exoplanet. The nearby star Gliese 581 is well known for having four planets with the outermost planet, Gliese 581d, already suspected habitable. This will be the first time evidence for any two potential habitable exoplanets orbiting the same star. Gliese 581g will be included, together with Gliese 667Cc, Kepler-22b, HD85512, and Gliese 581d, in the Habitable Exoplanets Catalog of the PHL @ UPR Arecibo as the best five objects of interest for Earth-like exoplanets.

Doubts about the existence of Gliese 581g appeared only two weeks after its announcement on September 29, 2010 by astronomers of the Lick-Carnegie Exoplanet Survey. Scientists from the HARPS Team from the Geneva Observatory, which discovered all the previously known four planets around Gliese 581, were not able to detect Gliese 581g out of their own data, which included additional observations.

Further analysis by others scientists also questioned the existence of Gliese 581g in the last two years. Enlarge Comparison of the estimated relative size and orbits of the five exoplanets around Gliese 581. The green shade represent the size of the habitable zone, or the orbital region where an Earth-size planet could have surface liquid water. Planets e, b, and c are too hot for liquid water and life but g and d are in the habitable zone.

Planet g is specially in the right spot for Earth-like conditions while d is marginally within these limits, and colder. This is the first case of a stellar system with two potential habitable exoplanets orbiting the same star. Now the original discoverers of Gliese 581g, led by Steven S. Vogt of UC Santa Cruz, present a new analysis with an extended dataset from the HARPS instrument that shows more promising evidence for its existence.

The new analysis supports their original assumption that all the planets around Gliese 581 are in circular and not elliptical orbits as currently believed. It is under this likely assumption that the Gliese 581g signal appears in the new data. “This signal has a False Alarm Probability of < 4% and is consistent with a planet of minimum mass 2.2M [Earth masses], orbiting squarely in the star’s Habitable Zone at 0.13 AU, where liquid water on planetary surfaces is a distinct possibility” said Vogt.

Based on the new data Gliese 581g probably has a radius not larger than 1.5 times Earth radii. It receives about the same light flux as Earth does from the Sun due to its closer orbital position around a dim red dwarf star. These factors combine to make Gliese 581g the most Earth-like planet known with an Earth Similarity Index, a measure of Earth-likeness from zero to one, of 0.92 and higher than the previously top candidate Gliese 667Cc, discovered last year.

“The controversy around Gliese 581g will continue and we decided to include it to our main catalog based on the new significant evidence presented, and until more is known about the architecture of this interesting stellar system” said Abel Méndez, Director of the PHL @ UPR Arecibo.

Authors on the original paper are Steven S. Vogt, UCO/Lick Observatory, UCSC; Paul Butler, Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution; and Nader Haghighipour of the Institute for Astronomy and NASA Astrobiology Institute. Their research is published online on July 20, 2012 in the journal Astronomical Notes, 333, No. 7, 561-575.

For more information: arxiv.org/abs/1207.4515 phl.upr.edu/projects/habitable-exoplanets-catalog

The Daily Galaxy via Planetary Habitability Laboratory

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Unfortunately the Terrestial Planet Finder is not going ahead for now and the James Webb space telescope is going ahead but I don't know if it can discern continents and oceans. Is there any other existing or soon existing telescope that will be able to detect oceans and continents on terrestrial extrasolar planets and determine if Gliese 581 g (or d) of some of the other habitable planets around red dwarfs are tidally locked?

Posted by:Doug Currie |July 20, 2012 at 11:29 AM

Boy this sure is exciting! Hope we can one day get more people fascinated by the wonder of space!

If anyone is interested, a group of filmmakers are looking to make a documentary that will help enlighten more people on our current situation as far as space travel goes, so that perhaps sooner than later we can get things back in the right direction. Sorry, not trying to spam or anything here, just seemed like a good place to mention it. Thanks guys.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/420606009/fight-for-space-space-program-and-nasa-documentary

Posted by:Jay Dee |July 20, 2012 at 04:43 PM

If they are habitable, it would be insane to walk on another world 20 light years from home. if there was a high speed internet relay going to said planet, it would take probably 20 years and 5 seconds to download an mp3 file. It is just so far, I think we can't live there.

Posted by:Bran Deditems |July 22, 2012 at 09:53 AM

Hi Bran;
I think you are too dependent on the internet. I'm sure there are still some more pioneering people that would be willing to venture out into space to start a new civilization on another planet that could be autonomous from earth. To make sure that people could be self-sustaing on Gliese 581 g a robot probe could be sent there or on a flyby first or as an orbiter or even lander. If you are so dependent on earth for going 20 light years away how do you think humanity could set up bases on more remote parts of the galaxy. Would you also have been reluctant to carry out the Apollo moon landings because there was then no internet or too much moon orbiter coordination?

Posted by:Doug Currie |July 22, 2012 at 10:41 AM

I'm pretty sure that Bran was saying that the planet is too far
for us to make the travel. He was comparing our internet download
speed to our speed of travel, since it's faster.
The planet may be inhabitable, but we wouldn't survive the distance.

I'd love to see if we could though--decades from now.
It makes me wonder how many different elements are only
found in other galaxies.

Posted by:Landon |July 24, 2012 at 06:52 AM

Hi Landon;
We might not be able to make it in one human lifetime now. However I think with nucler fission or later nucler fusion powered rockets people could do that within a couple generations. It would probably take about 100 years one way as I heard nucler powered rockets could get up to about 1/5 the speed of light. Nuclear fission rockets could be built now if there was the political, financial and social support. Testing was done in them in the 1960s that was successful but they were stopped because of the nucler test ban treaty in 1972. A nuclear rocket or solar sail for an unmanned trip could probably be built even sooner as it could be less massive and is even more within current technology. The Japanese were quite successful in launching and operating a solar sail they sent towards the planet Venus. It is important to have vision for long range space exploration plans but it would be also important to have political or business and financial and some social backing.

Posted by:Doug Currie |July 24, 2012 at 12:34 PM

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"The Seven Minutes of Terror" --All Systems "Go" for NASA's August 5th Landing on Mars

"The Seven Minutes of Terror" --All Systems "Go" for NASA's August 5th Landing on Mars
"The Seven Minutes of Terror" --All Systems "Go" for NASA's August 5th Landing on MarsThe Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel: Sci, Space, TechFollow the Daily Galaxy  « EcoAlert: Less than 1% of Earth's Mass Water |Main| Image of the Day: The Orion Nebula --An Engine of Life in the Milky Way? »

July 17, 2012 "The Seven Minutes of Terror" --All Systems "Go" for NASA's August 5th Landing on Mars

 

         

 

NASA's most advanced planetary rover, the 1-ton Curiosity , the centerpiece of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, is slated to land at the Gale Crater on the night of Aug. 5 to look for chemical evidence of ancient life preserved within exposures near the base of a five-kilometers high mound of layered materials at the center of Gale crater (above). However, getting the Curiosity rover to the surface of Mars will be a hair-raising event --that has been nicknamed the "seven minutes of terror."

"The Curiosity landing is the hardest NASA mission ever attempted in the history of robotic planetary exploration," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "While the challenge is great, the team's skill and determination give me high confidence in a successful landing."

To achieve the precision needed for landing (see diagram at bottom of page) safely inside Gale Crater, the spacecraft will fly like a wing in the upper atmosphere instead of dropping like a rock. To land the 1-ton rover, an airbag method used on previous Mars rovers will not work. Mission engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., designed a "sky crane" method for the final several seconds of the flight. A backpack with retro-rockets controlling descent speed will lower the rover on three nylon cords just before touchdown.

During a critical period lasting only about seven minutes, the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft carrying Curiosity must decelerate from about 13,200 mph (about 5,900 meters per second) to allow the rover to land on the surface at about 1.7 mph (three-fourths of a meter per second). Curiosity is scheduled to land at approximately 10:31 p.m. PDT on Aug. 5 (1:31 a.m. EDT on Aug. 6).

"Those seven minutes are the most challenging part of this entire mission," said Pete Theisinger, the mission's project manager at JPL. "For the landing to succeed, hundreds of events will need to go right, many with split-second timing and all controlled autonomously by the spacecraft. We've done all we can think of to succeed. We expect to get Curiosity safely onto the ground, but there is no guarantee. The risks are real."

In early June, a NASA spacecraft in orbit around the Red Planet, called Mars Odyssey, suffered a malfunction on one of its reaction wheels, an instrument that helps control the probe's attitude in space.* "Odyssey looks like it may not be where we expect it to be," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters.

The glitch does not pose a risk to Curiosity's impending arrival at the Red Planet, officials said. But Mars Odyssey's original orbit would have given it a complete view of Curiosity's landing, so the probe had been pegged to act as an orbiting outpost to relay communications and data back to mission managers on Earth.

With Odyssey in the picture, mission managers may be able to confirm Curiosity's touchdown by 10:31 p.m. PDT on Aug. 5 (1:31 a.m. EDT Aug. 6). Without Odyssey, however, mission controllers may not know the outcome of the landing maneuver until 10:35 p.m. PDT or later.

During the initial weeks after the actual landing, JPL mission controllers will put the rover through a series of checkouts and activities to characterize its performance on Mars, while gradually ramping up scientific investigations. Curiosity then will begin investigating whether an area with a wet history inside Mars' Gale Crater ever has offered an environment favorable for microbial life.

"Earlier missions have found that ancient Mars had wet environments," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Program at NASA Headquarters. "Curiosity takes us the next logical step in understanding the potential for life on Mars."

Curiosity will use tools on a robotic arm to deliver samples from Martian rocks and soils into laboratory instruments inside the rover that can reveal chemical and mineral composition. A laser instrument will use its beam to induce a spark on a target and read the spark's spectrum of light to identify chemical elements in the target.

Other instruments on the car-sized rover will examine the surrounding environment from a distance or by direct touch with the arm. The rover will check for the basic chemical ingredients for life and for evidence about energy available for life. It also will assess factors that could be hazardous for life, such as the radiation environment.

"For its ambitious goals, this mission needs a great landing site and a big payload," said McCuistion. "During the descent through the atmosphere, the mission will rely on bold techniques enabling use of a smaller target area and a heavier robot on the ground than were possible for any previous Mars mission. Those techniques also advance us toward human-crew Mars missions, which will need even more precise targeting and heavier landers."

The chosen landing site is beside a mountain informally called Mount Sharp. The mission's prime destination lies on the slope of the mountain. Driving there from the landing site may take many months.

Because of its history, 96-mile wide Gale Crater crater with its strangely sculpted mountain --three times higher than the Grand Canyon is deep--is the ideal place for Curiosity to conduct its mission of exploration into the Red Planet's past. Researchers plan to use Curiosity to study layers in the mountain that hold evidence about wet environments of early Mars.

"This may be one of the thickest exposed sections of layered sedimentary rocks in the solar system," said Joy Crisp, MSL Deputy Project Scientist from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "The rock record preserved in those layers holds stories that are billions of years old -- stories about whether, when, and for how long Mars might have been habitable."

An instrument on Curiosity can check for any water that might be bound into shallow underground minerals along the rover's path. Today the Red Planet is a radiation-drenched, bitterly cold, bleak world. Enormous dust storms explode across the barren landscape and darken Martian skies for months at a time. But data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter suggest that Mars once hosted vast lakes and flowing rivers.

"Gale Crater and its mountain will tell this intriguing story," says Matthew Golombek, Mars Exploration Program Landing Site Scientist from JPL. "The layers there chronicle Mars' environmental history."

"Be patient about the drive. It will be well worth the wait and we are apt to find some targets of interest on the way," said John Grotzinger, MSL project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "When we get to the lower layers in Mount Sharp, we'll read them like chapters in a book about changing environmental conditions when Mars was wetter than it is today."

 

        

The Daily Galaxy via NASA Curiosity Mission

Posted at 09:00 AM | Permalink

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Sounds like a pretty good plan dude. Wow.
www.Privacy-Been.tk

Posted by:ZundoRannYankDenn |July 17, 2012 at 10:27 AM

This is amazing. All the best to NASA scientists and the human ingenuity.

Posted by:Dayanand Sutar |July 21, 2012 at 01:45 PM

Can't wait!

Posted by:Ruth Mc |July 23, 2012 at 06:48 AM

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NASA's August 5th Mars Landing --Will Launch the Robotic Search for Life

NASA's August 5th Mars Landing --Will Launch the Robotic Search for Life
NASA's August 5th Mars Landing --Will Launch the Robotic Search for LifeThe Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel: Sci, Space, TechFollow the Daily Galaxy  « Image of the Day: 1st Ever Comet Storm Observed |Main| NASA Researchers Discover the Origin of a Major Aspect of Creation of Life »

July 26, 2012 NASA's August 5th Mars Landing --Will Launch the Robotic Search for Life

 

                           

"Gale Crater and its mountain will tell this intriguing story," says Matthew Golombek, Mars Exploration Program Landing Site Scientist from JPL. "The layers there chronicle Mars' environmental history."

In the gentle slopes around the mountain, Curiosity will prospect for organic molecules, the chemical building blocks of life. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has found an intriguing signature of clay near the bottom of the mountain and sulfate minerals a little higher up. Both minerals are formed in the presence of water, which increases potential for life-friendly environments.

"All the types of aqueous minerals we've detected on Mars to date can be found in this one location," explains Golombek.

Clay settles slowly in water and forms little platelets that conform around things, hardening over time and encasing them in ''casts." Clay could seal organics off from the outside environment much like it preserved dinosaur bones on Earth.

"If organics ever existed on Mars, they could be preserved in the clay."

Even on planet Earth, teeming with life, finding billion year-old well-preserved organics is difficult. But Curiosity will find them if they're present in the samples it takes. The rover is equipped with the most advanced suite of instruments for scientific studies ever sent to the Martian surface1. When these are brought to bear on Gale crater’s mysteriously layered mountain, the odds of a discovery will be at an all-time high.

As seasoned travelers know, however, the journey is just as important as the destination. Curiosity can travel up to 150 meters per Mars day, but will stop often to gather and analyze samples.

"It could take several months to a year to reach the foot of the mountain, depending on how often the rover stops along the way," says Golombek. "There will be plenty to examine before getting to the central mound."

A high-resolution camera on the rover's mast will take pictures and movies of the scenery, taking us Earthlings on an extraterrestrial sightseeing tour.

"As Curiosity climbs toward higher layers, you'll see spectacular valleys and canyons like those in the U.S. desert southwest. The walls on either side of the rover will rise over 100 feet. The sights alone will be worth the trip." 

The Mars Science Laboratory mission will use 10 instruments on Curiosity to investigate whether the area selected for the mission has ever offered environmental conditions favorable for life and favorable for preserving evidence about life.

"The strength of Mars Science Laboratory is the combination of all the instruments together," Mitrofanov stressed.

The Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons instrument, or DAN, will scout for underground clues to a depth of about 20 inches (50 centimeters). 

DAN will bring to the surface of Mars an enhancement of nuclear technology that has already detected Martian water from orbit. "Albedo" in the instrument's name means reflectance -- in this case, how original high-energy neutrons injected into the ground bounce off atomic nuclei in the ground. Neutrons that collide with hydrogen atoms bounce off with a characteristic decrease in energy, similar to how one billiard ball slows after colliding with another. By measuring the energies of the neutrons leaking from the ground, DAN can detect the fraction that was slowed in these collisions, and therefore the amount of hydrogen.

Oil prospectors use this technology in instruments lowered down exploration holes to detect the hydrogen in petroleum. Space explorers have adapted it for missions to the moon and Mars, where most hydrogen is in water ice or in water-derived hydroxyl ions.  

Mitrofanov is the principal investigator for a Russian instrument on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter, the high-energy neutron detector (HEND), which measures high energy of neutrons coming from Mars. In 2002, it and companion instruments on Odyssey detected hydrogen interpreted as abundant underground water ice close to the surface at high latitudes. That discovery led to NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander going to far northern Mars in 2008 and confirming the presence of water ice. 

"You can think of DAN as a reconnaissance instrument," Mitrofanov said. Just as Phoenix investigated what Odyssey detected, Curiosity can use various tools to investigate what DAN detects. The rover has a soil scoop and can also dig with its wheels. Its robotic arm can put samples into instruments inside the rover for thorough analyses of ingredients. Rock formations that Curiosity's cameras view at the surface can be traced underground with DAN, enhancing the ability of scientists to understand the geology.

The neutron detectors on Odyssey rely on galactic cosmic rays hitting Mars as a source of neutrons. DAN can work in a passive mode relying on cosmic rays, but it also has its own pulsing neutron generator for an active mode of shooting high-energy neutrons into the ground. In active mode, it is sensitive enough to detect water content as low as one-tenth of one percent in the ground beneath the rover.  

The neutron generator is mounted on Curiosity's right hip. A module with two neutron detectors is mounted on the left hip. With pulses lasting about one microsecond and repeated as frequently as 10 times per second, key measurements by the detectors are the flux rate and delay time of moderated neutrons with different energy levels returning from the ground. The generator will be able to emit a total of about 10 million pulses during the mission, with about 10 million neutrons at each pulse. 

"We have a fixed number of about 10 million shots, so one major challenge is to determine our strategy for how we will use them," said Maxim Litvak, leading scientist of the DAN investigation from the Space Research Institute.

Operational planning anticipates using DAN during short pauses in drives and while the rover is parked. It will check for any changes or trends in subsurface hydrogen content, from place to place along the traverse. Because there is a low possibility for underground water ice at Curiosity's Gale crater landing site, the most likely form of hydrogen in the ground of the landing area is hydrated minerals. These are minerals with water molecules or hydroxyl ions bound into the crystalline structure of the mineral. They can tenaciously retain water from a wetter past when all free water has gone.

"We want a better understanding of where the water has gone," said Alberto Behar, DAN investigation scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "DAN fits right into the follow-the-water strategy for studying Mars."

 "DAN will provide the ability to detect hydrated minerals or water ice in the shallow subsurface, which provides immediate clues as to how the geology of the subsurface might guide exploration of the surface, said Mars Science Laboratory Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology. "In addition, DAN can tell us how the shallow subsurface may differ from what the rover sees at the surface. None of our other instruments have the ability to do this. DAN measurements will tell us about the habitability potential of subsurface rocks and soils -- whether they contain water -- and as we drive along, DAN may help us understand what kinds of rocks are under the soils we drive across."

Information from DAN will also provide a ground-truth calibration for the measurements that the gamma-ray and neutron detectors on Odyssey have made and continue to make, all around the planet, enhancing the value of that global data set. The team leader of Odyssey's gamma-ray spectrometer suite, William Boynton of the University of Arizona in Tucson, is a co-investigator on the DAN investigation, with the major responsibility to provide DAN data products to NASA's Planetary Data System for usage by scientists everywhere. 

The Daily Galaxy via  nasa.gov/msl

Posted at 08:45 AM | Permalink

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I hope it doesn't crash.

Posted by:PP |July 26, 2012 at 09:26 AM

After following the development of the uk's rover n seeing that near indestructable device apparently break on landing after being left in the hands of the usa, i kinda hope it does :/

Posted by:FreeWorldForAll |July 26, 2012 at 04:37 PM

With the, soon to be, landing of the robotic probe of Curiosity there will be the continuing search for life outside our mother Earth, but as far as our search for worlds that would support human habitation; do we really need to find a planet that is ready made and "sustainable". What would happen if we do find that Mars has microbial life on it, how would that affect future missions to the Red Planet? What would happen if we don't find life on the Red Planet? How can we learn to live on other planets if we don't go there ourselves, even if the challenges seem formidable and daunting. We want to send people to Mars in a tin can and have them live on Mars in a tin can; fetching water in a pail,

Jack and Jill went up the hill to see if there were any microbes in the Martian water. Jack feel down and broke his crown and Jill made ice tea with the Martian filtered water.

Posted by:kristi276 |July 26, 2012 at 11:30 PM

@ Kristie - i would say finding microbial life on Mars would be a massive acheivement and proof that life can form elsewhere in the galaxy. I'm azmazed at how you managed to trivialize perhaps what would be the most important discovery of man-kind lol.

Posted by:Noochy |July 27, 2012 at 08:03 AM

you did the same for mans potential ability to live and spread beyond our home planet (another mankind laltering acheivement)in a sustainable basis haha. you are probably terrible in bed.

Posted by:Noochy |July 27, 2012 at 08:04 AM

Sending a robot to mars to find micro organisms/ life is a waste of a trip and money that could feel those who are starving on our planet. Why? Because it would make much more sense and waste much less time and money to send a organism there to see if it can survive. This seems like a much more logical process. You would think that NASA would have the brains to realize this.

Posted by:DaveG |July 27, 2012 at 01:42 PM

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