NASA’s InSight mission, expected to end shortly, saw a recent drop in power generated by its solar panels as a continent-size dust storm swirls over Mars’ southern hemisphere. First observed on September 21, 2022, by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), the storm is roughly 2,175 miles (3,500 kilometers) from InSight and initially had little impact ...
There is water in many places on Mars, including most of the polar ice caps — all in the frozen form. But recently, the European Space Agency detected bright reflections beneath Mars’ South Pole Layered Deposit (SPLD), a 1.4-kilometer-thick (0.87 miles) formation of relatively pure water ice’s Mars Express orbiter. Some scientists interpreted the observations ...
In 2011, NASA successfully launched the Curiosity rover into space, and after an 8 month flight, it finally landed on Mars. NASA was delighted at the time, because according to previous research, Mars was the closest Earth-like planet in the solar system and they wanted to find out if Mars would be able to, one day, support ...
Lakes are bodies of water fed by rainfall, snowmelt, rivers, and groundwater, through which Earth is teeming with life. Lakes also contain critical geologic records of past climates. Though Mars is a frozen desert today, scientists have shown that Mars contains evidence of ancient Martian lakes that existed billions of years ago, which could contain ...
A new analysis of seismic data from NASA’s Mars InSight mission has revealed a couple of surprises. The first surprise: the top 300 meters of the subsurface beneath the landing site near the Martian equator contains little or no ice. Geophysicist Vashan Wright of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, and three co-authors published ...
Using a multidisciplinary approach involving a machine learning algorithm, the new research – published in Nature Communications – identified the particular crater on Mars that ejected the so-called ‘Black Beauty’ meteorite, weighing 320 grams, and paired stones, which were first reported as being found in northern Africa in 2011. Black Beauty is the only brecciated Martian sample ...
Thanks to scientists, years of research, and space exploration, we continuously discover new facts about the cosmic space and planets beyond Earth. For example, in 2013, NASA’s Curiosity Rover found evidence of an ancient streambed on Mars. The following year, rock material collected from the red planet revealed organic chemistry on the planet. Fast forward ...
According to a new NASA laboratory experiment, rovers may have to dig about 6.6 feet (two meters) or more under the Martian surface to find signs of ancient life because ionizing radiation from space degrades small molecules such as amino acids relatively quickly. Amino acids can be created by life and by non-biological chemistry. However, finding certain ...
The high efficiency, light weight, and flexibility of the latest solar cell technology mean photovoltaics could provide all the power needed for an extended mission to Mars, or even a permanent settlement there, according to a new analysis by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley. Most scientists and engineers who’ve thought about the logistics ...
Determining the history of Mars, and how it formed and evolved over time, has been a goal of both orbiter and rover missions to the Red Planet for decades. Analyzing data from several of these Mars missions, a team of researchers led by Steve Ruff of Arizona State University’s School of Earth and Space Exploration has determined that enigmatic ...
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