First drill at Mount Sharp / Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS An interesting NASA News Story on the coordination of work between the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in orbit above the Red Planet and the Curiosity Rover on the ground below. Looking quite a bit down the road, one can see an emerging model of how a notional […]
NASA reported today on an intriguing line of inquiry in the hunt for evidence of liquid water running on the surface of Mars. Once thought to out of the question, recent years have seen a number of images which strongly suggest the presence of seasonal water flows of what is speculated as a very salty […]
Source: JPL Launched in 2005 aboard an Atlas V 401, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has provided a wealth of information regarding the presence of water ice on the Red Planet. In an article (abstract) published Sunday in Nature Geoscience, a team of researchers analyzing data from MRO’s CRISM instrument (Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer), which was used to image […]
NASA Glenn recently announced that it has passed the 43,000 hour mark of continuous operation of its NEXT (NASA Evolutionary Xenon Thruster) ion thruster. Although coverage focused on the long running duration, the more relevent statistic is that NEXT represents a significant advancement over the first generation NSTAR ion thruster which powered Deep Space 1, and is currently accelerating the DAWN mission towards an […]
Early in the age of exploration under sail, mapmakers sometimes colored in the boundaries of the unknown with the cryptic warning, “here there be dragons.” While the only Dragons seen lately are definitely of the friendly variety, dire warnings of the risks of radiation on Mars have served as a similar precautionary tale for those who would take the first available flight to the Red Planet. […]
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory yesterday released the results of the Mars Curiosity rover’s initial soil sample. The sample, conducted by the Chemistry and Minerology CheMin instrument on the rover, characterized both planetary windblown dust and as well as local material, as similar to basaltic soils found in Hawaii. The predominate minerals recorded so far are feldspar, pyroxene and olivine, with almost half […]
After taking two “sample” bites, the Mars Curiosity Rover has ingested a third bite to be studied by the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument. CheMin, which uses X-ray diffraction, will allow scientists to make the most accurate analysis ever undertaken of minerals on Mars. Although the mission’s primary purpose is study whether or not the landing location ever offered conditions conducive […]
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