Mars News and Discussions

[weatheriscool]

Discussion of Mars, ranging from rovers to new discoveries can be posted in this thread. Since the goal of wjfox's creating these sub forums are to get away from the one thread method.




NASA’s Mars Lander Cleaned Sand Off Its Solar Panels Using More Sand
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/323 ... -more-sand
By Ryan Whitwam on June 3, 2021 at 4:23 pm

NASA’s InSight lander has been on the red planet since 2018, and it relies on solar panels for power, unlike the nuclear-powered Perseverance rover. That means there’s the potential for dust build-up on the solar panels, which is becoming an issue as the planet descends into another frigid winter. Luckily, engineers at JPL devised an ingenious way to get the sand off the solar panels. All it took was more sand.

InSight got its mission extension in early 2021, shortly before the team decided to give up on the burrowing HP3 heat probe that stubbornly refused to burrow. However, the SEIS instrument has exceeded expectations as the first seismometer on another planet. The team has been working to wrap up InSight’s science operations for the season. The robot was designed to go quiet during the long Martian winter to save power for its heater and communication gear. Maybe there’s a little wiggle room, though?

[weatheriscool]

A catalyst that destroys perchlorate in water could clean Martian soil
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-catalyst- ... -soil.html
by Holly Ober, University of California - Riverside

Ateam led by UC Riverside engineers has developed a catalyst to remove a dangerous chemical from water on Earth that could also make Martian soil safer for agriculture and help produce oxygen for human Mars explorers.

Perchlorate, a negative ion consisting of one chlorine atom bonded to four oxygen atoms, occurs naturally in some soils on Earth, and is especially abundant in Martian soil. As a powerful oxidizer, perchlorate is also manufactured and used in solid rocket fuel, fireworks, munitions, airbag initiators for vehicles, matches and signal flares. It is a byproduct in some disinfectants and herbicides.

Because of its ubiquity in both soil and industrial goods, perchlorate is a common water contaminant that causes certain thyroid disorders. Perchlorate bioaccumulates in plant tissues and a large amount of perchlorate found in Martian soil could make food grown there unsafe to eat, limiting the potential for human settlements on Mars. Perchlorate in Martian dust could also be hazardous to explorers. Current methods of removing perchlorate from water require either harsh conditions or a multistep enzymatic process to lower the oxidation state of the chlorine element into the harmless chloride ion.

[weatheriscool]

Curiosity rover captures shining clouds on Mars
https://phys.org/news/2021-05-curiosity ... -mars.html
by Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Cloudy days are rare in the thin, dry atmosphere of Mars. Clouds are typically found at the planet's equator in the coldest time of year, when Mars is the farthest from the Sun in its oval-shaped orbit. But one full Martian year ago—two Earth years—scientists noticed clouds forming over NASA's Curiosity rover earlier than expected.

This year, they were ready to start documenting these "early" clouds from the moment they first appeared in late January. What resulted are images of wispy puffs filled with ice crystals that scattered light from the setting Sun, some of them shimmering with color. More than just spectacular displays, such images help scientists understand how clouds form on Mars and why these recent ones are different.

[weatheriscool]

Curiosity rover on Mars spotted from space as it climbs 'Mont Mercou' (video)
By Mike Wall 2 days ago

We now have a bird's eye view of the Curiosity rover and its latest Martian digs.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) captured a dramatic image last month of Curiosity ascending Mont Mercou, a landform on the slopes of the Red Planet's 3.4-mile-high (5.5 kilometers) Mount Sharp.

MRO took the picture on April 18 using its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) instrument, which can resolve features as small as a coffee table on the Martian surface. So the car-sized Curiosity is plainly visible, even though MRO was flying 167.5 miles (269.4 kilometers) above the rover at the time, according to the HiRISE team's image description.

More:
https://www.space.com/mars-rover-curios ... rbit-photo

[weatheriscool]

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Completes 7th Flight

By Ryan Whitwam on June 9, 2021 at 4:38 pm
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/323 ... 7th-flight

The Perseverance rover will no doubt make monumental contributions to science during its mission on Mars, but the ride-along Ingenuity helicopter is stealing the show right now. NASA’s ambitious flying drone has now completed its seventh flight on the red planet, and NASA confirms the robot encountered no issues as it traveled to yet another new landing zone in Jezero Crater. Not bad for a “demo” that was only supposed to fly a handful of times.

NASA did not design Ingenuity to do science on Mars. Perseverance is bristling with advanced instruments and cameras, but Ingenuity only has a few imagers that it uses to fly around the dusty world autonomously. Because of the great distances involved, engineers on Earth cannot control the drone in real-time, and that led to a small issue during the helicopter’s sixth flight.

[wjfox]

[Yuli Ban]

Amazing new photos show extremely rare clouds drifting over Mars

• NASA sent the Curiosity rover to Mars in 2011 as part of its exploration program.
• The rover, which is still active today, took photographs of clouds just after sunset in March this year, earlier than such clouds were expected in past years.
• The clouds are at higher altitudes than usual and are likely made of frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice.

Just after sunset on Mars, “noctilucent” clouds grow brighter as they fill with crystals, shimmering as the sky darkens behind them in a remarkable display caught by NASA cameras.

[weatheriscool]

Photos show Chinese rover on dusty, rocky Martian surface
Source: AP

BEIJING (AP) — The dusty, rocky Martian surface and a Chinese rover and lander bearing small national flags were seen in photos released Friday that the rover took on the red planet.

The four pictures released by the China National Space Administration also show the upper stage of the Zhurong rover and the view from the rover before it rolled off its platform.

Zhurong placed a remote camera about 10 meters (33 feet) from the landing platform, then withdrew to take a group portrait, the CNSA said.

China landed the Tianwen-1 spacecraft carrying the rover on Mars last month after it spent about three months orbiting the red planet. China is the second country to land and operate a spacecraft on Mars, after the United States.





Read more: https://apnews.com/article/olympic-game ... 223f2b0774

[weatheriscool]

Perseverance rover begins first science mission in Mars' Jezero Crater
By Nick Lavars
June 10, 2021

https://newatlas.com/space/perseverance ... ro-crater/

After a pretty eventful start to life on Mars that has included capturing the first ever audio recordings on the planet, producing the first ever oxygen on another world and supporting the Ingenuity helicopter throughout its history-making flights, NASA's Perseverance rover is ready to get down to business. The robot has now departed its landing site for the Jezero Crater to begin its primary science mission, where it will comb an old lakebed in a search for signs of ancient microbial life.

Perseverance left its Octavia E. Butler landing site on June 1 and started heading south toward the Jezero Crater, where its first stop will be a low-lying scenic lookout. From here, mission scientists will survey the crater's oldest geological features, and switch on the last remaining navigation and sampling systems.

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[weatheriscool]

NASA's self-driving Perseverance Mars rover 'takes the wheel'
https://phys.org/news/2021-07-nasa-self ... rover.html
by Andrew Good, NASA

NASA's newest six-wheeled robot on Mars, the Perseverance rover, is beginning an epic journey across a crater floor seeking signs of ancient life. That means the rover team is deeply engaged with planning navigation routes, drafting instructions to be beamed up, even donning special 3D glasses to help map their course.

But increasingly, the rover will take charge of the drive by itself, using a powerful auto-navigation system. Called AutoNav, this enhanced system makes 3D maps of the terrain ahead, identifies hazards, and plans a route around any obstacles without additional direction from controllers back on Earth.

[weatheriscool]

On its first try, China's Zhurong rover hit a Mars milestone that took NASA decades
https://www.space.com/china-mars-rover- ... FZ_x7w7Cpc
By Sara Webb, Rebecca Allen about 12 hours ago

China's Zhurong rover landed safely on Mars on May 15, making China only the third country to successfully land a rover on the red planet.More impressively still, China is the first Mars-going nation to carry out an orbiting, landing and rovering operation as its first mission.

Planetary scientist Roberto Orosei told Nature China is "doing in a single go what NASA took decades to do," while astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell described China's decision to include a rover in its maiden Mars outing as a "very gutsy move."

[wjfox]

[weatheriscool]

Curiosity rover finds patches of rock record erased, revealing clues
https://phys.org/news/2021-07-curiosity ... aling.html
by Jet Propulsion Laboratory
y

A new paper enriches scientists' understanding of where the rock record preserved or destroyed evidence of Mars' past and possible signs of ancient life.

Today, Mars is a planet of extremes—it's bitterly cold, has high radiation, and is bone-dry. But billions of years ago, Mars was home to lake systems that could have sustained microbial life. As the planet's climate changed, one such lake—in Mars' Gale Crater—slowly dried out. Scientists have new evidence that supersalty water, or brines, seeped deep through the cracks, between grains of soil in the parched lake bottom and altered the clay mineral-rich layers beneath.

The findings published in the July 9 edition of the journal Science and led by the team in charge of the Chemistry and Mineralogy, or CheMin, instrument—aboard NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover—help add to the understanding of where the rock record preserved or destroyed evidence of Mars' past and possible signs of ancient life.

[wjfox]

[weatheriscool]

Signs of life on Mars? Perseverance rover begins the hunt
https://phys.org/news/2021-07-life-mars ... rover.html
by Jet Propulsion Laboratory

NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover has begun its search for signs of ancient life on the Red Planet. Flexing its 7-foot (2-meter) mechanical arm, the rover is testing the sensitive detectors it carries, capturing their first science readings. Along with analyzing rocks using X-rays and ultraviolet light, the six-wheeled scientist will zoom in for closeups of tiny segments of rock surfaces that might show evidence of past microbial activity.

Called PIXL, or Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry, the rover's X-ray instrument delivered unexpectedly strong science results while it was still being tested, said Abigail Allwood, PIXL's principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Located at the end of the arm, the lunchbox-size instrument fired its X-rays at a small calibration target—used to test instrument settings—aboard Perseverance and was able to determine the composition of Martian dust clinging to the target.

[weatheriscool]

NASA’s InSight Mission Reveals the Detailed Internal Structure of Mars
https://scitechdaily.com/nasas-insight- ... e-of-mars/

By CNRS July 23, 2021
Internal Structure of Mars

Using information obtained from around a dozen earthquakes detected on Mars by the Very Broad Band SEIS seismometer, developed in France, the international team of NASA’s InSight mission has unveiled the internal structure of Mars. The three papers published on July 23, 2021, in the journal Science, involving numerous co-authors from French institutions and laboratories, including the CNRS, the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, and Université de Paris, and supported in particular by the French space agency CNES and the French National Research Agency ANR, provide, for the first time, an estimate of the size of the planet’s core, the thickness of its crust and the structure of its mantle, based on the analysis of seismic waves reflected and modified by interfaces in its interior. It makes this the first-ever seismic exploration of the internal structure of a terrestrial planet other than Earth, and an important step towards understanding the formation and thermal evolution of Mars.

[weatheriscool]

Marsquakes reveal the Red Planet boasts a liquid core half its diameter
Data from NASA’s InSight lander also hint at the thickness of the planet’s crust

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/mar ... meter-nasa
July 22, 2021 at 2:00 pm

Mars has had its first CT scan, thanks to analyses of seismic waves picked up by NASA’s InSight lander. Diagnosis: The Red Planet’s core is at least partially liquid, as some previous studies had suggested, and is somewhat larger than expected.

InSight reached Mars in late 2018 and soon afterward detected the first known marsquake (SN: 11/26/18; SN: 4/23/19). Since then, the lander’s instruments have picked up more than a thousand temblors, most of them minor rumbles. Many of those quakes originated at a seismically active region more than 1,000 kilometers away from the lander. A small fraction of the quakes had magnitudes ranging from 3.0 to 4.0, and the resulting vibrations have enabled scientists to probe Mars and reveal new clues about its inner structure.

[weatheriscool]

The #MarsHelicopter’s success today marks its 1-mile total distance flown. It targeted an area called "Raised Ridges." This is the most complex flight yet w/ 10 distinct waypoints and a record height of 40 ft (12 m). Its scouting is aiding @NASAPersevere . http://go.nasa.gov/3dci8jE



Goals for Flight 10:

STATUS UPDATES | July 23, 2021
Aerial Scouting of ‘Raised Ridges’ for Ingenuity’s Flight 10

https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helico ... flight-10/