Mars

Opportunity Gets a View From The Edge

May 22, 2012

The rover Opportunity captured a view into Endeavour crater as a low Sun cast a long shadow in this image, acquired back on March 9. Endeavour is a large crater — 14 miles (22 km) wide, it’s about the same area as the city of Seattle. Opportunity arrived at its edge in August of 2011 [...]

Read the full article →

Opportunity Roving Mars Once Again

May 16, 2012

After spending 19 weeks working in one place during the Martian winter in Meridian Planum, the Opportunity Mars rover is now roving once again. During the winter, available solar power was too low for driving, but on May 8th (here on Earth), Opportunity took its first drive since Dec. 26, 2011. She drove about 3.67 [...]

Read the full article →

More Evidence of Mars’ Watery Past

May 8, 2012

ESA’s Mars Express orbiter has sent back images revealing terrain that seems to have been sculpted by flowing water, lending further support to the hypothesis that Mars had liquid water on its surface at some point.

Read the full article →

Take a Peek Inside Curiosity’s Shell

May 7, 2012

Take a look around Curiosity’s cozy cabin! Ok, there’s really not much to see (she didn’t get a window seat) but when the image above was taken by the rover’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on April 20, the spacecraft she’s tucked into was just over 120 million km (74 million miles) from Earth, [...]

Read the full article →

SAM: NASA’s Attempt to Repeat Viking’s Search for Martian Organics

May 3, 2012

After 36 years of debate, confusion, and failed attempts by other space agencies to answer a basic question, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is on its way to repeat the search for organic matter that eluded the two Viking probes.

Read the full article →

Weekly SkyWatcher’s Forecast: April 30-May 6, 2012

April 29, 2012

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! Are you ready for another week filled with bright planets, a meteor shower, challenging lunar features, interesting stars and astronomy history? Then you have come to the right place! Bring along your telescopes and binoculars and meet me in the backyard…

Read the full article →

Weird Swirly Features Found on Mars

April 26, 2012

Strange coiling spiral patterns have been found on Mars surface by a graduate student who was doing what many of us enjoy: looking through the high-resolution images from the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Similar features have been seen on Earth, but this is the first time they have been identified on Mars. [...]

Read the full article →

Features on Mars Erased From Existence

April 19, 2012

More proof that Mars is an ever-changing world: In 2010, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE camera spotted evidence that a boulder had rolled down an incline in a crater. The boulder left a visible track in the Martian regolith big enough to be spotted by MRO. But just one Martian year later, the tracks are [...]

Read the full article →

Is This Proof of Life on Mars?

April 12, 2012

The Curiosity rover is currently on its way to Mars, scheduled to make a dramatic landing within Gale Crater in mid-August and begin its hunt for the geologic signatures of a watery, life-friendly past. Solid evidence that large volumes of water existed on Mars at some point would be a major step forward in the [...]

Read the full article →

Will Russia Rescue ExoMars?

April 10, 2012

After NASA was forced to back out the joint ExoMars mission with the European Space Agency due to budget constraints, ESA went looking for help with the planned multi-vehicle Mars mission. Now, reportedly the Head of Roscosmos Vladimir Popovkin met with Director General of the ESA, Jean-Jacques Dordain last week, and the two signed a [...]

Read the full article →

Weekly SkyWatcher’s Forecast: April 9-15, 2012

April 7, 2012

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! It’s shaping up to be a great week to enjoy astronomy. For both hemispheres, the Virginid Meteor shower is underway and its peak occurs late Monday night / early Tuesday morning. Need more celestial fireworks? Then keep looking up as the “April Fireballs” will be visiting, with their peak beginning about a [...]

Read the full article →

Mars’ Giant Dust Devil in Motion

April 5, 2012

The folk at JPL have kindly put together an animation of the gigantic Martian dust devil spotted by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The dust devil is roughly 20 kilometers (12 miles) high, churning through the Amazonis Planitia region of northern Mars, and this shows what the tall but thin dust devil would look like if [...]

Read the full article →

Could There Be Life In Them Thar Pits?

April 5, 2012

Recent images from ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft reveal long rows of crater-like depressions lining the flanks of ancient Martian volcanoes located in the planet’s vast Tharsis region. Rather than being the result of impact events, these “pit chains” were likely caused by underground lava flows — and could be a prime location for look for [...]

Read the full article →

New Gigantic Tornado Spotted on Mars

April 4, 2012

Last month, we were excited to share an image of a twister on Mars that lofted a twisting column of dust more than 800 meters (about a half a mile) high. We now know that’s nothin’ — just peanuts, chump change, hardly worth noticing. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has now spotted a gigantic Martian dust [...]

Read the full article →

Take a Ride on a Rocket Sled To Test Supersonic Decelerators

April 3, 2012

Landing large payloads on Mars — large enough to bring humans to the Red Planet’s surface — is still beyond our capability. “There’s too much atmosphere on Mars to land heavy vehicles like we do on the moon, using propulsive technology completely,” said Rob Manning, Chief Engineer for the Mars Exploration Directorate, in an article [...]

Read the full article →

Ice Sculptures Fill The Deepest Parts of Mars

April 2, 2012

One of the “weirdest and least understood” areas of Mars, the enormous Hellas Impact Basin contains strange flowing landforms that bespeak of some specialized and large-scale geologic process having taken place. The HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recently captured the image above, showing what’s being called “lava lamp terrain” — stretched and contorted [...]

Read the full article →

Curiosity Halfway to Red Planet Touchdown

April 1, 2012

As of today, NASA’s car sized Curiosity rover has reached the halfway point in her 352 million mile (567 million km) journey to Mars – No fooling on April 1, 2012. It’s T Minus 126 days until Curiosity smashes into the Martian atmosphere to brave the hellish “6 Minutes of Terror” – and, if all [...]

Read the full article →

Did Water or Lava Carve the Outflow Channels on Mars?

March 29, 2012

Large features on Mars called outflow channels have been a point of contention among planetary scientists. “Most Mars scientists accept that outflow channels were carved by water, but alternate hypotheses persist, especially that lava carved the outflow channels,” said Alfred McEwen Principal Investigator of the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. McEwen said that [...]

Read the full article →

You’ll Only See This Landform on Mars, Nowhere on Earth

March 26, 2012

Geologists are often surprised to find features on Earth replicated on other worlds; ancient riverbeds on Mars, lakes on Titan, and volcanic eruptions on Io. But researchers from the University of Washington have identified a geologic feature that exists on Mars… But not on Earth.

Read the full article →

Clouds Get in the Way on Mars

March 22, 2012

The science team from the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter wanted to take another look at a region of icy sand dunes on Mars to look for seasonal changes as spring is now arriving on the Red Planet’s northern hemisphere. But the view was obstructed by clouds, creating this unusual hazy view. “This [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries