Mars Archives

March 10, 2009December 24, 2015 by Ian O'Neill

Phoenix Team Divided: Are the Mars Liquid Water Observations a “Matter of Belief”?

Detail of the three controvercial images of the Phoenix Mars Lander's leg. Are they droplets of water? (Renno, et al., NASA)

[/caption]

Last month, it was announced that in the few days after the landing of the Phoenix lander in May 2008, the camera attached to the robotic arm captured visual evidence of (what appeared to be) droplets of water, almost like condensation forming on the leg of the lander. In three images dated on sol 8, sol 31 and sol 44 of the mission, the droplets appear to move, in a fluid-like manner. Although a recent publication indicates this oddity could be a water-perchlorate mix (where the toxic salt acts as a potent anti-freeze, preventing the water from freezing and subliming), other members of the Phoenix team are very dubious, saying that there is another, more likely explanation…

One of the key components necessary for the survival of life on Earth is water, especially when the water is in a liquid state. This is an easy proposition on our planet, as the atmospheric pressures and temperatures are just right for the majority of water on Earth to be in a usable liquid state. Should liquid water be discovered on another planet however, where the conditions are often too hot or too cold (or when atmospheric pressure is too low) for water to be found in a liquid state, you’d expect there to be some excitement. When that other planet is Mars, the focal point of the search for basic extraterrestrial life, this excitement will be tempered with intense scrutiny.

In February’s article, Nilton Renno from the University of Michigan and Phoenix mission team scientist, announced results from his team’s research into some odd-looking blobs on one of the lander’s legs. Renno’s hypothesis, to be presented on March 23rd at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston (TX), focuses on the possibility that the newly discovered toxic compound, perchlorate, may hold the key to the possibility of liquid water on the Martian surface. We know on Earth, briny (salty) water has a lower freezing point than pure water, and Renno suspects that this might be the case for water on the surface of Mars. However, rather than regular salt, the toxic perchlorate salt is mixed with water in the regolith, allowing it to sustain its liquid state.

Although a very interesting proposition, Renno’s results are based on only photographic evidence of what appears to be blobs of water. Other Phoenix scientists are emphasising that the theory is controversial, citing far simpler answers for the observations.

“There’s a matter of belief at some level,” said Peter Smith from the University of Arizona in Tucson and principal Phoenix investigator. “I can’t say I agree with every statement in the [Renno] paper.”

Michael Hecht, the lead scientist for the instrument that discovered perchlorate in the first place, goes as far to say a perchlorate brine on the Martian surface is very unlikely. Simpler explanations for the apparent dynamic movement of the “liquid” blobs could be attributed to changing shadows. Although perchlorate acts as an efficient “sponge”, condensing water vapour from the surrounding air, the temperatures stated in the paper are actually too warm to form liquid droplets of perchlorate brine.

“I just don’t think it’s the likely explanation,” Hecht said. “It’s just plain old frost, nothing more.”

Looking at the Phoenix images (top), I am a little suspicious about the lifetime of these proposed “liquid” droplets. From sol 8 to sol 44, there is little dramatic change in the locations or sizes of these features. 36 sols of long-term droplets of liquid water seems like a very long time considering the very low atmospheric pressures we are dealing with. Surely liquid brine droplets will dissipate (through evaporation, rather than sublimation) far quicker than 36 sols? Granted, there may be further condensation from the atmosphere (topping up the presence of the liquid), but wouldn’t there be more motion in the blobs if this were the case? This said, I am not familiar with perchlorate brine, so this might well be a characteristic of this cold liquid.

It looks like Renno’s research will make for a very interesting presentation on March 23rd at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, sure to provoke a lively debate…

Source: Space.com

March 9, 2009April 26, 2016 by Nancy Atkinson

HiRISE Nabs Deimos

[/caption]
Don’t panic – its only Deimos. But what an image this is of the smaller moon of Mars! HiRISE captured this enhanced-color image of Deimos on February 21, 2009, showing the moon’s smooth surface – with a few impact craters here and there. The one crater near the middle that looks sharp and crisp was created relatively recently. Deimos is composed fragmental rock, or regolith, rich in carbonaceous material, much like C-type asteroids and carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. Deimos is noticeably smoother than Phobos. (See images of Phobos taken by HiRISE in 2008). HiRISE took two images of Deimos, about five and a half hours apart – see below.

Two images of Deimos taken 5.5 hours apart. Credit: NASA/JPL/U of Arizona

These images have a scale of about 20 meters/pixel, so the features 60 meters or larger can be seen. The images were acquired 5 hrs 35 minutes apart, so the sun was to the upper left in the first (left) image and to the right in the second image. Although the viewing geometry is similar in the two images, surface features appear very different due to the changes in illumination.

There are subtle color variations—redder in the smoothest areas and less red near fresh impact craters and over ridges or topographic highs (relative to its center of gravity). The HiRISE scientists say these color variations are probably caused by the exposure of surface materials to the space environment, which leads to darkening and reddening. Brighter and less-red surface materials have seen less exposure to space due to recent impacts or downslope movement of regolith.

Deimos is named after a figure in Greek mythology representing panic or dread. Only two geological features on Deimos have been given names: the craters Swift and Voltaire are named after two writers who speculated on the existence of Martian moons before they were discovered.

More about the operations of taking the images from the HiRISE team.

Source: HiRISE

March 5, 2009December 24, 2015 by Ian O'Neill

A Bizarre View From HiRISE: The Melting Volcano

What is it? Strange melt areas on an ancient volcano in the Hellas impact basin (NASA/HiRISE/Univ. of Arizona)

[/caption]

This image is probably more suited to Nancy’s “Where In The Universe” series, but judging by the resolution and surrounding landscape, it may be fairly easy to distinguish which planet and what instrument took the shot. Of course, this is Mars and the image was snapped by the astounding HiRISE instrument on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Still… what is it? Apart from looking like a particularly large coffee stain, the answer might not be very obvious. However, once we realise this is an image of an ancient volcano covered with ice, the big question is, why has the ice melted in discrete patches when the rest of the landscape looks like a winter wonderland?

On January 16th, the MRO dashed above the southern hemisphere of Mars, over the famous Hellas impact basin. This large crater is very interesting for many reasons, particularly as the altitude distance from the crater rim to the deepest part of the crater bottom is 9 km. This means there is a 89% increase in atmospheric pressure at the bottom of the crater when compared to the planet average. The pressure is therefore high enough to entertain the thought that liquid water may be a reality in this region (if the temperature gets higher than 0°C that is).

There are also ancient volcanoes in the region, of particular note is the group of volcanoes called Malea Patera (as captured in the HiRISE image above). As Hellas is so close to the southern arctic (antarctic?) region, it is currently entering spring time, surface ice is beginning to melt as the Sun creeps higher above the Martian horizon. However, there appears to be areas of ice that are melting faster than others, and a pattern is emerging.

Detail of the melting ice on Malea Patera (NASA/HiRISE/Univ. of Arizona)

At first, I looked at the images and thought that there may be some heat being released from thermal vents in the volcanic region. However, HiRISE scientists have another explanation for the dalmatian spots that have appeared. On Earth, we will often find dark rocks that appear to have melted the snow from around them during a sunny day. This is because the sunlight will penetrate the snow and heat up the darker rocks quicker than the lighter rocks. Dark rocks will absorb solar energy faster than the more reflective light rock, dark rocks heat up faster, snow surrounding dark rocks melts quicker.

This basic ice melting mechanism is being singled out for what HiRISE is seeing on this ancient volcanic region. There are patches of dark rock melting the snow faster than the rest of the region as the Sun gradually heats the southern hemisphere. What is very interesting is the patches and shape of the melt region. Could it be an ancient lava outflow from a volcano? Are the patches sand dunes peppered with volcanic material? Or is there some other explanation? HiRISE scientists hope to take more images of Malea Patera as the seasons roll on to see how the ice continues to melt. It will be interesting to see what HiRISE finds under the ice during the summer…

Source: HiRISE

March 5, 2009December 24, 2015 by Anne Minard

Spirit Backslides on Plateau Climb, Must Go Around

[/caption]

Spirit is taking the long way around a low plateau called “Home Plate,” after loose soil at the edge blocked the shortest route south for the upcoming Martian summer and following winter. The rover has begun a trek skirting at least partway around the plateau instead of directly over it.

NASA officials say even a circuitous route to the destinations chosen for Spirit will be much shorter than the overland expedition the rover’s twin, Opportunity, is making on the opposite side of Mars. And they’re pointing out that Spirit has gotten a jump on its summer science plans, examining a silica-rich outcrop that adds information about a long-ago environment that had hot water or steam.

The view from "Home Plate" Plateau, where Spirit spent the winter.

Both of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers landed on Mars in 2004 for what were originally planned as three-month missions.

Spirit spent 2008 on the northern edge of Home Plate, a flat-topped deposit about the size of a baseball field, composed of hardened ash and rising about 1.5 meters (5 feet) above the ground around it. There, the north-facing tilt positioned Spirit’s solar arrays to catch enough sunshine for the rover to survive the six-month-long Martian winter.

The scientists and engineers who operate the rovers chose as 2009 destinations a steep mound called “Von Braun” and an irregular, 45-meter-wide (150-foot-wide) bowl called “Goddard.” These side-by-side features offer a promising area to examine while energy is adequate during the Martian summer. They’ll also provide the next north-facing winter haven beginning in late 2009. Von Braun and Goddard intrigue scientists as sites where Spirit may find more evidence about an explosive mix of water and volcanism in the area’s distant past. They are side-by-side, about 200 meters, or yards, south of where Spirit is now.

It’s mid-spring now in the southern hemisphere of Mars. The Sun has climbed higher in the sky over Spirit in recent weeks.

The rover team tried to drive Spirit onto Home Plate, heading south toward Von Braun and Goddard. They tried this first from partway up the slope where the rover had spent the winter. Only five of the six wheels on Spirit have been able to rotate since the right-front wheel stopped working in 2006. With five-wheel drive, Spirit couldn’t climb the slope. In January and February, Spirit descended from Home Plate and drove eastward about 15 meters (about 50 feet) toward a less steep on-ramp. Spinning wheels in loose soil led the rover team to choose another option.

“Spirit could not make progress in the last two attempts to get up onto Home Plate,” said rover project manager John Callas of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “Alternatively, we are driving Spirit around Home Plate to the east. Spirit will have to go around a couple of small ridges that extend to the northeast, and then see whether a route east of Home Plate looks traversable. If that route proves not to be traversable, a route around the west side of Home Plate is still an option.”

During the drive eastward just north of Home Plate in January, Spirit stopped to use tools on its robotic arm to examine a nodular, heavily eroded outcrop dubbed “Stapledon,” which had caught the eye of rover-team scientist Steve Ruff when he looked at images and infrared spectra Spirit took from its winter position.

“It looked like the material east of Home Plate that we found to be rich in silica,” said Ruff, of Arizona State University in Tempe. “The silica story around Home Plate is the most important finding of the Spirit mission so far with regard to habitability. Silica this concentrated forms around hot springs or steam vents, and both of those are favorable environments for life on Earth.”

Sure enough, Spirit’s alpha particle X-ray spectrometer found Stapledon to be rich in silica, too. Researchers plan to use Spirit’s thermal emission spectrometer and panoramic camera to check for more silica-rich outcrops on the route to Von Braun and Goddard. However, the team has set a priority to make good progress toward those destinations. Winds cleaned some dust off Spirit’s solar panels on Feb. 6 and Feb. 14, resulting in a combined increase of about 20 percent in the amount of power available to the rover.

Oppy, meanwhile, shows signs of increased friction in its right-front wheel. The team is driving the rover backwards for a few sols, a technique that has helped in similar situations in the past, apparently by redistributing lubricant in the wheel. Opportunity’s major destination is Endeavour Crater, about 22 kilometers (14 miles) in diameter and still about 12 kilometers (7 miles) away to the southeast. Opportunity has been driving south instead of directly toward Endurance, to swing around an area where loose soil appears deep enough to potentially entrap the rover.

Source: NASA

March 5, 2009December 24, 2015 by Anne Minard

New Theory: Olympus Mons Could Harbor Water, Life on Mars

Rice University professors Patrick McGovern and Julia Morgan are proposing that pockets of water could be trapped under Olympus Mons on Mars -- and could support life. Credit: Rice University

Olympus Mons is the latest hotspot in the hunt for habitable zones on Mars.

The Martian volcano is about three times the height of Mount Everest, but it’s the small details that matter to Rice University professors Patrick McGovern and Julia Morgan. After studying computer models of Olympus Mons’ formation, McGovern and Morgan are proposing that pockets of ancient water could still be trapped under the mountain. Their research is published in February’s issue of the journal Geology.

Olympus Mons is tall, standing almost 15 miles (24 km) high, and slopes gently from the foothills to the caldera, a distance of more than 150 miles (241 km). That shallow slope is a clue to what lies beneath, say the researchers. They suspect if they were able to stand on the northwest side of Olympus Mons and start digging, they’d eventually find clay sediment deposited there billions of years ago, before the mountain was even a molehill.

In modeling the formation of Olympus Mons with an algorithm known as particle dynamics simulation, McGovern and Morgan determined that only the presence of ancient clay sediments can account for the volcano’s asymmetric shape. The presence of sediment indicates water was or is involved.

The European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft has in recent years found abundant evidence of clay on Mars. This supports a previous theory that where Olympus Mons now stands, a layer of sediment once rested that may have been hundreds of meters thick.

Morgan and McGovern show in their computer models that volcanic material was able to spread to Olympus-sized proportions because of the clay’s friction-reducing effect, a phenomenon also seen at volcanoes in Hawaii.

But fluids embedded in an impermeable, pressurized layer of clay sediment would allow the kind of slipping motion that would account for Olympus Mons’ spread-out northeast flank – and they may still be there. And because NASA’s Phoenix lander found ice underneath the Martian surface last year, Morgan and McGovern believe it’s reasonable to suspect water could be trapped in the sediment underneath the mountain.

“This deep reservoir, warmed by geothermal gradients and magmatic heat and protected from adverse surface conditions, would be a favored environment for the development and maintenance of thermophilic organisms,” they wrote. On Earth, such primal life forms exist along deep geothermal vents on the ocean floor.

Finding a source of heat will be a challenge, Morgan and McGovern admit. “We’d love to have the answer to that question,” said McGovern. He noted that evidence of methane on Mars is considered by some to be another marker for life.

LEAD IMAGE CAPTION: Rice University professors Patrick McGovern and Julia Morgan are proposing that pockets of water could be trapped under Olympus Mons on Mars — and could support life. Credit: Rice University

Source: Eurekalert

March 5, 2009December 24, 2015 by Ian O'Neill

Opportunity, the Dune Buggy: HiRISE Watches the Rover’s Trek

Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity trundles over the dunes (NASA/HiRISE/Univ. of Arizona)

[/caption]

Its pictures like these that put the Mars Program into perspective for me. We have two operational rovers that have rolled across the Martian landscape for five years (when they were designed to last only three months), and we have three satellites orbiting Mars carrying out a variety of key scientific studies. For one of the instruments orbiting over 250 km (155 miles) above the Red Planet on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), it is fulfilling the “reconnaissance” duties of the MRO rather nicely. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) is helping out its roving buddy, Opportunity, to plot the best route through the undulating sandy dunes of Meridiani Planum. Robots helping other robots on Mars…

We’ve seen shots like this before taken by the high resolution camera used by HiRISE. From spotting the Phoenix Mars Lander repeatedly throughout 2008 to keeping a watchful eye on the progress of both rovers, the instrument has been an invaluable tool for NASA scientists to see what the landscape is like around the tough wheeled robots.

As another sol rolls on, MER Opportunity clocks up some more distance on its epic two year journey toward Endeavour, a crater 20 times larger than Opportunity’s previous crater subject, Victoria (now a feature shrinking in the rover’s rear view mirror). The rover has a long way to go, but should Opportunity survive the trip, it will be a momentous achievement. After all, the rover will be seven years old at that point.

A close-up of Opportunity, plus wheel tracks (NASA/HiRISE/Univ. of Arizona)

For now, HiRISE is aiding the planning of Opportunity’s drive through the open Mars desert. As can be seen in the HiRISE image to the left (detail from the main image, top), 1783 sols into its mission, the rover is still going strong. The day before this image, Opportunity had driven 130 metres over the sand dunes. Generally, these dunes are mere ripples in the regolith, but some can be too big for Opportunity to traverse. However, HiRISE will spot any hazard well in advance, and NASA can plan Opportunity’s route accordingly.

So Opportunity roves on toward the southeast target of the Endeavour crater, about 17 km away. But HiRISE will be watching…

Source: HiRISE

March 2, 2009December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Mars Gullies From Snow and Ice Melt “Relatively Recent”

The gully system in the Promethei Terra region of Mars appears to have been carved by melt water and may be the most recent period when water was active on the planet. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

[/caption]
A new study of gullies seen on Mars provides evidence that water flowed recently on the Red Planet, at least in geologic terms. Planetary geologists at Brown University have found a gully fan system on Mars that formed only about 1.25 million years ago. The structure of this fan offers compelling evidence that it was formed by melt water that originated in nearby snow and ice deposits. This time frame may be the most recent period when water flowed on the planet. This most recent finding comes on the heels of discoveries of water-bearing minerals such as opals and carbonates, and together all these discoveries provide clues that Mars was, at least occasionally, wetter and warmer for far longer than previously thought.

While gullies are known to be young surface features, it’s difficult to date them. But the Brown scientists were able to date the gully system because of craters in the area, and also hypothesize what water was doing there.

The gully system shows four intervals where water-borne sediments were carried down the steep slopes of nearby alcoves and deposited in alluvial fans, said Samuel Schon, a Brown graduate student and the paper’s lead author.

“You never end up with a pond that you can put goldfish in,” Schon said, “but you have transient melt water. You had ice that typically sublimates. But in these instances it melted, transported, and deposited sediment in the fan. It didn’t last long, but it happened.”

The gully system shows four distinct lobes. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

The gully system is located on the inside of a crater in Promethei Terra, an area of cratered highlands in the southern mid-latitudes. The eastern and western channels of the gully each run less than a kilometer from their alcove sources to the fan deposit.

Viewed from afar, the fan appears as one entity several hundred meters wide. But by zooming in with the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Schon was able to distinguish four individual lobes in the fan, and determine that each lobe was deposited separately. Moreover, Schon was able to identify the oldest lobe, because it was pockmarked with small craters, while the other lobes were unblemished, meaning they had to be younger.

Next came the task of trying to date the secondary craters in the fan. Schon linked the craters on the oldest lobe to a rayed crater more than 80 kilometers to the southwest. Using well-established techniques, Schon dated the rayed crater at about 1.25 million years, and so established a maximum age for the younger, superimposed lobes of the fan.

The team determined that ice and snow deposits formed in the alcoves at a time when Mars had a high obliquity (its most recent ice age) and ice was accumulating in the mid-latitude regions. Sometime around a half-million years ago, the planet’s obliquity changed, and the ice in the mid-latitudes began to melt or, in most instances, changed directly to vapor. Mars has been in a low-obliquity cycle ever since, which explains why no exposed ice has been found beyond the poles.

The team tested other theories of what the water may have been doing in the gully system. The scientists ruled out groundwater bubbling to the surface, Schon said, because it seemed unlikely to have occurred multiple times in the planet’s recent history. They also don’t think the gullies were formed by dry mass wasting, a process by which a slope fails as in a rockslide. The best explanation, Schon said, was the melting of snow and ice deposits that created “modest” flows and formed the fan.

The team’s findings appear in the March issue of Geology.

Source: Brown University

March 1, 2009April 26, 2016 by Ian O'Neill

Russia Will Send Life to Phobos

Going where no tardigrade has been before

[/caption]

How ironic. Not content with searching for life on Mars, the Russian space agency and the US-based Planetary Society will soon be sending terrestrial life to the Martian moon Phobos. The mini-interplanetary travellers will consist of bacteria, spores, seeds, crustaceans, insects and fungi. Why? To see how biological life, in various forms, deals with space travel spanning three years.

So if you thought that a human (or monkey) would be the first of Earth’s ambassadors to land on Mars or one of its moons, you’d be very mistaken…

The Phobos-Grunt mission profile

Russia has been carrying out a variety of biological space tests to see how life deals with the hazards of spaceflight recently. In one experiment carried out in collaboration with Japanese scientists, a mosquito was attached to the hull of the International Space Station (ISS) to see… what would happen.

The mosquito was a part of the Biorisk project, and the scientists knew the insect had the ability to drop into a “suspended animation” during times of draught in Africa. The African mosquito can turn its bodily water into tricallosa sugar, slowing its functions nearly to a stop. When the rain returns, the crystallised creature is rehydrated and it can carry on its lifecycle. The Biorisk mosquito however survived 18 months with no sustenance, exposed to temperatures ranging from -150°C to +60°C. When returned to Earth, Russian scientists gave the hardy mozzie a health check, declaring:

“We brought him back to Earth. He is alive, and his feet are moving.” — Anatoly Grigoryev, Vice President of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Quite happy with living in space, the mosquito ©Gerald Yuvallos/Flickr

Was this insect cruelty of the most extreme kind, or did it serve a purpose? Actually, the mosquito experiment provided an insight to a biological specimen after being exposed to cosmic rays for long periods, and it also showed us that the African mosquito’s natural ability to slip into a defensive coma, only to be revived and appear to be healthy (that is, if it was more than just its feet moving – there was no indication as to whether the little guy was successfully re-integrated into mosquito society). Perhaps the lessons learned from this small test may go to some way of helping us realise the potential for putting future interplanetary astronauts into some kind of biological stasis.

So that’s the idea behind sending creatures into space: we need to understand how animals and plants deal with space travel. This will aid the understanding of how humans will cope in space for long periods, plus we need to understand if there are any harmful effects from growing foodstuffs away from our planet. This is why the Russian space agency wants to go one step further when it launches its Phobos-Grunt mission next year, to send biological specimens on a voyage of a lifetime. A return trip to the Martian moon Phobos.

Say hello to our interplanetary ambassador, the tardigrade (FUNCRYPTA)

On board, it is hoped the US-based Planetary Society will be able to send a small package filled with 10 different species including tardigrades (“water bears”), seeds and bacteria. The main purpose of this experiment will be to test the panspermia hypothesis, where it is thought that life may travel from planet to planet, hitching a ride on fragments of planetary material. Most of the biological samples will be in a dormant state (i.e. the plant spores), and tests will be carried out when Phobos-Grunt returns to Earth to see if the bacteria survived, seeds germinate and spores… do what ever spores do.

Russia on the other hand has far loftier goals; the space agency will attach a small petting zoo. Inside the Russian experiment will include crustaceans, mosquito larvae (already proven to be enthusiastic space travellers), bacteria and fungi. The Russian experiment will specifically look at how cosmic radiation can effect these different types of life during an interplanetary trip (essential ahead of any manned attempt to the Red Planet).

Naturally, there are some concerns about contamination to the moon (if Phobos-Grunt doesn’t do the “return” part of the mission), but the chances of any extraterrestrial life being harboured on this tiny piece of airless rock are low. Having said that, we just don’t know, so the mission scientists will have to be very careful to ensure containment. Besides, there’s something unsettling about infecting an alien world with our bacteria before we’ve even had the chance to get there ourselves…

Source: Discovery

February 27, 2009December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

MRO Goes Into Safe Mode

[/caption]
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter unexpectedly rebooted its computer Monday morning, Feb. 23, and put itself into a limited-activity mode, an automated safety response to an anomalous event such as a cosmic ray hit on part of the electronics on board the spacecraft. This is the fifth time since August of 2005 that the spacecraft has gone into safe mode. However, the symptoms from this week’s event do not match any of the prior safe-mode events. “We are going to bring the spacecraft back to normal operations, but we are going to do so in a cautious way, treating this national treasure carefully,” said Jim Erickson of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., project manager for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. “The process will take at least a few days.”

Safe Mode is a precaution programmed for the spacecraft when it senses a condition for which it does not know a more specific response.

MRO engineers are examining possible causes of the event while planning to prepare the spacecraft to resume its scientific investigations of Mars. There has been no reoccurrence of the reboot event.

The spacecraft is in communication with and under control by the flight team. Its batteries are charged and its solar panels are properly generating electricity. The team successfully commanded an increase of more than 10,000-fold in the communication rate Monday afternoon from the rate of 40 bits per second that the orbiter initially adopted when it went into the precautionary “safe” mode.

From the spacecraft data received after communications accelerated, the team gained a preliminary indication that the cause of the reboot might have been a measurement — possibly erroneous — of a brief increase in power load. The event lasted between 200 nanoseconds and 41 seconds. That leads engineers to identify one possible scenario as a cosmic-ray hit that could have caused an erroneous voltage reading that would last 9 microseconds, enough to trigger the reboot.

The reboot occurred at about 4:25 a.m. Pacific Standard Time on Monday, while the orbiter was behind Mars from Earth’s perspective. Engineers hope to have MRO back functioning normally by early next week.

Source: NASA

February 21, 2009December 24, 2015 by Anne Minard

Arizona Scientist: We Could All Be Martians

Artist's conception of an fragment as it blasts off from Mars. Boulder-sized planetary fragments could be a mechanism that carried life between Mars and Earth, UA planetary scientist Jay Melosh says. (Credit: The Planetary Society)

[/caption]

As long as we’re still pondering human origins, we may as well entertain the idea that our ancestor microbes came from Mars.

And Jay Melosh, a planetary scientist from the University of Arizona in Tucson, is ready with a geologically plausible explanation.

Meteorites.

“Biological exchange between the planets of our solar system seem not only possible, but inevitable,” because of meteorite exchanges between the planets, Melosh said. “Life could have originated on the planet Mars and then traveled to Earth.”

jay_melosh — Jay Melosh. Credit: Maria Schuchardt, University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Lab

Melosh is a long-time researcher who says he’s studied “geological violence in all its forms.” He helped forge the giant impact theory of the moon’s formation, and helped advance the theory that an impact led to the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

He points out that Martian meteorites have been routinely pummeling Earth for billions of years, which would have opened the door for past Mars microbes to hitch a ride. Less regularly, Earth has undergone impacts that sent terrestrial materials flying, and some of those could have carried microbes toward the Red Planet.

“The mechanism by which large impacts on Mars can launch boulder-sized surface rocks into space is now clear,” he said. He explained that a shock wave spreads away from an impact site faster than the speed of sound, interacting with the planetary surface in a way that allows material to be cast off – at relatively low pressure, but high speed.

“Lightly damaged material at very high speeds,” he said, “is the kind of environment where microorganisms can survive.”

Scientists have recent evidence of Earth microbes surviving a few years in space. When the Apollo 12 astronauts landed on the moon, they retrieved a camera from Surveyor 3, an unmanned lander that had touched down nearly three years prior. Earthly microbes – including those associated with the common cold — were still living inside the camera box.

“The records were good enough to show one of the technicians had a cold when he was working on it,” he said.

Scientists also have evidence that microbes can survive for thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years when frozen on Earth, but surviving that long in space would be an entirely different matter, with the bombardment of UV light and cosmic rays. Then again, the microbe Dienococcus radiodurans is known to survive in the cores of nuclear reactors.

Melosh acknowledges that scientists lack proof that such an exchange has actually occurred between Mars and Earth — but science is getting ever closer to being able to track it down.

LEAD PHOTO CAPTION: Artist’s conception of an fragment as it blasts off from Mars. Boulder-sized planetary fragments could be a mechanism that carried life between Mars and Earth, UA planetary scientist Jay Melosh says. (Painting by Don Davis. Copyright SETI Institute, 1994)

Source: University of Arizona and an interview with Jay Melosh