Space and astronomy news
Anybody with a modicum of intellectual curiosity is looking forward to the NASA/ESA Mars Sample Return Mission. NASA’s Perseverance rover is busily collecting and caching samples for eventual return to Earth. While the technical and engineering challenges in getting those samples into scientists’ hands here on Earth are formidable, budgeting and funding might be the …
Continue reading “What’s Going on With the Mars Sample Return Mission?”
Humans on Mars will need oxygen, and Mars’ atmosphere is pretty anemic when it comes to the life-sustaining element. NASA’s Perseverance rover successfully extracted oxygen from CO2 in Mars’ atmosphere, but there are other ways to acquire it. There seem to be vast amounts of water buried under the Martian surface, and oxygen in the …
Continue reading “A Robotic Chemist Could Whip up the Perfect Batch of Oxygen on Mars”
In preparation for their sample-return mission to Mars (Tianwen-3), Chinese scientists have created an atmospheric model that accurately simulates Martian weather
A recent study published in The Planetary Science Journal examines how helicopters equipped with a magnetometer could be used to conduct magnetic field investigations within the crust of Mars, providing important insights into the present characteristics and early evolution of the Red Planet. This study comes as NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter continues breaking records and making …
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NASA’s Perseverance rover took its 20th sample from “Emerald Lake,” an area filled by rocks that were deposited by an ancient river.
China’s Zhurong rover landed in the Utopia Planitia region of Mars, a vast plain in the northern hemisphere. Dunes surround the landing site, piled up by winds over eons. Images from the rover show that the landing area went through two main climatic stages, where the predominant wind changed direction by 70 degrees. Scientists think this change happened around 400,000 years ago and could have been due to a change in the planet’s rotation axis, causing a global climate change that affected wind patterns.
China’s Shenzou-16 mission just delivered three taikonauts to the Tiangong space station, performing the most complicated docking maneuver ever attempted
In a recent study published in National Science Review, a team of researchers led by the China University of Geosciences discuss direct evidence of an ancient ocean and its shoreline that existed in the northern hemisphere of Mars during the Hesperian Period, or more than 3 billion years ago. This finding is based on data …
Continue reading “China’s Rover Found Evidence of an Ancient Ocean on Mars”
China’s mysterious experimental spaceplane (Shenlong) just returned to Earth after spending 276 days in orbit.
Before going into hibernation, China’s Zhurong rover found evidence that water recently existed in small patches on Mars (and might still!)