Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Multi-Layer Mars Parfait Provides Environmental Record

This oblique view shows geological layers of rock exposed on a mound inside Gale Crater on Mars. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/USGS

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Is Mars more like a Peanut Buster Parfait, a granola-yogurt parfait, –or perhaps — maybe a seven-layer salad? Near the center of a Martian crater about the size of Connecticut, hundreds of exposed rock layers form a mound as tall as the Rockies and reveal a record of major environmental changes on Mars billions of years ago. According to a new report by geologists using instruments on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to look at the “parfait” of layers inside Gale Crater, the layers show that Mars was likely wet at one point, but gradually dried over time.

“Looking at the layers from the bottom to the top, from the oldest to the youngest, you see a sequence of changing rocks that resulted from changes in environmental conditions through time,” said Ralph Milliken from JPL. “This thick sequence of rocks appears to be showing different steps in the drying-out of Mars.”

Layers of rock exposed in the lower portion of a tall mound near the center of Gale Crater on Mars exhibit variations in layer thickness and range between dark and light tones. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Milliken and two co-authors of a paper in Geophysical Research Letters say that clay minerals, which form under very wet conditions, are concentrated in layers near the bottom of the Gale stack. Above that, sulfate minerals are intermixed with the clays. Sulfates form in wet conditions and can be deposited when the water in which they are dissolved evaporates. Higher still are sulfate-containing layers without detectable clays. And at the top is a thick formation of regularly spaced layers bearing no detectable water-related minerals.
Layers of rock in the upper portion of a tall mound near the center of Gale Crater on Mars exhibit a regular thickness of several meters, unlike the less regular pattern of layers in the lower formation on the same mound. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Rock exposures with compositions like various layers of the Gale stack have been mapped elsewhere on Mars, and researchers, including Jean-Pierre Bibring of the University of Paris, have proposed a Martian planetary chronology of clay-producing conditions followed by sulfate-producing conditions followed by dry conditions. However, Gale is the first location where a single series of layers has been found to contain these clues in a clearly defined sequence from older rocks to younger rocks.

“If you could stand there, you would see this beautiful formation of Martian sediments laid down in the past, a stratigraphic section that’s more than twice the height of the Grand Canyon, though not as steep,” said Bradley Thomson of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md. He and John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena are Milliken’s co-authors.

NASA selected Gale Crater in 2008 as one of four finalist sites for the Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, which has a planned launch in 2011. The finalist sites all have exposures of water-related minerals, and each has attributes that distinguish it from the others. This new report is an example of how observations made for evaluating the landing-site candidates are providing valuable science results even before the rover mission launches.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Movies of Spirit’s Last Moves Before Winter

Even though the Spirit rover is stuck in a Martian sandtrap, the rover drivers were actually able to move her quite a bit, and therefore improving her chances of surviving the winter. This video shows recent drives by the Spirit rover from Jan. 14 to Feb. 4, 2010 (Sols 2145 to 2165), where the center of the rover approximately 13.4 inches (34 centimeters) backwards. Since Jan 26 (sol 2157), drive commands have concentrated on placing Spirit into a favorable tilt toward the sun as the Martian winter approaches.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Can an Immobile Spirit Rover Survive the Martian Winter?

Mission managers for the Mars Exploration Rover program announced this week that the Spirit rover will likely never rove again on Mars. But that doesn’t mean her life is over. However, with the rover virtually immobile and stuck in a sand trap, she currently is in a very vulnerable and potentially “deadly” situation as winter approaches on Mars’ southern hemisphere. Pointing the rover’s solar panels towards the sun is critical if the rover is to survive, and the rover team has just a handful of drives to make it so. And the winters are long and harsh on Mars. “The temperatures will be colder than anything Spirit has experienced before,” said John Callas, project manager for the MER mission. “This is a much more difficult and dangerous situation for Spirit, and we’re heading into a regime where vehicle is going to get colder than it ever has.”

What is Spirit facing, and what are her odds?

“Spirit will be experiencing decreasing power levels, and we will likely see energy levels that will drop below 160 watt hours,” said Callas, which is the level of power the rover needs to maintain so it can communicate daily with Earth. “If we can’t maintain that level, that will trip a low power fault where the rover shuts down or hibernates, taking the necessary steps to preserve as much power as possible. Everything is turned off except the master clock, and all the photons that hit solar arrays go into charging the batteries.”

In this low-power fault, a timer wakes the rover up occasionally to check battery levels, and if there is enough power, Spirit will wake up enough to see how charged the batteries are and attempt to communicate with Earth. “Spirit will be like a polar bear hibernating, possibly for several months, maybe on the order of 6 months that the rover will be in this state,” said Callas. “It won’t be like the Phoenix lander where it shuts down virtually completely. The rover will still be electrically active, but not with enough power to be awake each day.”

Callas predicted it will be in the March-April time frame here on Earth when they run out of ability to communicate with rover because there won’t be enough power.

Normally the rover stays warm enough simply by being “on” and running, like running your car in the winter to warm it up. But since rover will be deeply sleeping, temperatures on the rover will drop.

Callas and his team are concerned that temperatures on the rover will get very cold. Based on past winters, they expect about -40 to -50 C temperatures on Mars during the depths of winter. The electronics on the rover can withstand -40 degrees C when operating and -50 c when the rover is idle. But these standards are for a brand-new out-of-the-box rover, Callas said, not a 6 year-old rover with electronics have gone through many different temperature cycles.

Ironically, the fumaroles or steam vents that likely created the very scientifically rich “Troy” area where Spirit sits would have made it a “hot spot” on Mars. But, of course, the fumaroles are no longer active.

The rovers do have three 1-watt Radioisotope Heater Units (RHUs) which are tiny thermal heating units used to keep motors and batteries warm on the rover, so Spirit’s important insides will not get as cold as the outside.

But power from the solar panels is very important for keeping the computer and other electronics active, and right now, the position of the solar panels is not at all optimal.

“Our primary mission is to get solar panels pointed toward sun improve her chances,” said rover driver Ashley Stroupe. “Ideally the solar panels should be pointed toward the sun, to maximize the energy the rover receives. If we can get enough power to keep the rover warm, that will shorten the amount of time Spirit may have to be in a low power state.”

In upcoming drives, the team will try to get left rear wheel of the rover lifted up, by driving backward and improving its northerly tilt. Spirit is sitting in a small crater with the rim behind her, so as it moves backwards, it is slowly climbing up on the rim, tilting the rover. “On the last drive we saw 1-2 degree improvement in tilt,” Stroupe said on Tuesday. “So we’re going to do as much improvement as we can by continuing to drive backward. We can an also attempt to rotate the rover in place, so that the roll isn’t pointed as much towards the south as it is now.”

The Spirit rover's solar panels were covered with dust until a gust of wind blew it off. Credit: NASA.

Each degree of tilt towards the north gains 5 watt hours of improvement. One upside is that the solar panels are currently fairly free of dust accumulation.

When the rover attempts to wake up each day, it will be at about noon local time on Mars, when the electronics will have warmed up because of sunlight.

But there’s the possibility the team might not hear from the rover for months.

“We have to be prepared to go through a period like this,” said Callas. “We may not hear from rover, and it will be frustrating and challenging for the team, but we’ll have to be disciplined about this, and hopefully when power resumes we can resume communication in the spring.”

A look at the nearly buried wheels on the Spirit rover on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL

And, worst case scenario, where is a very long period of time where they don’t hear from the rover, how long will the team attempt to communicate with Spirit?

“That’s a very complex problem,” Callas told Universe Today at the Tuesday’s press conference. “The rover will actually experience two levels of fault protection. The rover takes action based on hearing from Earth, and if we go too long without talking to the rover, it trips an up loss timer. We only keep about 6 weeks of communication tables on the rover, so that likely will have run out. All these things make for a complex recovery effort for the rover. It is hard to say how long we would try, because we would have to try many things before we exhaust the list of things we can do.”

Callas didn’t want to give odds if Spirit will make it through the winter. “Spirit’s best chance for survival is when we can stay in contact with her,” he said. “As long as we can maintain communication with rover we can look out for trouble, and advise her on how to best reapportion her limited resources.”

MER PI Steve Squyres said not having a roving rover is a “poignant moment” for the team. “We built the rovers to drive around, so we have shifted our focus to a different class of activities. It is a change and one we’ll have to adapt to. But this is a much better way that having an abrupt end to the mission, which would preclude doing the kind of science we’re looking forward to.” (Read more about the science Spirit can do in our earlier article)

“We have hope that Spirit will survive this cold dark winter that Spirit has ahead of her,” Squyres said.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Big Full Moon and Mars Put on a Show Friday Night

An almost full Moon on Jan. 27, 2010. Credit and copyright: Alan Walters

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If your skies are clear on Friday night, January 29, 2010, take advantage of one of the skywatching highlights of the year. A full Moon and Mars will be putting on a show, and the pair will be prominently close to each other in the sky. Plus, this Friday night’s full Moon is the biggest and brightest full Moon of the year. It’s a “perigee Moon,” as much as 14% wider and 30% brighter than other full Moons you’ll see later in 2010, according to Spaceweather.com. And, even though you’ve likely not gotten an email from an excited acquaintance relaying that Mars is really close to the Earth now — that is the case. Mars is at opposition on the 29th, which means it lines up opposite the Sun and is now the closest to Earth their orbits, and so will shine brighter.

The image above of the not-quite-full Moon from January 27, 2010 is shared by Universe Today reader Alan Walters, from Florida. You can see more of his wonderful photography of the night sky, launches and shuttle landings, Florida wildlife and more at Alan Walters Photography.

Positions of the Moon and Mars. Credit: McDonald Observatory

This image, courtesy of Stardate Online and the McDonald Observatory, shows the positions of the Moon and Mars in the night sky the next few evenings.

This is not a great opposition for Mars because it occurs around the time that Earth is closest to the Sun and Mars is farthest. The gap between the two planets will be a hefty 62 million miles (99 million km). The smallest possible distance at opposition is about 35 million miles (56 million km), which happened a back in August of 2003, and prompted the infamous emails that now surface every August, that Mars would be as big the full Moon, which of course, is not — and was not — true. Mars appeared more than twice as bright then as it will this year, but was still a star-like dot in the sky.

JPL is sponsoring a Facebook Event, Friday Night With the Moon and Mars, to heighten awareness of what a great sight it will be; plus its a great way to share in the experience with others online.

And for more information, see this Science@NASA article about the close encounter.

Sources: Stardate, Spaceweather.com

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

New Amazing Mars Flyover Videos


Doug Ellison from UnmannedSpaceflight.com has done it again… and again… and again. Here are new Mars flyover videos Doug has created from data from the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Using DEM (Digital Elevation Model)– (also known as DTM Digital Terrain Model) files provided by the HiRISE team, Doug is able to render 3-D movies of a specific location on Mars. Since he is using actual high-resolution data from HiRISE, Doug says the terrain seen in the movies has accurate vertical scaling and is not exaggerated. These new views of the Red Planet are also stunningly beautiful! The video above is of the Mojave Crater wall on Mars, and below is Athabasca Valles. And Doug says more are on the way! If you recall, Doug created the flyover video of the Spirit rover’s location that was on Astronomy Picture of the Day.
Continue reading “New Amazing Mars Flyover Videos”

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Could Mars Dust Be “Levitated” Away?

The Spirit rover's solar panels were covered with dust until a gust of wind blew it off in 2006. Credit: NASA.

What could potentially be the biggest problem during a human mission to Mars? One NASA study says, surprisingly, that dust could be the number one risk for both humans and equipment. Human explorers could inhale the extremely fine but rough dust particles causing severe respiratory problems, and high winds on Mars could disperse the dust to coat solar panels, penetrate through seals and interfere with machinery. But scientists at the University of Vermont may have come up with a new way to combat dust: acoustic levitation. But will it work on Mars?

The researchers conducted a feasibility study to develop an acoustic dust removing system for use in space stations or habitations on the Moon or Mars. They found a high-pitched (13.8 kHz, 128 dB) standing wave of sound emitted from a 3 cm aperture tweeter and focused on a reflector 9 cm away was strong enough to dislodge and move extremely fine (<2 µm diameter) dust particles on the reflector surface. The sound waves overcome the van der Waals adhesive force that binds dust particles to the surface, and creates enough pressure to levitate the dust, which is then blown away. The team tested the system on a solar panel coated with mock lunar and Martian dust. The output of the clean panel was 4 volts, but when coated with dust it produced only 0.4 volts. After four minutes of acoustic levitation treatment the output returned to 98.4% of the maximum. Mars dust, although fine, is rougher that Earth dust, and likely is more similar to the dust that covers the Moon. The thin atmosphere on Mars means dust particles are not as rounded as they would be on Earth and can remain quite sharp and abrasive. [/caption] Mars dust, as we have found with the Mars rovers, has a high electrostatic charge, which means the fine dust clings to everything. The dust has severely decreased the efficiency of solar panels on the rovers, and over time has likely caused other problems with the mechanical operation on the rovers as well. We've had several articles here on Universe Today discussing the problems of dust on the solar panels of the Mars Exploration Rovers, and inevitably we get comments from readers suggesting "wiper blades" or other types of cleaning solutions for the solar panels. Amazingly, Mars itself has cleaned the rovers' solar panels several times with gusts of wind from the almost ubiquitous Martian dust devils. Acoustic levitation could be a solution, as it would be cheap and easily built. But there is a problem, and it is a big one: it will only work when it is sealed inside a space station or other habitation. It will not work where there is no atmosphere (such as the moon) or where the atmosphere is low pressure and thin (such as Mars) because sound is a pressure wave that travels through the air. So, we might be stuck with having to resort to wiper blades, or devising a way to mimic the dust devils and gusts of wind that have repeatedly benefited the Mars rovers. Unless we can figure out a way to get dust to levitate without sound. Nirvana anyone? Source: PhysOrg

Posted on by Jean Tate

Debunking Astrology: Mars Can’t Influence You

So you think the position of Mars in the sky at the time of your birth made you tall, dark, and handsome (or short, fair, and ugly)? Or lucky (or unlucky) in love? If you think believing in astrology is anywhere close to scientific, well, Dude, time to think again.

Pick two babies born within a minute of each other. One has two nurses and a doctor attending; the other, just a midwife. One is born in a brightly lit maternity ward in a downtown big city hospital; the other in a poorly lit room in a village 50 kilometers from the nearest big city. ‘Downtown’ is just a few meters above sea level; the village is situated on a 1000 meter high plateau. These local differences have far greater effects on the babies than Mars does. Let’s see how.

Nearly five centuries of physics have given us quite a few certainties, and among those are that the only long range forces in the universe are gravity and electromagnetism. And both of these, from Mars, are totally – and I mean totally – overwhelmed by those same forces that were produced by things near you when you were delivered. In a word, Mars can’t influence you.

Start with gravitation.

The gravitational force between you and Mars is greatest when Mars is closest to the Earth; let’s say that’s 56 million kilometers. Now Mars has a mass of 6.4 x 1023 kg, so the acceleration, here on Earth, due to Martian gravity would be 1.4 x 10-8 meters per second per second (m s-2).

How did I work that out? By using Newton’s law of universal gravitation:
F = Gm1m2/r2
and:
F = ma
so:
a = GmMars/distance-to-Mars2.

How does this compare with variations in gravitational force due to adults standing nearby (everyone has a mother, so we won’t count her)?

Let’s take 60 kg as an adult’s mass, and a distance of 1 meter; that gives a gravitational acceleration of 4 x 10-9 m s-2, so just three adults nearby would have the same gravitational effect on you as Mars!

How does this compare with variations in gravitational force we know people born at the same time – but elsewhere on Earth – experienced?

Let’s take a difference in altitude of 1000 m (lots of big cities have altitudes greater than this – Mexico City, for example, is at 2240 m – and lots are close to sea level), and calculate the difference in acceleration due to the Earth’s gravity (this ignores several important factors, such as the Earth’s rotation, and local differences in g). Well, it works out as 0.003 m s-2, or about 200,000 times greater than Martian gravity!

In fact, if you were born just half a centimeter higher, you’d be influenced to the same extent, gravitationally, as by Mars!

Next, electromagnetism.

You can be influenced, electromagnetically, in four separate ways: by a magnetic field, by an electric current, by an electric field, and by electromagnetic radiation. How powerful is Mars, electromagnetically?

There’s no electric current between Mars and Earth; the solar wind – which blows outward from the Sun (so Mars is ‘downstream’, and any electromagnetic influence carried by the solar wind would be from Earth to Mars) – is neutral, on balance, and carries no current.

The solar wind is a plasma, and any electric field there is in it will not be felt much more than a few Debye lengths’ away (basically, because electrons and ions are free to move in a plasma, they screen charges – the source of electric fields – quite effectively; the Debye length is about as far as an electric field can penetrate). Now the solar wind can be quite dynamic – meaning it can change a lot – but the Debye length in any part of it will rarely, if ever, be greater than a few tens of meters. Let’s be generous and say an electric field could be felt up to a kilometer away. But Mars never comes closer to the Earth than ~50 million km!

Well, that makes any electric field influence from Mars impossible, doesn’t it?!

While Mars does have a weak magnetic field, it has no influence on Earth, because the Earth’s own field creates a magnetosphere around us, one that screens out external magnetic fields. Besides, as Mars is downstream from us (the way the solar wind blows), and as the solar wind can carry (actually stretch) a magnetosphere only in the direction it blows, any magnetic influence would be from Earth to Mars, not Mars to Earth.

Three down, one to go.

The Earth’s atmosphere blocks all electromagnetic radiation except for that which we see by (and a bit on the UV side too), some infrared, and in the microwave and radio regions of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Mars is a very weak source of microwaves and radio waves, and even in the (radio) quietest places on Earth, electromagnetic radiation from (distant) radio stations, (distant) cellphone towers, TV satellites, airplanes overhead, etc totally, totally drowns out any Martian signals.

On a clear, moonless night, Mars may seem bright to your dark-adjusted eyes … but most likely you were born under quite bright lights, and indoors. No Martian influence here either.

So what do we have then?

Like I said, Mars can’t make you tall dark and handsome, nor can it influence your love life.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

No More Roving for Spirit; Stationary Science Ahead

Mars Exploration Rover Mission
Artist concept of the Mars Exploration Rover on Mars. Credit: NASA

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The Spirit rover’s driving days are likely over, as efforts to extricate the rover have been curtailed. “We do not believe that Spirit is extractable,” said Doug McCuistion, director of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program. But mission managers stressed that today is not a day of loss at this point, as they hope to continue to make some exciting scientific observations. However, the rover needs to be tilted to gather as much sunlight as possible in order to survive the Martian winter. John Callas, project manager for the MER mission told Universe Today at today’s press briefing that time is short. “We estimate about three weeks of driving activity, and we can’t drive every day,” he said. “So there are just a handful of drives left before there is insufficient power to continue.”

Callas added that around the March-April time frame will be the last images and data the rover can transmit before going into hibernation for the winter.

Spirit has been embedded in a sandtrap for 10 months, and the rover team has been engaged in an ambitious process to extricate the rover. They’ve encountered numerous setbacks, including the loss of use of an additional wheel, making it a four-wheeled rover. (Spirit’s right front wheel has not worked for a couple of years, now the right rear wheel has lost functionality).

A look at the nearly buried wheels on the Spirit rover on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL

“Spirit is in a golfer’s worst nightmare, stuck in a sand trap that no matter how many strokes you take you can’t get out of,” said McCuistion.

Pointing the rover’s solar panels towards the sun is critical if the rover is to survive. In past winters, the movable rover has been able to be positioned to allow for maximum sun-gathering but the current embedding of the rover has left it with an unfavorable tilt, 9 degrees to south, when they really want a level rover — or even better — tilted to north.

Rover driver Ashley Stroupe said the rover is now pitched flat and rolled to left. “We want to try to pitch it forward and roll right for best winter survival.”

The last few drives were aimed at trying to improve the rover’s position, and were mildly successful.

“We’ve aimed toward improving northerly tilt,” said Stroupe. “Spirit is sitting in a small crater with the rim behind her, so as it moves backwards, it is slowly climbing up, providing more tilt. On the last drive saw 1-2 degree improvement in tilt.”

In recent drives, the rover has moved approximately 20 centimeters. The team can also attempt to rotate the rover in place, so that the roll isn’t pointed as much towards the south as it currently is.

Mosaic of the area called Home Plate where Spirit remains stuck was made especially for Spaceflight Now, and is used by permission. It shows smooth area, foreground, that concealed slippery water related sulfate material where rover became stuck. Credit: Kenneth Kremer, Marco DiLorenzo, NASA/JPL/Cornell/Spaceflight Now

Should they be successful, and if the rover survives the winter, the science team has some exciting prospects of continuing science with Spirit.

“We have hope that Spirit will survive this cold dark winter that she has ahead of her,” said MER principal investigator Steve Squyres. “The bottom line is we’re not giving up on Spirit.”

Squyres said they are most excited about tracking the radio signal from Spirit in order to determine if Mars has a solid or liquid core. “This is something totally new, something we’ve never done,” Squyres said. “If we can accurately determine the rover’s motion in space in three dimensions, we can see the motions of Mars in orbit and track it precisely, then we can characterize the wobble very precisely. The way Mars wobbles depends on its internal structure. If Mars has a solid core of iron, will wobble one way but if it has a liquid molten core it will wobble another way. We should be able to do this by tracking the stationary rover for six months.”

Squyres said the team is finding new tricks on how to use a stationary rover. Additionally, they should be able to characterize the odd soil at the Home Plate region, and characterize the interactions between the atmosphere and the surface of Mars.

“We’re not giving up on Spirit and we’ll keep squeezing as much science out of the rover as we can,” Squyres said. “We feel there is a lot of really exiting science yet ahead.”

Source: Press briefing

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

No Word Yet From Phoenix; Spirit’s Days May be Numbered

A look at the nearly buried wheels on the Spirit rover on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL

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Not a peep yet from the Phoenix lander. The Mars Odyssey orbiter has completed all 30 relay overflights of the Phoenix landing site that were scheduled for Jan. 18 to 21, and heard nothing from the lander. Additional listening campaigns will be conducted in February and March. NASA has said repeatedly that hearing from the lander would be highly unlikely, as Phoenix was never designed to withstand the Martian arctic winters.

Meanwhile, the outlook isn’t brilliant for the Spirit rover, either.

Efforts to free the rover have barely budged it, and as the Martian autumn approaches, precious sunlight which provides power to the rover is declining each day. As of now, Spirit is tilted the wrong way to generate enough heat to make it through the winter, although the Free Spirit team is working to change the angle of her solar panels.

The rover team has now begun driving Spirit backward as the next technique for attempting to extricate the rover from the sand trap where it is embedded. The first two backward drives produced about 6.5 centimeters (2.6 inches) of horizontal motion and lifted the rover slightly.

However, the right-rear wheel is still non-functional, along with the right-front wheel (even though that wheel came back to life, briefly), and during a recent extrication drive attempt, the left middle wheel stalled. The team is working to get more diagnostic information about that wheel stall. Even with four working wheels, Spirit would have a very difficult path to get out of her predicament.

And rover fans must be continuing to suggest using the rover’s robotic arm to help push Spirit out, because the latest press release about Spirit included some back-of-the-envelope calculations about using the arm for just such an action. They figured out that by pushing with the arm, only about 30 newtons of lateral force could be achieved, while a minimum of several hundreds of newtons would be needed to move the rover. Further, such a technique risks damaging the arm and preventing its use for high-priority science from a stationary rover. The other technique of re-sculpting the terrain and perhaps pushing a rock in front of or behind the left-front wheel was also assessed to be of little to no help and, again, risks the arm. There is also a large risk of accidentally pushing the rock into the open wheel and jamming it.

When asked if he was discouraged about Spirit’s current situation, NASA’s lead scientist for the Mars exploration program, Michael Meyer said, “You gotta be joyful when something that was only supposed to operate for three months lasts over 6 years.”

A 3-D view of Opportunity's view as she leaves Marquette Island, created by Stu Atkinson. Image credit: NASA/JPL/ U of Arizona

The Opportunity rover, on the other side of Mars, continues her approximately 7 mile trek to Endeavour Crater. The rover left the rock called Marquette Island on Sol 2122 (Jan. 12, 2010), and has now crossed the 19-kilometer (11.8-mile) odometer mark. Amazing!

There is a relatively fresh impact crater that has been named “Conception,” and Oppy will stop to investigate, having to detour about 250 meters (820 feet) to the south.

Sources: JPL, NASA TV

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

HiRISE Makes Your Wishes Comes True

Possible future landing site on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

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The HiRISE science team is now taking requests! A new web tool called HiWish is now available for the high-resolution camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter which allows the public to suggest a location on Mars where the HiRISE instrument should take an image. If you don’t have a particular location, you can use the HiWish site to browse around the planet, examine the locations of other data sets, and find a place that should be imaged. The team will then put into their targeting database, and your suggestion may get selected as an upcoming observation. Furthermore, the HiWish site allows you to track your suggestions and be notified when one of your suggestions gets taken.

Maybe you could even find a really unusual feature on Mars, such as this race-track-like feature that may one day be a landing site for a future mission to the Red Planet. HiRISE images will help determine if this spot is sufficiently safe for landing, such as not too many boulders, steep slopes, or too many high speed MASCAR races — (that’s the Mars Association for Super Cool Aerodynamical Racing). If it is safe, it may be considered for the 2011 Mars Science Laboratory or the 2018 rovers that ESA and NASA are working on for a join mission.

The above image is actually a huge shield volcano in the northeast part of Syrtis Major, and near the Northwest rim of Isidis Planitia, a giant impact basin.

So, go create an account at HiWish and get wishing!