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Mars Armada Resumes Contact with NASA – Ready to Rock ‘n Roll n’ Drill

Curiosity accomplished historic 1st drilling into Martian rock at John Klein outcrop on Feb 8, 2013 (Sol 182), shown in this context mosaic view of the Yellowknife Bay basin taken on Jan. 26 (Sol 169) – back dropped with Mount Sharp – where the robot is currently working. Curiosity will bore a 2nd drill hole soon following the resumption of contact with the end of the solar conjunction period. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo
See drill hole and conjunction videos below[/caption]

After taking a well deserved and unavoidable break during April’s solar conjunction with Mars that blocked two way communication with Earth, NASA’s powerful Martian fleet of orbiters and rovers have reestablished contact and are alive and well and ready to Rock ‘n Roll ‘n Drill.

“Both orbiters and both rovers are in good health after conjunction,” said NASA JPL spokesman Guy Webster exclusively to Universe Today.

Curiosity’s Chief Scientist John Grotzinger confirmed to me today (May 1) that further drilling around the site of the initial John Klein outcrop bore hole is a top near term priority.

The goal is to search for the chemical ingredients of life.

“We’ll drill a second sample,” Grotzinger told Universe Today exclusively. Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., leads NASA’s Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory mission.

“We’ll move a small bit, either with the arm or the wheels, and then drill another hole to confirm what we found in the John Klein hole.”

Earth, Mars and the Sun have been lined up in nearly a straight line for the past several weeks, which effectively blocked virtually all contact with NASA’s four pronged investigative Armada at the Red Planet.

NASA’s Red Planet fleet consists of the Curiosity (MSL) and Opportunity (MER) surface rovers as well as the long lived Mars Odyssey (MO) and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) robotic orbiters circling overhead. ESA’s Mars Express orbiter is also exploring the Red Planet.

“All have been in communications,” Webster told me today, May 1.

The NASA spacecraft are functioning normally and beginning to transmit the science data collected and stored in on board memory during the conjunction period when a commanding moratorium was in effect.

“Lots of data that had been stored on MRO during conjunction has been downlinked,” Webster confirmed to Universe Today.

Curiosity and Mount Sharp: Curiosity's elevated robotic arm and drill are staring back at you - back dropped by Mount Sharp, her ultimate destination. The rover team anticipates new science discoveries following the resumption of contact with NASA after the end of solar conjunction. This panoramic vista of Yellowknife Bay basin was snapped on March 23, Sol 223 prior to conjunction and assembled from several dozen raw images snapped by the rover's navigation camera system. These images were snapped after the robot recovered from a computer glitch in late Feb and indicated she was back alive and functioning working normally. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Marco Di Lorenzo/KenKremer (kenkremer.com).
Curiosity and Mount Sharp: Curiosity’s elevated robotic arm and drill stare back at you at the John Klein drill site – back dropped by mysterious Mount Sharp. The rover has resumed contact with NASA following the end of solar conjunction. This panoramic vista was snapped on March 23, 2013, Sol 223. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Marco Di Lorenzo/KenKremer (kenkremer.com)

And NASA is already transmitting and issuing new marching orders to the Martian Armada to resume their investigations into unveiling the mysteries of the Red Planet and determine whether life ever existed eons ago or today.

“New commanding, post-conjunction has been sent to both orbiters and Opportunity.”

“And the sequence is being developed today for sending to Curiosity tonight (May 1), as scheduled more than a month ago,” Webster explained.

“We’ll spend the next few sols transitioning over to new flight software that gives the rover additional capabilities,” said Grotzinger.

“After that we’ll spend some time testing out the science instruments on the B-side rover compute element – that we booted to before conjunction.”

Curiosity is at work inside the Yellowknife Bay basin just south of the Martian equator. Opportunity is exploring the rim of Endeavour crater at the Cape York rim segment.

Opportunity Celebrates 9 Years and 3200 Sols on Mars snapping this panoramic view from her current location on ‘Matijevic Hill’ at Endeavour Crater. The rover discovered phyllosilicate clay minerals and calcium sulfate veins at the bright outcrops of ‘Whitewater Lake’, at right, imaged by the Navcam camera on Sol 3197 (Jan. 20, 2013). “Copper Cliff” is the dark outcrop, at top center. Darker “Kirkwood” outcrop, at left, is site of mysterious “newberries” concretions. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer
Opportunity Celebrates 9 Years and 3200 Sols on Mars snapping this panoramic view from her current location on ‘Matijevic Hill’ at Endeavour Crater. The rover discovered phyllosilicate clay minerals and calcium sulfate veins at the bright outcrops of ‘Whitewater Lake’, at right, imaged by the Navcam camera on Sol 3197 (Jan. 20, 2013). “Copper Cliff” is the dark outcrop, at top center. Darker “Kirkwood” outcrop, at left, is site of mysterious “newberries” concretions. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer

Mars Solar Conjunction is a normal celestial event that occurs naturally about every 26 months. The science and engineering teams take painstaking preparatory efforts to insure no harm comes to the spacecraft during the conjunction period when they have no chance to assess or intervene in case problems arise.

So it’s great news and a huge relief to the large science and operations teams handling NASA’s Martian assets to learn that all is well.

Since the sun can disrupt and garble communications, mission controllers suspended transmissions and commands so as not to inadvertently create serious problems that could damage the fleet in a worst case scenario.

So what’s on tap for Curiosity and Opportunity in the near term ?

“For the first few days for Curiosity we will be installing a software upgrade.”

“For both rovers, the science teams will be making decisions about how much more to do at current locations before moving on,” Webster told me.

The Opportunity science team has said that the long lived robot has pretty much finished investigating the Cape York area at Endeavour crater where she made the fantastic discovery of phyllosilicates clay minerals that form in neutral water.

Signals from Opportunity received a few days ago on April 27 indicated that the robot had briefly entered a standby auto mode while collecting imagery of the sun.

NASA reported today that all operations with Opportunity was “back under ground control, executing a sequence of commands sent by the rover team”, had returned to normal and the robot exited the precautionary status.

Opportunity Celebrates 9 Years on Mars snapping this panoramic view of the vast expanse of 14 mile (22 km) wide Endeavour Crater from atop ‘Matijevic Hill’ on Sol 3182 (Jan. 5, 2013). The rover then drove 43 feet to arrive at ‘Whitewater Lake’ and investigate clay minerals. Photo mosaic was stitched from Navcam images and colorized. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo
Opportunity Celebrates 9 Years on Mars snapping this panoramic view of the vast expanse of 14 mile (22 km) wide Endeavour Crater from atop ‘Matijevic Hill’ on Sol 3182 (Jan. 5, 2013). The rover then drove 43 feet to arrive at ‘Whitewater Lake’ and investigate clay minerals. Photo mosaic was stitched from Navcam images and colorized. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

“The Curiosity team has said they want to do at least one more drilling in Yellowknife Bay area,” according to Webster.

Curiosity has already accomplished her primary task and discovered a habitable zone that possesses the key ingredients needed for potential alien microbes to once have thrived in the distant past on the Red Planet when it was warmer and wetter.

The robot found widespread evidence for repeated episodes of flowing liquid water, hydrated mineral veins and phyllosilicates clay minerals on the floor of her Gale Crater landing site after analyzing the first powder ever drilled from a Martian rock.

Video Caption: Historic 1st bore hole drilled by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover on Sol 182 of the mission (8 Feb 2013). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer (http://www.kenkremer.com/)

During conjunction Curiosity collected weather, radiation and water measurements but no imagery.

Check out this wonderful new story at Space.com featuring Curiosity mosaics by me and my imaging partner Marco Di Lorenzo and an interview with me.

Ken Kremer

Curiosity Rover snapped this self portrait mosaic with the MAHLI camera while sitting on flat sedimentary rocks at the “John Klein” outcrop where the robot conducted historic first sample drilling inside the Yellowknife Bay basin, on Feb. 8 (Sol 182) at lower left in front of rover. The photo mosaic was stitched from raw images snapped on Sol 177, or Feb 3, 2013, by the robotic arm camera - accounting for foreground camera distortion. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Marco Di Lorenzo/KenKremer (kenkremer.com).
Curiosity Rover snapped this self portrait mosaic with the MAHLI camera while sitting on flat sedimentary rocks at the “John Klein” outcrop where the robot conducted historic first sample drilling inside the Yellowknife Bay basin, on Feb. 8 (Sol 182) at lower left in front of rover. The photo mosaic was stitched from raw images snapped on Sol 177, or Feb 3, 2013, by the robotic arm camera – accounting for foreground camera distortion. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Marco Di Lorenzo/KenKremer (kenkremer.com).

Watch this brief NASA JPL video for an explanation of Mars Solar Conjunction.

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Soviet Lander Spotted by Mars Orbiter

On May 28, 1971, the Soviet Union launched the Mars 3 mission which, like its previously-launched and ill-fated sibling Mars 2, consisted of an orbiter and lander destined for the Red Planet. Just over six months later on December 2, 1971, Mars 3 arrived at Mars — five days after Mars 2 crashed. The Mars 3 descent module separated from the orbiter and several hours later entered the Martian atmosphere, descending to the surface via a series of parachutes and retrorockets. (Sound familiar?) Once safely on the surface, the Mars 3 lander opened its four petal-shaped covers to release the 4.5-kg PROP-M rover contained inside… and after 20 seconds of transmission, fell silent. Due to unknown causes, the Mars 3 lander was never heard from or seen again.

Until now.

These images show what might be hardware from the Soviet Union's 1971 Mars 3 lander ( NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)
These images show what might be hardware from the Soviet Union’s 1971 Mars 3 lander (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)

The set of images above shows what might be hardware from the 1971 Soviet Mars 3 lander, seen in a pair of images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

While following news about Mars and NASA’s Curiosity rover, Russian citizen enthusiasts found four features in a five-year-old image from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that resemble four pieces of hardware from the Mars 3 mission: the parachute, heat shield, terminal retrorocket and lander. A follow-up image by the orbiter from last month shows the same features.

“Together, this set of features and their layout on the ground provide a remarkable match to what is expected from the Mars 3 landing, but alternative explanations for the features cannot be ruled out.”

– Alfred McEwen, HiRISE Principal Investigator

The Mars 3 lander (NSSDC)
The Mars 3 lander (NSSDC)

Vitali Egorov from St. Petersburg, Russia, heads the largest Russian Internet community about Curiosity. His subscribers did the preliminary search for Mars 3 via crowdsourcing. Egorov modeled what Mars 3 hardware pieces should look like in a HiRISE image, and the group carefully searched the many small features in this large image, finding what appear to be viable candidates in the southern part of the scene. Each candidate has a size and shape consistent with the expected hardware, and they are arranged on the surface as expected from the entry, descent and landing sequence.

“I wanted to attract people’s attention to the fact that Mars exploration today is available to practically anyone,” Egorov said. “At the same time we were able to connect with the history of our country, which we were reminded of after many years through the images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.”

The predicted Mars 3 landing site was at latitude 45 degrees south, longitude 202 degrees east, in Ptolemaeus Crater. HiRISE acquired a large image at this location in November 2007, and promising candidates for the hardware from Mars 3 were found on Dec. 31, 2012.

Candidate features of the Mars 3 retrorockets (top) and lander (bottom)
Candidate features of the Mars 3 retrorockets (top) and lander (bottom)

The candidate parachute is the most distinctive feature in the images (seen above at top.) It is an especially bright spot for this region, about 8.2 yards (7.5 meters) in diameter.

The parachute would have a diameter of 12 yards (11 meters) if fully spread out over the surface, so this is consistent.

“Together, this set of features and their layout on the ground provide a remarkable match to what is expected from the Mars 3 landing, but alternative explanations for the features cannot be ruled out,” said HiRISE Principal Investigator Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona, Tucson. “Further analysis of the data and future images to better understand the three-dimensional shapes may help to confirm this interpretation.”

Source: NASA/JPL

 

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Terran Fleet at Mars Takes a Break for Conjunction – Enjoy the Video and Parting View

Curiosity and Mount Sharp – Parting Shot ahead of Mars Solar Conjunction
Enjoy this parting view of Curiosity’s elevated robotic arm and drill staring at you; back dropped with her ultimate destination – Mount Sharp – in this panoramic vista of Yellowknife Bay basin snapped on March 23, Sol 223, by the rover’s navigation camera system. The raw images were stitched by Marco Di Lorenzo and Ken Kremer and colorized. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Marco Di Lorenzo/KenKremer (kenkremer.com)
See video below explaining Mars Solar Conjunction[/caption]

Earth’s science invasion fleet at Mars is taking a break from speaking with their handlers back on Earth.

Why ? Because as happens every 26 months, the sun has gotten directly in the way of Mars and Earth.

Earth, Mars and the Sun are lined up in nearly a straight line. The geometry is normal and it’s called ‘Mars Solar Conjunction’.

Conjunction officially started on April 4 and lasts until around May 1.

From our perspective here on Earth, Mars will be passing behind the Sun.

Watch this brief NASA JPL video for an explanation of Mars Solar Conjunction.

Therefore the Terran fleet will be on its own for the next month since the sun will be blocking nearly all communications.

In fact since the sun can disrupt and garble communications, mission controllers will be pretty much suspending transmissions and commands so as not to inadvertently create serious problems that could damage the fleet in a worst case scenario.

Right now there are a trio of orbiters and a duo of rovers from NASA and ESA exploring Mars.

The spacecraft include the Curiosity (MSL) and Opportunity (MER) rovers from NASA. Also the Mars Express orbiter from ESA and the Mars Odyssey (MO) and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) from NASA.

Geometry of Mars Solar Conjunction
Geometry of Mars Solar Conjunction

Because several of these robotic assets have been at Mars for nearly 10 years and longer, the engineering teams have a lot of experience with handling them during the month long conjunction period.

“This is our sixth conjunction for Odyssey,” said Chris Potts of JPL, mission manager for NASA’s Mars Odyssey, which has been orbiting Mars since 2001. “We have plenty of useful experience dealing with them, though each conjunction is a little different.”

But there is something new this go round.

“The biggest difference for this 2013 conjunction is having Curiosity on Mars,” Potts said. Odyssey and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter relay almost all data coming from Curiosity and the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, as well as conducting the orbiters’ own science observations.

The rovers and orbiters can continue working and collecting science images and spectral data.

But that data will all be stored in the on board memory for a post-conjunction playback starting sometime in May.

Ken Kremer

…………….

Learn more about Curiosity’s groundbreaking discoveries and NASA missions at Ken’s upcoming lecture presentations:

April 20/21 : “Curiosity and the Search for Life on Mars – (in 3-D)”. Plus Orion, SpaceX, Antares, the Space Shuttle and more! NEAF Astronomy Forum, Suffern, NY

April 28: “Curiosity and the Search for Life on Mars – (in 3-D)”. Plus the Space Shuttle, SpaceX, Antares, Orion and more. Washington Crossing State Park, Titusville, NJ, 130 PM

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Curiosity’s Landing Leftovers

During its “seven minutes of terror” landing on August 6, 2012, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory dropped quite a few things down onto the Martian surface: pieces from the cruise stage, a heat shield, a parachute, the entry capsule’s backshell, a sky crane, one carefully-placed rover (obviously) and also eight tungsten masses — weights used for ballast and orientation during the descent process.

Two 75 kilogram (165 lb) blocks were released near the top of the atmosphere and six 25 kg (55 lb) weights a bit farther down, just before the deployment of the parachute. The image above, an enhanced-color image from the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows the impact craters from four of these smaller tungsten masses in high resolution. This is part of a surface scan acquired on Jan. 29, 2013.

These four craters are part of a chain of six from all the 55 kg weights. See below for context:

CLICK TO PLAY - Before-and-after images of the 55 kg-mass landing sites (NASA/JPL/MSSS)
CLICK TO PLAY – Before-and-after images of the 55 kg-mass landing sites (NASA/JPL/MSSS)

Captured by MRO’s Context Camera shortly after the rover landed, the animation above shows the impact site of all six 55 kg masses. These impacted the Martian surface about 12 km (7.5 miles) from the Curiosity rover’s landing site.

A mosaic has been assembled showing potential craters from the larger ballast blocks as well as other, smaller pieces of the cruise stage. Check it out below or download the full 50mb image here.

HiRISE images of MSL's impact craters (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)
HiRISE images of MSL’s impact craters (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

As Alfred McEwen wrote in his article on the University of Arizona’s HiRISE site: “most of the stuff we sent to Mars crashed on the surface–everything except the Curiosity rover.”

 

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First Color Image of Curiosity’s Tracks from Orbit

HiRISE image of Curiosity’s tracks, landing zone and the MSL rover at John Klein outcrop (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

As Curiosity prepares for the historic first drilling operation on Mars, the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured an image of it from 271 km (169 miles) up, along with twin lines of tracks and the blast marks from the dramatic rocket-powered descent back on August 6 (UTC).

The image here was acquired on Jan. 13, Sol 157 of the MSL mission, as part of a dual HiRISE/CRISM observation of the landing site. According to The University of Arizona’s HiRISE site it’s the first time the rover’s tracks have been imaged in color.

Her original landing site can be seen at the right edge. (Wait… did I just say “her?”)

The pair of bright white spots in the HiRISE image show the area immediately below where sky crane’s rockets were pointed. Those areas were “blasted clean” and therefore show brightest. The larger dark scour zone is dark because the fine dust has been blown away from the area leaving darker materials.

– Ross A. Beyer, UofA HiRISE team

Curiosity can be seen as she (yes, it was confirmed today during ScienceOnline2013 that the rover — like all exploration vehicles — is a girl) was preparing for drilling into a rock outcrop called John Klein within the “Yellowknife” region in Gale Crater. Drilling is expected to begin today, Jan. 31.

MSL detail hirise

Orbital view (detail) of Curiosity at her drilling site in Yellowknife. Image was rotated so north is up. (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

Read more about the first drilling to be performed on Mars in this article by Ken Kremer, and see more news from the MSL mission here.

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Giant Spiders on Mars!

Eek, spiders! All right, so it’s not actually little green arachnids we’re talking about here, but they are definitely spidery features. Called araneiform terrain, these clusters of radially-branching cracks in Mars’ south polar surface are the result of the progressing spring season, when warmer temperatures thaw subsurface CO2 ice.

As dry ice below the surface warms it can sublimate rapidly and burst through the frozen ground above, creating long cracks. If the material below is dark it can be carried upwards by the escaping gas, staining the surface.

Each dark splotch is around 100 meters wide.

This image was acquired by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on September 26, from a distance of 262 km (163.8 miles). See the full-size scan here, and check out more recent HiRISE images in the November PDS release here.

Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

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What Curiosity Looks Like From 200 Kilometers Up

Here’s a look down at Curiosity from the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, orbiting approximately  200 km (125 miles) above the surface of Mars. This new image, released today, shows the rover inside Gale Crater surrounded by a skirt of blue-tinted material, including several bright radiating marks –the  result of the descent stage rockets clearing layers of dust from the surface.

In this exaggerated-color view the blue indicates material of a different texture and composition than the surrounding area. HiRISE captures images in visible light wavelengths as well as near-infrared, which we can’t see. To us, the blue material would look grey.

North is up, and Curiosity’s ultimate exploration target, Gale Crater’s central peak, Mount Sharp, is off frame to the lower right.

Click here for a full-size version of the HiRISE image scan, showing the scene above plus some areas further north and south — including portions of the dark dune fields visible in recent images from Curiosity.

It’s nice to know that Curiosity has friends in high places!

Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

 

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Ice Sculptures Fill The Deepest Parts of Mars

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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 surface that looks like overworked modeling clay or pulled taffy… or, with a bit of imagination, the melted, mesmerizing contents of a party light from another era.

At 1,400 miles (2,300 km) across, Mars’ Hellas Basin is one of the largest impact craters in the entire Solar System. Its vast interior sinks to a depth of about 23,000 feet (7152 meters) below Mars’ average surface elevation (Martian “sea level”, if you will) and thus its floor is often shrouded by haze and dust, making visual imaging difficult.

The “lava lamp” terrain is just one of many different types of landforms that are found in the basin, although many of these banded features are found in the northwest area — which is also the deepest part of the basin. If there had been water in the region at some point in the planet’s history, it would have concentrated there.

Although the texture at first appears as if it could be volcanic in origin, it’s thought that flowing water or ice may actually be the source.

Researchers are currently working to determine how the Hellas Basin became so smoothly sculpted. Nicolas Thomas, Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Bern, Switzerland, told Universe Today:

“There are a lot of very interesting images from this area and we are trying to get more data (including stereo) to understand better what’s going on and to try to establish what process is responsible for the numerous bizarre features we see. We are hoping to make some more progress in the next few months.”

Example of banded terrain. Compare the relatively fresh appearance of the bands with the older terrain seen to the left of this sub-image. (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/N. Thomas et al.)

This hypothesis is also in line with the possibility of Hellas Basin having once been a giant lake.

“Together with the observations of isolated areas and the lack of obvious caldera(s), it is difficult to envisage a volcanic origin for these features and we currently tend towards a mechanism involving ice,” Thomas stated in an abstract of a presentation given at the Europlanet Conference in 2010.

Read the full abstract here, and see this and more high-resolution images from Mars on the HiRISE website.

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MRO Spots Martian Dunes in Motion

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The benefit of long-term observations from orbit became evident today with the release of images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter showing the subtly shifting motion of large sand dunes on the red planet, proving that the surface of Mars is much more dynamic than previously believed!

The atmosphere of Mars is extremely thin – only 1% as dense as Earth’s. This means that Martian winds would seem barely perceptible to a human, and has to blow at high speeds to move even the smallest particles on its surface.

Although scientists have known that Mars contains many dunes and vast expanses of sandy regions it has been assumed that these features must move very slowly – if at all – due to the thin air.

“We used to think of the sand on Mars as relatively immobile, so these new observations are changing our whole perspective.”

– Nathan Bridges, lead author

A rippled dune near Herschel crater undulates in the thin Martian wind. (Click to play.)

Now, images taken at different intervals by the MRO’s HiRISE camera have been seen to clearly show the shifting motion of several large sand dune features (called bedforms) in various locations on Mars.

“Mars either has more gusts of wind than we knew about before, or the winds are capable of transporting more sand,” said Nathan Bridges, planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory and lead author of a paper published online in the journal Geology. “We used to think of the sand on Mars as relatively immobile, so these new observations are changing our whole perspective.”

Sandy particles on Earth that could be moved by a 10 mph breeze would require an 80 mph gust of Martian wind. Weather data and climate models have shown that such winds should be rare on Mars; these recent findings by MRO indicate that either high-speed winds are more common than once thought or else they are more capable of moving sand around… or a combination of both!

Not all of Mars’ dunes are so restless, though. The study showed that there are regions that show no movement.

“The sand dunes where we didn’t see movement today could have larger grains, or perhaps their surface layers are cemented together,” Bridges said. “These studies show the benefit of long-term monitoring at high resolution.”

Ten years ago the belief was that dunes on Mars are either static or move too slowly to detect. Thanks to MRO and the HiRISE team – and the authors of this new paper – we now know that idea is all just dust in the wind.

Read more on the NASA MRO news release.

 

Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Ariz./JHUAPL

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Proof! Bio Station Alpha is Just an Image Artifact

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It’s time for another episode of “Conspiracy Theory of the Week.” This one involves a supposed secret space station on Mars. The You Tube video showing “Bio Station Alpha” (below) went viral and was even reported on some mainstream media outlets. The station is supposedly a 700 ft x 150 ft structure on Mars and by some accounts is colored white with blue and red stripes. It was found on Google Mars by an “armchair astronaut” and breathless conspiracy bloggers have touted this as the most important discovery on Mars yet, and “proof!” that NASA is hiding their activities.

In reality, this is not a space station, a Mars base or any type of structure – created or natural — on the surface of the Red Planet. What shows up in this location on Google Mars is just a smattering of about 11 bad pixels from data dropout – a linear streak artifact likely caused by a cosmic ray hitting the Mars Express spacecraft while it was taking the image – and then that smudge has been badly distorted through image processing when it became part of Google Mars.

“This looks like a cosmic ray hit,” said Tanya Harrison, planetary scientist on the science operations team for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Context Camera (CTX) and Mars Color Imager (MARCI) at Malin Space Science Systems. “We see these from time to time in the MARCI data from MRO.”

Here’s the image that is seen on Google Mars after processing, which includes very noticeable compression artifacts:

And now here’s the original image taken by the Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera image (H5620_0000_ND), taken on May 18, 2008 (and here’s the link to the original image):

Original Mars Express HRSC image of the location in question on Mars. Credit: ESA

This image really makes it clear this is an image artifact from a cosmic ray hit.

Here’s the same location taken by the MRO Context Camera (CTX) on January 25, 2010 (a crop of the same location as seen above from the original large CTX image, available here):

MRO's Context Camera (CTX) image MRO CTX B17_016407_2528_XN_72N029W of the same location. Credit: MSSS

In this image, each pixel represents a distance of about 6.25 meters, a higher resolution than what is available from the Mars Express spacecraft, which takes images at 10 meters per pixel. Obviously, there is no structure or anything unusual at that location, except for the northern polar sand dunes.

Harrison explained that the CTX acquires grayscale (black & white) images at 6 meters per pixel scale over a swath 30 kilometers wide and provides context images for the MRO HiRISE and CRISM cameras, which can take even higher resolution images. It is used to monitor changes occurring on the planet, and help the science team select critical science targets. The team at Malin Space Science Systems pores over the images looking for anything unusual. In this case, at this location, they found nothing.

“Every day, the images we acquired with CTX and MARCI the previous day are inspected by multiple sets of eyes,” Harrison told Universe Today. “We look at every single image for multiple reasons: checking the health of the instrument, monitoring weather conditions for future targeting of the cameras, and looking for anything geologically interesting.”

Harrison added that nearly all the operations folks on the team have Master’s degrees or Ph.D.s in geology or a related field.

“If we spot anything out of the ordinary, we look at previous images of the area, not just from CTX and MARCI, but from the Mars Global Survery’s Mars Orbiter Camera, the THEMIS VIS and IR on the Mars Odyssey spacecraft, the HRSC on Mars Express, and Viking,” Harrison said. “This lets us look at the features at different illumination angles, times of day, resolutions, etc. We know better than to speculate on something below the resolution of our cameras, so if we see something in CTX that’s worth following up on at a higher resolution, we ask HiRISE to shoot it. The same thing was true for MOC, following up on things observed in the low-resolution wide angle images with high-resolution narrow angle images.”

Clearly, this region has been imaged and examined previously, with absolutely nothing found by the top experts in the field. The region is so uninteresting that no one has requested for HiRISE — which can take images of 1-2 meters per pixel — to take any images of this area.

Harrison said CTX takes images of Mars that are up to 30 km wide and over 300 km long at a very high resolution. “This is a pretty big footprint with a relatively high resolution compared to previous cameras!” she said. “The size of that footprint has allowed us to cover over 60% of Mars at 6 meters per pixel in the 5 years MRO has been orbiting Mars. In addition to mapping, we use CTX to acquire stereo coverage of key areas, as well as to monitor hundreds of locations on Mars for changes such as new impact craters and dust activity.”

If there were something unusual on Mars, the people at NASA, ESA, MSSS and anyone monitoring Mars would have imaged this site repeatedly with the best cameras available. They would love to find something unusual, groundbreaking and front-page worthy, and if they did would be shouting it from the rooftops, not hiding it.

You can hear Harrison talk about how the images taken by the various Mars orbiters require meticulous planning, on the June 1, 2011 episode of 365 Days of Astronomy.

MSSS is comprised of several small groups which all contribute to designing, building, and operating cameras on orbiters and rovers at other planets.

If you want to see the image artifact on Google Mars, here are the coordinates: 71 49’19.73?N 29 33’06.53?W

And, if you must, here’s the video by David Martinez: