Tag: Mars

Curiosity moves on

9:18 am

After six months and a short pause in work while engineers analyzed a short circuit, Curiosity has finally left the Pahrump Hills are on the slopes of Mount Sharp.

The rover has begun driving away from the Pahrump Hills outcrop where it had spent the last six months. On Thursday, March 12, it drove about 33 feet (about 10 meters) southwestward. The rover team plans on taking Curiosity through a valley called “Artist’s Drive” to reach higher geological layers of Mount Sharp. Curiosity is currently heading towards a rock outcrop known as “Garden City.”

The link has a nice image showing Curiosity’s recent travels as well as its future route.

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Drill design flaw source of short circuit on Curiosity

9:47 am

NASA engineers have confirmed that the rover’s drill is the source of the intermittent short circuit that forced them to shut down Curiosity temporarily.

“The most likely cause is an intermittent short in the percussion mechanism of the drill,” Erickson said in a statement. (Curiosity’s drill doesn’t simply rotate; it hammers into rock, via that percussion mechansism, as well.) “After further analysis to confirm that diagnosis, we will be analyzing how to adjust for that in future drilling.” A brief short occurred during a test on Thursday (March 5) that used the drill’s percussive action, NASA officials explained.

This is not a surprise, as it has been known since before launch that a design flaw in the drill could cause short circuits, possibly serious enough to permanently shut down the rover. They have thus used the drill much less than they had originally planned, and with great care.

Once they get a handle on the specifics causing this short, they say that Curiosity will go back into operation. However, I suspect that they may no longer use the drill, or if they do, they will use it under very very very limited circumstances.

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New images from Mangalyaan

10:18 am

Arsia Mons

Indian scientists have released a new set of color images taken by their Mars orbiter, Mangalyaan.

The image on the right is of Arsia Mons, one of the three giant volcanoes to the east of Mars’ biggest volcano, Olympus Mons. Arsia Mons is important for future manned colonization, as there are known caves on its western flanks. In addition, those western flanks show solid evidence of past glaciers, which means that it is very likely that those caves will harbor significant quantities of water-ice, making settlement much easier.

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The oceans that Mars lost

12:47 pm

The lost oceans of Mars

New data from a six year study of the water in the modern Martian atmosphere have allowed scientists to estimate the amount of water Mars once had.

About four billion years ago, the young planet would have had enough water to cover its entire surface in a liquid layer about 140 metres deep, but it is more likely that the liquid would have pooled to form an ocean occupying almost half of Mars’s northern hemisphere, and in some regions reaching depths greater than 1.6 kilometres. “Our study provides a solid estimate of how much water Mars once had, by determining how much water was lost to space,” said Geronimo Villanueva, a scientist working at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, USA, and lead author of the new paper.

The image on the right is an artist’s conception of the oceans that would have existed on Mars, based on modern elevation data.

I must note that this conclusion, the size of the lost Martian ocean, is based on the assumption that the isotope ratios of Martian water started out the same as the Earth’s. While this is a reasonable assumption, it does not have to be true. Nonetheless, these conclusions, using ground-based telescopes, do match up with similar data obtained by Curiosity.

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NASA picks landing site for next Mars lander

8:51 am

NASA scientists have chosen a specific region of Mars, Elysium Planitia, to land its next Mars science probe.

The landing-site selection process evaluated four candidate locations selected in 2014. The quartet is within the flat-lying “Elysium Planitia,” less than five degrees north of the equator, and all four appear safe for InSight’s landing. The single site will continue to be analyzed in coming months for final selection later this year. If unexpected problems with this site are found, one of the others would be imaged and could be selected. The favored site is centered at about four degrees north latitude and 136 degrees east longitude.

InSight launches next year.

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NASA considering ion engines for next Mars orbiter

9:40 am

Rather than using conventional chemical thrusters for a Mars orbiter planned for the 2020s, NASA managers are considering using ion engines instead.

Worried its fleet of Mars orbiter is aging, NASA intends to dispatch the spacecraft to the red planet in September 2022 to link ground controllers with rovers and extend mapping capabilities expected to be lost when the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter stops functioning.

Engineers also want to add ion engines to the orbiter and fly the efficient electrically-powered thruster system to Mars for the first time, testing out a solar-electric propulsion package that officials say will be needed when astronauts visit the red planet. Ion engines produce just a whisper of thrust, using electric power to ionize atoms of a neutral gas and spit out the particles at high speed. While the drive given by the thrusters is barely noticeable in one instant, they can operate for months or years, burning scant fuel compared to traditional chemical rockets.

That this decision requires long-winded and extended high level negotiations at NASA illustrates the slow and lumbering nature of government. Private enterprise is embracing ion engines now, and NASA itself is seeing its own spectacular ion engine success with Dawn. The decision should be a no-brainer, especially because the benefits of ion engines (low weight, more power, greater flexibility) are so obvious.

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Curiosity in trouble?

9:05 am

The Mars rover Curiosity has temporarily ceased work as engineers investigate what appears to be a short circuit in its electrical system.

The space agency said Tuesday that the electrical problem was discovered over the weekend as Curiosity tried to transfer bits of powder from a rock that it had drilled into. The short circuit stopped the rover’s robotic arm. Engineers are diagnosing the issue, and the testing is expected to take several days.

The worrisome components of this story are the words “short circuit” and “drill”, because of a known design flaw in the electrical system of the rover’s drill. It could very well be that this flaw, which could cause a short that could bring down the rover, is the cause of this electrical problem.

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Methane does exist in the Martian atmosphere

6:32 pm

The uncertainty of science: Curiosity has confirmed the presence, and fluctuation, of methane in the local Martian atmosphere.

SAM [Sample Analysis at Mars, one of Curiosity’s instruments] has been detecting basal levels of methane concentration of around 0,7 ppbv, and has confirmed an event of episodic increase of up to ten times this value during a period of sixty soles (Martian days), i.e., of about 7 ppvb. The new data are based on observations during almost one Martian year (almost two Earth years), included in the initial prediction for the duration of the mission (nominal mission), during which Curiosity has surveyed about 8 kms in the basin of the Gale crater.

Since methane has a short life expectancy, something must be doing something to generate it.

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Jet lag is worse on Mars

9:45 am

Research and actual experience has found that adjusting to the slightly longer Martian day is not as easy as you would think.

If you’re on Mars, or at least work by a Mars clock, you have to figure out how to put up with the exhausting challenge of those extra 40 minutes. To be exact, the Martian day is 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35 seconds long, a length of day that doesn’t coincide with the human body’s natural rhythms. Scientists, Mars rover drivers, and everyone else in the space community call the Martian day a “sol” to differentiate it from an Earth day. While it doesn’t seem like a big difference, that extra time adds up pretty quickly. It’s like heading west by two time zones every three days. Call it “rocket lag.”

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How to drill rocks on Mars

9:02 am

Engineers have found that to properly drill on Mars, Curiosity need only use its lowest power settings.

The new drilling procedures essentially call for the rover to use its lowest energy setting right from the beginning, rather than starting with a setting a few levels up. Curiosity has six settings on its drill that have a nearly 20-fold range in energy. The drill has only been used three times before Curiosity reached Mount Sharp (Aeolis Mons), its ultimate science goal, late last year.

On those three occasions and when the drill was used once at Mount Sharp, Curiosity began its investigations at the drill’s Level 4. The first rock probed at Mount Sharp broke under this pressure. The new algorithm instead starts at Level 1 and only progresses upwards if drilling proves too slow.

The engineers have found that the rocks they have drilled into on Mars have been more fragile that expected, which actually shouldn’t be a surprise, due to the lower gravity. In fact, this one simple fact probably reveals a great deal of important information to geologists about the geology of Mars and how it formed.

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Work stalls on Mars One robotic missions

7:03 pm

Mars One, the company that just this week announced the 100 finalists in its competition to send 24 people on a one-way trip to Mars, has quietly suspended all work on two robotic missions heralded as precursors to that manned mission.

These facts just add weight to my conviction that the Mars One competition is at the moment nothing more than a reality television show. It is a cool idea for a television show, but journalists should stop selling it as anything more than that.

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