Tag: Mars

The first preliminary list of candidate landing sites for NASA’s next Mars rover have been proposed.

9:59 am

The first preliminary list of candidate landing sites for NASA’s next Mars rover have been proposed.

At the conclusion of the workshop, attendees voted informally on the nearly 30 candidate sites that researchers had presented—ranking the sites as being of high, medium, or low scientific interest. Floating to the top was a site called Northeast Syrtis Major, a terrain at the edge of the Isidis Basin, the remnant of one of Mars’s biggest and most ancient asteroid impacts. Jack Mustard, a planetary scientist at Brown University and an advocate for the site, says material from the impact could offer a precise date for that event. Scientists also want a piece of nearby lava flows, thought to have oozed out and cooled several hundred million years later.

Nothing is even close to being decided yet, however.

In related news, a new study suggests that dozens of microbes might have stowed away on Curiosity when it left for Mars.

Emphasis must be placed on the word “suggests” however.

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Engineers commanded Curiosity to drill its third drill hole on Tuesday on what looks like an outcrop of sandstone in Gale Crater.

9:22 am

Engineers commanded Curiosity to drill its third drill hole on Tuesday on what looks like an outcrop of sandstone in Gale Crater.

This hole is shallow and is merely a test to see if a deeper full bore would be worthwhile geological.

That Curiosity has only drilled three holes, and is now only doing a test bore first is partly because engineers fear that using the drill too much will cause a short circuit that will disable the rover entirely. This fear is because of a design flaw in the construction of the rover and the drill.

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Budget issues continue to threaten a number of successfully functioning science spacecraft, including Opportunity on Mars and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter circling the Moon.

9:51 am

Penny wise, pound foolish: Budget issues continue to threaten a number of successfully functioning science spacecraft, including Opportunity on Mars and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter circling the Moon.

Don’t be surprised if NASA announces soon that they are shutting down these spacecraft so they can save some money. Or as the article notes, “Money not spent on these extended missions will probably slide into [the Science Mission Directorate’s] Black Hole of Funding (the James Webb Space Telescope) or be dissipated on new paperwork, committee meetings and concept studies.”

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New research suggests that, in general, Mars has always been too cold to harbor liquid water on its surface.

9:35 am

The uncertainty of science: New research suggests that, in general, Mars has always been too cold to harbor liquid water on its surface for long periods.

Mars’ atmosphere was probably never thick enough to keep temperatures on the planet’s surface above freezing for the long term, suggests research published today in Nature Geoscience1. Although the planet’s topography indicates that liquid water has flooded Mars in the distant past, evidence increasingly suggests that those episodes reflect occasional warm spells, not a consistently hospitable phase of the planet’s history.

The research does not say that liquid water never flowed on the Martian surface, only that such events were short-lived. They looked at craters and noted that the surface has impacts from meteorites that would not have survived to the surface had the atmosphere been thick enough for liquid water.

The research however did not address Mars’ relatively smooth northern hemisphere, where there are not a lot of craters and where some scientists think there might once have been a shallow ocean. If Mars never had liquid water for long periods, why does this area lack craters?

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Scientists from the joint European/Russian ExoMars rover mission have narrowed their candidate landing sites to four.

9:43 am

Scientists from the joint European/Russian ExoMars rover mission have narrowed their candidate landing sites to four.

Last week, 60 scientists met at ESA’s European Space Astronomy Centre near Madrid to discuss eight potential sites. On 27 March, they cast an informal vote, and four sites emerged as favourites: Mawrth Vallis, Oxia Planum, Hypanis Vallis and Oxia Palus. An expert working group tasked with recommending a final landing site will now consider the proposals, before announcing a formal shortlist of three or four sites in June. Following detailed studies of the shortlisted sites, the panel will make a single recommendation to ESA and Roscosmos in late 2016.

This is maybe the most risky mission to Mars in decades, as the landing design is coming from the Russians, who have not had a successful interplanetary mission since the era of the Soviet Union, and even then had a 100% failure rate for their missions to Mars. (On a more optimistic note, the European Mars Express mission used a Russian rocket to take off, making it the first Mars mission with Russians participation that actually succeeded.)

One of the factors that has made this mission more risky is the fact that the U.S. was once a participant and backed out very late in the game. The Russians are our replacement, and have had to scramble to catch up.

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