NASA Mars Rover Curiosity Begins Arm-Work Phase

Before completing its final flight on the back of a 747 on September 20 the Space Shuttle Endeavour will visit the Bay Area, flying low over NASA Ames Research Center and possibly other area landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge. Endeavour will begin its multi-day cross-country journey by taking off near dawn on September 17 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The final stop of Endeavour’s tour will be Los Angeles International Airport, 12 miles way from its new museum home at the California Science Center.

Although the exact timing and path of the ferry flight will depend on weather conditions and operational constraints, the piggybacked duo are scheduled to conduct low-level flyovers of several locations along the planned flight path. These include the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and Patrick Air Force Base, in and around the Florida spaceport; NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi and the agency's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans; Houston, Clear Lake and Galveston, near NASA's Johnson Space Center; White Sands Test Facility near Las Cruces, N.M.; NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, and various landmarks in multiple California cities. Social media users are encouraged by NASA to share their Endeavour sightings using the hashtags #spottheshuttle and #OV105, Endeavour’s orbiter vehicle designation.

After arriving at LAX, the shuttle will be removed from its 747 carrier aircraft and spend a few weeks in a United Airlines hanger being prepared for transportation and display. Endeavour then will travel through Inglewood and Los Angeles city streets on a 12-mile journey from the airport to the science center, arriving in the evening on Oct. 13. Beginning Oct. 30, the shuttle will be on display in the California Science Center's Samuel Oschin Space Shuttle Endeavour Display Pavilion.

Read more

NASA's Mars rover may be in for blind landing

NASA's new Mars rover is heading for a risky do-or-die touchdown next month to assess conditions for life on the planet, but the U.S. space agency may not know for hours whether it arrived safely, managers said on Monday.

That's because the satellite that NASA was counting on for real-time coverage of the Mars Science Laboratory's descent into Gale Crater, located near the planet's equator, was sidelined last month by a maneuvering system glitch.

Managers were able to recover the satellite, but it is now in a different orbit than intended, which may make it unable to view and record the rover's seven-minute descent and landing.

Two other spacecraft orbiting Mars will be monitoring the probe's arrival, but one records data for later playback and the other won't be aligned to see the last minute of flight, NASA's Mars exploration program chief Doug McCuistion told reporters.

"We're assessing what the issues are," McCuistion said. "There's no impact to landing itself. It's simply how that data gets returned to us and how timely that data is."

Mars Science Lab, nicknamed Curiosity, is scheduled to land at 1:31 a.m. EDT (0531 GMT) on August 6 inside an 96-mile (155-km) wide impact basin that may be one of the final resting places for Mars' lost surface water.

The planet, which is about 1.5 times as far away from the sun as Earth, is a cold, dry and acidic desert today. But that was not always the case.

Previous orbiters, landers and rovers have turned up solid evidence of water, including geologic features such as channels, as well as chemical fingerprints of clays and minerals that on Earth form when rock interacts with water.Gale Crater is one of the lowest places on Mars.

SEARCHING FOR WATER

"It's like a little bowl, capturing any water that may have been present there," said project scientist John Grotzinger, with the California Institute of Technology. "Water flows downhill, and if you don't know anything else in advance, that's where you want to go to find evidence of water."

Curiosity is after more than water, however. To support Earth-like life, an environment needs water, an energy source, like the sun or chemical energy, and carbon.

The goal of the mission, designed to last two years, is to assess whether Gale Crater had all the ingredients at the right time and in the right places for microbial life to arise and be preserved.

The basin sports a 3-mile (5-km) high mound of what appears to be layers of sediment, which at one time might have completely filled the crater.

"One of the main reasons why we're going to Mars is to figure out whether life ever started there," said NASA's lead Mars scientist Michael Meyer.

"If in the second place in our solar system that we think life has a possibility and actually did start there, my conclusion would be that life is easy, it's a natural process and the universe is just littered with places that have life," Meyer said.

Weighing in at about a ton, Curiosity is too big for the landing bags and thruster rockets that were designed to let previous probes to Mars touch down gently down on its surface.

Read more

100 Days and Counting to NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover Landing

At 10:31 p.m. PDT today, April 27, (1:31 p.m. EDT), NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, carrying the one-ton Curiosity rover, will be within 100 days from its appointment with the Martian surface. At that moment, the mission has about 119 million miles (191 million kilometers) to go and is closing at a speed of 13,000 mph (21,000 kilometers per hour).

"Every day is one day closer to the most challenging part of this mission," said Pete Theisinger, Mars Science Laboratory project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Landing an SUV-sized vehicle next to the side of a mountain 85 million miles from home is always stimulating. Our engineering and science teams continue their preparations for that big day and the surface operations to follow."

On Sunday, April 22, a week-long operational readiness test concluded at JPL. The test simulated aspects of the mission's early surface operations. Mission planners and engineers sent some of the same commands they will send to the real Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars to a test rover used at JPL.

"Our test rover has a central computer identical to Curiosity's currently on its way to Mars," said Eric Aguilar, the mission's engineering test lead at JPL. "We ran all our commands through it and watched to make sure it drove, took pictures and collected samples as expected by the mission planners. It was a great test and gave us a lot of confidence moving forward."

The Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft, launched Nov. 26, 2011, will deliver Curiosity to the surface of Mars on the evening of Aug. 5, 2012, PDT (early on Aug. 6, Universal Time and EDT) to begin a two-year prime mission. Curiosity's landing site is near the base of a mountain inside Gale Crater, near the Martian equator. Researchers plan to use Curiosity to study layers in the mountain that hold evidence about wet environments of early Mars. 

Read more

NASA raids other budgets to fund Mars effort

WASHINGTON — NASA is starting the planning process for its scaled-back robotic Mars exploration program immediately and will use 2012 funds previously slotted for work on outer planets missions to shore up the effort.

NASA will spend about $30 million in 2012 on its retooled Mars exploration program, a cross-agency effort known in budget documents as Mars Next Generation.

In total, NASA plans to spend about $700 million on the mission. It is tentatively penciled in for launch in either 2018 or 2020. Mars Next Generation was conceived to fill the void NASA's planetary science program created after big cuts in the White House's 2013 budget request forced NASA's exit from the joint ExoMars sample cache-and-return campaign with the European Space Agency and Russia. Those missions remain slated for 2016 and 2018.

"NASA is committed to develop an integrated strategy to ensure that the next steps for the robotic Mars exploration program will support science, as well as longer-term human exploration and technology goals," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden wrote in a Feb. 13 letter to lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Bolden's letter accompanied NASA's 2012 operating plan, a copy of which was obtained by Space News.

Of the $30 million NASA is spending on Mars Next Generation planning this year, $20 million will come from money the agency expects to have left after paying to close out its ExoMars work and fund ongoing missions. The other $10 million is being taken from the Planetary Science Division's outer planets program, which is being downsized as NASA tables plans for a large-scale mission to a planetary destination beyond Mars.

Another $24 million was diverted from outer planets for "foundational technology work on critical sensor development in support of the revised future Mars mission as well as other future planetary missions, as recommended by the recent decadal survey," according to the operating plan.

NASA has to date spent about $45 million on four instruments for the 2016 ExoMars mission. That work will cease once all the instruments reach preliminary design review, Jim Green, NASA's planetary science director, said. Closeout costs for the 2016 instrument programs will not be known until later, Bolden said in his letter to lawmakers.

Diamond Earrings

Read more

Durable NASA Rover Beginning Ninth Year of Mars Work

Eight years after landing on Mars for what was planned as a three-month mission, NASA's enduring Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is working on what essentially became a new mission five months ago.

Opportunity reached a multi-year driving destination, Endeavour Crater, in August 2011. At Endeavour's rim, it has gained access to geological deposits from an earlier period of Martian history than anything it examined during its first seven years. It also has begun an investigation of the planet's deep interior that takes advantage of staying in one place for the Martian winter.

Opportunity landed in Eagle Crater on Mars on Jan. 25, 2004, Universal Time and EST (Jan. 24, PST), three weeks after its rover twin, Spirit, landed halfway around the planet. In backyard-size Eagle Crater, Opportunity found evidence of an ancient wet environment. The mission met all its goals within the originally planned span of three months. During most of the next four years, it explored successively larger and deeper craters, adding evidence about wet and dry periods from the same era as the Eagle Crater deposits.

In mid-2008, researchers drove Opportunity out of Victoria Crater, half a mile (800 meters) in diameter, and set course for Endeavour Crater, 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter.

"Endeavour is a window further into Mars' past," said Mars Exploration Rover Program Manager John Callas, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

The trek took three years. In a push to finish it, Opportunity drove farther during its eighth year on Mars -- 4.8 miles (7.7 kilometers) -- than in any prior year, bringing its total driving distance to 21.4 miles (34.4 kilometers).

The "Cape York" segment of Endeavour's rim, where Opportunity has been working since August 2011, has already validated the choice of Endeavour as a long-term goal. "It's like starting a new mission, and we hit pay dirt right out of the gate," Callas said.

The first outcrop that Opportunity examined on Cape York differs from any the rover had seen previously. Its high zinc content suggests effects of water. Weeks later, at the edge of Cape York, a bright mineral vein identified as hydrated calcium sulfate provided what the mission's principal investigator, Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., calls "the clearest evidence for liquid water on Mars that we have found in our eight years on the planet."

Mars years last nearly twice as long as Earth years. Entering its ninth Earth year on Mars, Opportunity is also heading into its fifth Martian winter. Its solar panels have accumulated so much dust since Martian winds last cleaned them -- more than in previous winters -- the rover needs to stay on a sun-facing slope to have enough energy to keep active through the winter.

The rover team has not had to use this strategy with Opportunity in past winters, though it did so with Spirit, farther from the equator, for the three Martian winters that Spirit survived. By the beginning of the rovers' fourth Martian winter, drive motors in two of Spirit's six wheels had ceased working, long past their design lifespan. The impaired mobility kept the rover from maneuvering to an energy-favorable slope. Spirit stopped communicating in March 2010.

All six of Opportunity's wheels are still useful for driving, but the rover will stay on an outcrop called "Greeley Haven" until mid-2012 to take advantage of the outcrop's favorable slope and targets of scientific interest during the Martian winter. After the winter, or earlier if wind cleans dust off the solar panels, researchers plan to drive Opportunity in search of clay minerals that a Mars orbiter's observations indicate lie on Endeavour's rim.

Diamond Earrings

Read more

NASA Prepares for Mars Rover Launch: Here's How You Can Watch

On Friday, November 25 at 10:25 am EST (7:25 am Pacific), the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission will rocket into the sky on a 191-foot-tall Atlas V rocket and begin its mission to Mars. While the MSL rover, Curiosity, is currently sitting on top of the Atlas V rocket, NASA is making its final preparations for the first launch opportunity, and tweeters are preparing for a two-day launch tweetup.

The MSL is an extremely important Mars mission that will perform the first-ever precision landing--using a guided entry system--on Mars; analyze the soil for organic compounds; investigate the composition of the Martian surface; and determine the Martian atmospheric cycling and processes, as well as a number of other atmospheric conditions that could help determine the past and future habitability of Mars.

That last one is important--we may finally have the answer to whether life has ever existed on Mars.

According to NASA, Curiosity is twice as long and five times as heavy as previous Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity; it will also carry instruments that weigh 15 times as much as the previous Mars rover payloads, and according to the New York Times, the total cost of MSL is about $2.3 billion.

Currently, NASA is preparing for launching the mission on November 25th--the first launch opportunity. If weather or other conditions prevent launch then there will be other launch windows through the 18th of December of this year. The rover will land on Mars in August of 2012 and the mission will last for 686 Earth days.

Diamond Stud

Read more

NASA Orbiter Catches Mars Sand Dunes in Motion

PASADENA, Calif. -- Images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show sand dunes and ripples moving across the surface of Mars at dozens of locations and shifting up to several yards. These observations reveal the planet's sandy surface is more dynamic than previously thought.

"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 in Laurel, Md., and lead author of a paper on the finding 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."

While red dust is known to swirl all around Mars in storms and dust devils, the planet's dark sand grains are larger and harder to move. Less than a decade ago, scientists thought the dunes and ripples on Mars either did not budge or moved too slowly for detection.

MRO was launched in 2005. Initial images from the spacecraft's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera documented only a few cases of shifting sand dunes and ripples, collectively called bedforms. Now, after years of monitoring the Martian surface, the spacecraft has documented movements of a few yards (or meters) per year in dozens of locations across the planet.

The air on Mars is thin, so stronger gusts of wind are needed to push a grain of sand. Wind-tunnel experiments have shown that a patch of sand would take winds of about 80 mph (nearly 130 kilometers per hour) to move on Mars compared with only 10 mph (about 16 kilometers per hour) on Earth. Measurements from the meteorology experiments on NASA's Viking landers in the 1970s and early 1980s, in addition to climate models, showed such winds should be rare on Mars.

The first hints that Martian dunes move came from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, which operated from 1997 to 2006. But the spacecraft's cameras lacked the resolution to definitively detect the changes. NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers also detected hints of shifting sand when they touched down on the Red Planet's surface in 2004. The mission team was surprised to see grains of sand dotting the rovers' solar panels. They also witnessed the rovers' track marks filling in with sand.

"Sand moves by hopping from place to place," said Matthew Golombek, a co-author of the new paper and a member of the Mars Exploration Rover and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter teams at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Before the rovers landed on Mars, we had no clear evidence of sand moving."

Not all of the sand on Mars is blowing in the wind. The study also identifies several areas where the bedforms did not move.

"The sand dunes where we didn't see movement today could have larger grains, or perhaps their surface layers are cemented together," said Bridges, who also is a member of the HiRISE team. "These studies show the benefit of long-term monitoring at high resolution."
Diamond stud

Read more

NASA Research Team Reveals Moon Has Earth-Like Core

Uncovering details about the lunar core is critical for developing accurate models of the moon's formation. The data sheds light on the evolution of a lunar dynamo -- a natural process by which our moon may have generated and maintained its own strong magnetic field.

The team's findings suggest the moon possesses a solid, iron-rich inner core with a radius of nearly 150 miles and a fluid, primarily liquid-iron outer core with a radius of roughly 205 miles. Where it differs from Earth is a partially molten boundary layer around the core estimated to have a radius of nearly 300 miles. The research indicates the core contains a small percentage of light elements such as sulfur, echoing new seismology research on Earth that suggests the presence of light elements -- such as sulfur and oxygen -- in a layer around our own core.

The researchers used extensive data gathered during the Apollo-era moon missions. The Apollo Passive Seismic Experiment consisted of four seismometers deployed between 1969 and 1972, which recorded continuous lunar seismic activity until late-1977.

"We applied tried and true methodologies from terrestrial seismology to this legacy data set to present the first-ever direct detection of the moon's core," said Renee Weber, lead researcher and space scientist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

Two Asteroids to Pass by Earth

Two asteroids, several meters in diameter and in unrelated orbits, will pass within the moon's distance of Earth on Wednesday, Sept. 8.

Both asteroids should be observable near closest approach to Earth with moderate-sized amateur telescopes. Neither of these objects has a chance of hitting Earth. A 10-meter-sized near-Earth asteroid from the undiscovered population of about 50 million would be expected to pass almost daily within a lunar distance, and one might strike Earth's atmosphere about every 10 years on average.

The Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Ariz., discovered both objects on the morning of Sunday, Sept. 5, during a routine monitoring of the skies. The Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass., first received the observations Sunday morning, determined preliminary orbits and concluded that both objects would pass within the distance of the moon about three days after their discovery.

Near-Earth asteroid 2010 RX30 is estimated to be 32 to 65 feet (10 to 20 meters) in size and will pass within 0.6 lunar distances of Earth (about 154,000 miles, or 248,000 kilometers) at 2:51 a.m. PDT (5:51 a.m. EDT) Wednesday. The second object, 2010 RF12, estimated to be 20 to 46 feet (6 to 14 meters) in size, will pass within 0.2 lunar distances (about 49,088 miles or 79,000 kilometers) a few hours later at 2:12 p.m. PDT (5:12 pm EDT).

Second CME to Hit Earth's Magnetic Field

Another great image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) of the news-making solar event on August 1, 2010 resulting in two Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) launched in Earth's direction.

Earth's magnetic field is still reverberating from the CME impact of August 3rd, which sparked auroras as far south as Wisconsin and Iowa in the United States. Analysts believe a second CME is right behind it, due to arrive today. This second impact could re-energize the fading geomagnetic storm and spark a new round of Northern Lights.

MESSENGER Spacecraft Reveals New Information About Mercury

The first spacecraft designed by NASA to orbit Mercury is giving scientists a new perspective on the planet's atmosphere and evolution.

Launched in August 2004, the Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging spacecraft, known as MESSENGER, conducted a third and final flyby of Mercury in September 2009. The probe completed a critical maneuver using the planet's gravity to remain on course to enter into orbit around Mercury next year.

Data from the final flyby has revealed the first observations of ion emissions in Mercury's exosphere, or thin atmosphere; new information about the planet's magnetic substorms; and evidence of younger volcanic activity than previously recorded. The results are reported in three papers published online in the July 15 edition of Science Express.

The distribution of individual chemical elements that the spacecraft saw in Mercury’s exosphere varied around the planet. Detailed altitude profiles of those elements in the exosphere over the north and south poles of the planet were also measured for the first time.

"These profiles showed considerable variability among the sodium, calcium, and magnesium distributions, indicating that several processes are at work and that a given process may affect each element quite differently," said Ron Vervack, lead author of one of the papers and the spacecraft's participating scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory , in Laurel, Md.

In addition to flying by Mercury, the spacecraft flew past Earth in August 2005 and Venus in October 2006 and June 2007. Approximately 98 percent of Mercury's surface has been imaged by NASA spacecraft. After this spacecraft goes into orbit around Mercury for a yearlong study of the planet, it will observe the polar regions, which are the only unobserved areas of the planet.

The spacecraft was designed and built by APL. The mission is managed and operated by APL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Small Near-Earth Object Probably a Rocket Part

Scientists at NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have determined that a small object that safely passed Earth on May 21 is more than likely an upper-stage of a rocket that carried a spacecraft on an interplanetary trajectory.

"The orbit of this object is very similar to that of the Earth, and one would not expect an object to remain in this type of orbit for very long," said Paul Chodas, a scientist at NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Observations by astronomer S.J. Bus, using the NASA-sponsored Infrared Telescope Facility in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, indicate that 2010 KQ's spectral characteristics do not match any of the known asteroid types, and the object's absolute magnitude (28.9) suggests it is only a few meters in size.

2010 KQ was discovered by astronomer Richard Kowalski at the NASA-sponsored Catalina Sky Survey in the mountains just north of Tucson, Ariz., on May 16. Five days later, it made its closest approach to Earth at a distance just beyond the moon's orbit. The object is departing Earth's neighborhood but will be returning in 2036.

"At present, there is a 6 percent probability that 2010 KQ will enter our atmosphere over a 30-year period starting in 2036," said Chodas. "More than likely, additional observations of the object will refine its orbit and impact possibilities. Even in the unlikely event that this object is headed for impact with Earth, whether it is an asteroid or rocket body, it is so small that it would disintegrate in the atmosphere and not cause harm on the ground."

NASA detects, tracks and characterizes asteroids and comets passing close to Earth using both ground- and space-based telescopes. The Near-Earth Object Observations Program, commonly called "Spaceguard," discovers these objects, characterizes a subset of them, and plots their orbits to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.

New images show evidence of Ancient lake found on Mars

US researchers have uncovered traces of an ancient lake on Mars boosting hopes of discovering evidence that billions of years ago the Red planet hosted life.

The lake, which dates back some 3.4 billion years, appears to have covered as much as 80 square miles and was up to 1,500 feet deep, said the team from the University of Colorado.

"This is the 1st unambiguous evidence of shorelines on the surface of Mars," said Boulder's research associate, Gaetano Di Achille, in a study published in the latest edition of Geophysical Research Letters.



"The identification of the shorelines and accompanying geological evidence allows us to calculate the size and volume of the lake, which appears to have formed about 3.4 billion years ago."

Analysis of the images has shown the water carved out the canyon in which it was found, which then opened out into a valley depositing sediment which formed a delta.

"Finding shorelines is a holy grail of sorts to us," said assistant professor Brian Hynek, adding it showed the lake existed at a time when Mars was thought to have been cold and dry.

"Not only does this research prove there was a long-lived lake system on Mars, but we can see that the lake formed after the warm, wet period is thought to have dissipated."

Scientists believe the oldest surfaces on Mars formed during the wet and warm era known as the Noachan epoch, about 4.1 billion to 3.7 billion years ago, that featured a bombardment of large meteors and extensive flooding.

The newly discovered lake is believed to date from the Hesperian era and postdates the end of the warm and wet period on Mars by 300 million years, according to the study.

Scientists believe deltas next to the lake may well hold secrets about past life on Mars as such places on Earth have become the natural deposits of organic carbon and other markers of life.

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5572609/Ancient-lake-found-on-Mars.html