Home Tags Posts tagged with "NASA"
NASA
NASA’s MAVEN mission has set off for Mars.
The orbiter was launched on an Atlas V rocket from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 13:28 local time.
Assuming the $671million mission stays on track, the probe will have a 10-month cruise to the Red Planet.
MAVEN is going to study Mars’ high atmosphere, to try to understand the processes that have robbed the world of most of its air.
Evidence suggests the planet was once shrouded in a thick blanket of gases that supported the presence of liquid water at its surface. Today, the air pressure is so low that free water would instantly boil away.
MAVEN was released from the Atlas V’s upper-stage some 53 minutes after leaving the Cape Canaveral pad. The probe then had to open its solar panels and orientate itself into a cruise configuration.
“During cruise, we perform four planned trajectory correction manoeuvres where we fire thrusters to tweak the trajectory so that we arrive at the right place and time to go into orbit around Mars. At that point, we will fire a set of thrusters to slow down the spacecraft and get captured into orbit,” explained Guy Beutelschies, the spacecraft’s programme manager at manufacturer Lockheed Martin.
The present-day atmosphere of Mars, composed mostly of carbon dioxide, is extremely thin, with atmospheric pressure at the surface just 0.6% of the Earth’s surface pressure.
NASA’s MAVEN mission has set off for Mars
The Martian landscape, though, retains channels that were evidently cut by abundant, flowing water – proof that the planet had a much denser atmosphere in the past.
Some of the air would certainly have reacted with, and been incorporated into, minerals at the surface.
But the most likely explanation for its loss is that the solar wind – the great outflow of energetic particles from the Sun – has simply eroded it through time.
This has been possible because, unlike Earth, the Red Planet lacks a protective global magnetic field, which is capable of deflecting the abrasive assault from our star.
MAVEN (the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN spacecraft) is equipped with eight instruments – some to understand the Sun’s influence at Mars; others to investigate the composition and behavior of the atmosphere. The intention is to measure the rates at which different air molecules are being lost today, distinguishing between the various processes responsible.
Scientists will use this information to get some insights into the history of the Martian climate – from the time billions of years ago when it was warmer and wetter, and potentially habitable to life, to the present environment which is cold and desiccated.
“Most of the loss is thought to have occurred early in Mars’ history when the Sun and the solar wind were more intense,” said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN’s principal investigator from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
“The loss rates today are low enough that we’re probably not going to see the loss of the entire atmosphere. The reason we are studying it today, even though the loss rates are so much lower, is that we can understand the specific processes that are going on and learn how to extrapolate them back in time.”
Arrival at Mars is timed for September 22, 2014.
“MAVEN will be in an elliptical orbit that ranges as far away as 6,220 km and as close as 150 km,” said Guy Beutelschies.
“We will also execute a set of operations to dip down into the tenuous upper reaches of the atmosphere to do some direct sampling for approximately a week at a time. These are called ‘deep dips’ and we do five of them during the primary mission.”
That primary mission lasts one Earth year (half a Mars year), after which the science team will need additional funding to continue their investigations.
NASA, though, fully intends to keep operating MAVEN long into the future as a data-relay platform for surface rovers like Curiosity.
“If things go nominally, we should have fuel left onboard to keep the vehicle flying for years beyond its design life,” according to NASA.
“As a reference, Mars Odyssey was launched in 2001 and is still operating.”
India launched its Mangalyaan mission to Mars on November 5 but is taking a less direct trajectory to the Red Planet than MAVEN, which means the US mission should get into orbit just a few days before the other orbiter.
[youtube rh_nyFIwPy0 650]
NASA has reported that its Curiosity rover has made another significant discovery on Mars.
Curiosity has drilled into a rock that contains clay minerals – an indication of formation in, or substantial alteration by, neutral water.
Scientists say the find is one more step towards showing conditions on Mars in the distant past could have supported life.
Many rocks studied previously were probably deposited in acidic water.
While this would not have precluded the possibility of micro-organisms taking hold on Mars, it would have been more challenging, scientists believe.
Identifying clays shows there were at least some locations on the planet billions of years ago where environments would have been much more favorable.
“We have found a habitable environment that is so benign and supportive of life that probably if this water was around and you had been there, you would have been able to drink it,” said John Grotzinger, Curiosity’s project scientist.
Curiosity rover drilled a powdered sample from a mudstone at its exploration site in Gale Crater, a deep impact bowl on Mars’ equator.
This was delivered to the two big onboard laboratories, Sam and Chemin, for analysis.
The rock sample was found to contain 20-30% smectite – a particular group of clay minerals.
Their high abundance and the relative lack of salt are strongly suggestive of a fresh-water environment for the mudstone’s formation.
The presence of calcium sulphates, rather than the magnesium or iron sulphates seen in previous rock analyses at other locations on the planet, adds to the evidence that the sampled rock in Gale was deposited in a neutral to mildly alkaline pH environment.
Mars Curiosity rover has drilled into a rock that contains clay minerals, an indication of formation in, or substantial alteration by, neutral water
Scientists think Curiosity probably drilled into an ancient lakebed.
The analysis also identified sulphur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon – some of the key chemical elements for life.
Additionally, it found compounds in a range of oxidized states, meaning there were electrons moving through the environment. Those could have been co-opted as an energy source by simple life-forms, if they ever existed in Gale.
“What we’ve learned in the last 20 years of modern microbiology is that very primitive organisms – they can derive energy just by feeding on rocks,” explained Prof. John Grotzinger.
“Just like on [a] battery – you hook up the wires and it goes to a lightbulb and the lightbulb turns on. That’s kind of what a micro-organism would have done in this environment, if life had ever evolved on Mars and it was present here.”
Curiosity rover is assembling quite a catalogue of water evidence in the crater.
Already, it has seen the remains of an ancient riverbed system, where water once flowed perhaps a metre deep and quite vigorously.
The picture that seems to be emerging is one where sediments were transported downhill from the eroding crater rim into a network of streams that then flowed into the lake environment represented by the mudstone.
Curiosity is currently working in a small depression known as Yellowknife Bay, about half a kilometre from the location where it touched down last August.
NASA’s original mission plan was to head towards the big mountain that dominates the centre of Gale Crater, but the fascinating science at Yellowknife Bay has delayed this journey somewhat.
In recent days, operations have been slowed by a software glitch, requiring the vehicle to be run off its reserve computer.
There is also the imminent issue of solar conjunction, which will see Mars move behind the Sun as viewed from Earth, blocking communications.
All this means that Curiosity will be at Yellowknife Bay for a while yet.
“Basically, we can’t talk to the rover and the rover [can’t] talk to us for most of the month of April,” said Michael Meyer, the lead scientist on NASA’s Mars exploration programme.
“We’ll do some more science activities though the end of this month, [provided] the engineers confirm it’s safe for us to do those operations. But we will not do a second drill hole until after solar conjunction.”
When the rover does finally get to the mountain, known as Mount Sharp, the expectation, based on satellite imagery, is that it will again find clay minerals.
This will enable the robot to compare and contrast past environments.
The US space agency’s Opportunity rover, which continues to work nine years on from its landing, is also believed to be sitting on top of clay-bearing rocks at its exploration site far to the west of Gale. Opportunity, however, does not have Curiosity’s capability to assess those rocks.
[youtube IPZ23Vdc6EQ]
Curiosity Mars rover has been put into “safe mode” after a computer glitch caused by corrupted files.
NASA’s Curiosity robot, which is analyzing rock samples on Mars, is now running from a back-up computer.
NASA scientists are looking into possible causes for the files on the robot’s flash memory being damaged.
The fault means the rover’s work has been put on temporary hold while the back-up computer is reconfigured so it can take full control.
“We’re still early on in the process,” said project manager Richard Cook, in an interview with Space.com.
“We have probably several days, maybe a week of activities to get everything back and reconfigured.”
Curiosity rover has been running on the back-up computer since Thursday.
NASA’s Curiosity robot, which is analyzing rock samples on Mars, is now running from a back-up computer
“We switched computers to get to a standard state from which to begin restoring routine operations,” Richard Cook said.
On Curiosity’s Twitter feed, NASA wrote: “Don’t flip out: I just flipped over to my B-side computer while the team looks into an A-side memory issue.”
The corrupted files may have been caused by stray cosmic rays.
Speaking to Space.com, Richard Cook said: “The hardware that we fly is radiation-tolerant, but there’s a limit to how hardened it can be.
“You can still get high-energy particles that can cause the memory to be corrupted. It certainly is a possibility and that’s what we’re looking into.”
The timing of the glitch would frustrate NASA as Curiosity had just begun analyzing rock samples.
Samples from Mars’ surface had been ingested into the rover’s on-board laboratory last month.
The back-up computer on the rover had previously been used to test software updates before they were installed on the main machine.
Due to capacity limitations on the craft, Curiosity rover launched with only the software needed to land. Once on the planet, new software had to then be installed remotely.
Fragments from the meteorite that struck Russia’s Urals region on Friday, injuring some 1,200 people, have been found around a frozen lake, Russian scientists say.
The fragments were detected around a frozen lake near Chebarkul, a town in the Chelyabinsk region, where the meteorite is believed to have landed.
Viktor Grohovsky, of the Urals Federal University, told Russian media that the material contained about 10% iron.
Russian officials say the strike caused damage costing 1 billion roubles ($33 million).
Fireballs were seen streaking through the skies above Chelyabinsk, about 1,500 km east of Moscow, followed by loud bangs on Friday morning.
An estimated 200,000 sq m of windows were broken; shattered glass causing most of the injuries reported in Chelyabinsk.
While some 9,000 people have been helping in the clear-up and rescue operation, scientists have been concentrating their search for fragments of the rock around Chebarkul Lake, where a 6 m (20 ft) wide crater had been found following the strike.
“We have just completed the study, we confirm that the particulate matters, found by our expedition in the area of Lake Chebarkul indeed have meteorite nature,” Viktor Grohovsky was quoted by Russia’s Ria Novosti news agency as saying.
“This meteorite is an ordinary chondrite. It is a stony meteorite which contains some 10% of iron. It is most likely to be named Chebarkul meteorite,” he added.
The fragments were detected around a frozen lake near Chebarkul, a town in the Chelyabinsk region, where the meteorite is believed to have landed
A search of the lake bottom by a group of six divers on Saturday had found nothing; and it was thought the search would be delayed until the snow melts in the spring.
Russian scientists say the meteor weighed about 10 tonnes before it entered the Earth’s atmosphere, travelling at some 30 km (19 miles) per second, before breaking apart 30-50 km (20-30 miles) above ground.
However, the US space agency NASA said the meteor was 17 m (55 ft) wide and weighed 10,000 tonnes before entering the atmosphere, releasing about 500 kilotons of energy. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 was 12-15 kilotons.
Scientists have played down suggestions that there is any link between the event in the Urals and 2012 DA14, an asteroid which raced past the Earth later on Friday at a distance of just 27,700km (17,200 miles) – the closest ever for an object of that size.
Such meteor strikes are rare in Russia but one is thought to have devastated an area of more than 2,000 sq km (770 sq m) in Siberia in 1908.
[youtube yAMwuFle7Wc]
NASA’s Messenger probe to Mercury has shown off a stunning new color map of the planet.
The map comprises thousands of images acquired by the spacecraft during its first year in orbit.
This is not how we would see Mercury, which would look like a dull, brownish-grey globe to our eyes.
Rather, the map represents an exaggerated view of Mercury that is intended to highlight variations in the composition of its rock.
“Messenger’s camera has filters that go from the blue to the near-infrared of the spectrum, and we are able to use computer processing to enhance the very subtle but real colour differences that are present on Mercury’s surface,” explained Dr. David Blewett from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab.
“The areas that you see that are orange – those are volcanic plains. There are some areas that are deep blue that are richer in an opaque mineral which is somewhat mysterious – we don’t really know what that is yet.
“And then you see beautiful light-blue streaks across Mercury’s surface. Those are crater rays formed in impacts when fresh, ground-up rock is strewn across the surface of the planet,” said David Blewett.
Dr. David Blewett displayed the map here in Boston at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
He was giving a sneak preview of the data that is about to be deposited in NASA’s planetary archive.
This will include a black-and-white, or monochrome, map of the entire surface of Mercury at a resolution of 200 m per pixel (the color map has a resolution of 1 km per pixel and is just short of 100% coverage).
NASA’s Messenger probe to Mercury has shown off a stunning new color map of the planet
The mission so far has been a triumph, which ought to make the current request to NASA management for an operational extension a very easy case to make.
Messenger’s observations have thrown up many surprises and challenged a lot of assumptions.
The probe has revealed Mercury’s rich volcanic history. It has confirmed the existence of great lava plains, but also uncovered evidence for explosive volcanism.
We know now, too, that the planet has ice in shadowed craters.
“It’s got polar ice caps. Who’d have thought that?” said Dr. David Blewett.
In addition, the probe’s instruments have detected relatively high abundances of sulphur and potassium in surface materials.
These are volatile elements that should not really be present on such a scale on a planet that orbits so close to the Sun with its searing heat.
But these elements may help explain many puzzles, like the nature of those opaque terrains. These could get their dark hue from the presence of sulphides.
The compounds could also lie behind the intriguing “hollows” that pockmark great swathes of Mercury’s surface.
Shallow with irregular shapes, the depressions often have bright halos and bright interiors. When scientists look around the Solar System for similar phenomena, the best comparison would appear to be the depressions that form in the carbon dioxide ice at the poles of Mars.
Those features are thought to arise when the CO2 ice sublimates away – that is, when it transforms directly from a solid state to a gaseous state.
“Well, Mercury’s surface isn’t made of ice – it’s scorching hot next to the Sun. But it seems that there is some sort of sublimation-like loss in the solid, silicate rocks that is causing these hollows to initiate and enlarge.
“It may be that a combination of high temperatures and what’s called severe space weathering destroys sulphide minerals in the rocks, causing them to crumble and open up a depression.”
Messenger is in great shape should NASA management agree to a mission extension. The probe is thought to have enough fuel to operate until 2015.
And by then, new spacecraft will be on their way to Mercury. Under a joint venture known as BepiColombo, Europe and Japan are sending two satellites that should arrive at the innermost world in 2022.
[youtube ZF5TwM3oxqg]
Asteroid 2012 DA14, which is as large as an Olympic swimming pool, will race past the Earth on Friday at a distance of just 27,700 km (17,200 miles) – the closest ever predicted for an object of that size.
It will pass closer even than the geosynchronous satellites that orbit the Earth, but there is no risk of impacts or collisions.
Its closest approach will be 19:25 GMT.
For regions in darkness around that time, it will be visible using good binoculars or a telescope.
The asteroid orbits the Sun in 368 days – a period similar to Earth’s year – but it does not orbit in the same plane as the Earth.
As it passes – at a blistering 7.8 km/s (17,450 mi/hr) – it will come from “under” the Earth and return back toward the Sun from “above”.
As it does, it will pass over the eastern Indian Ocean, making for the best viewing in Eastern Europe, Asia and Australia.
But keen viewers anywhere can find one of several live streams of the event on the internet, including a feed from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at NASA, available from 19:00 GMT.
Asteroid 2012 DA14 will race past the Earth on Friday at a distance of just 27,700 km, the closest ever predicted for an object of that size
2012 DA14 was first spotted in February 2012 by astronomers at the La Sagra Sky Survey in Spain – once a fairly small-scale, amateur effort to discover and track asteroids that has in recent years become a significant contributor to our knowledge of these “near-Earth objects”.
They caught sight of the asteroid after its last pass, at a far greater distance.
From their observations, they were able to calculate the asteroid’s future and past paths and predict Friday’s near-miss – which will be the closest the object comes for at least 30 years.
Alan Fitzsimmons of Queens University Belfast said that it is a scientific opportunity not to be missed.
“When asteroids come this close, it’s very important to try to learn about them – it’s become so bright, so it’s so easy to study,” he said.
“We get an additional insight into these small objects, which are the most likely impactors on Earth.”
[youtube pVspDvwMytM]
NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars has finally drilled deep enough into a rock to acquire a powdered sample for analysis.
The fine grey tailings from the 6cm-hole will be sieved and inspected before being delivered to the robot’s onboard labs in the coming days.
It will represent a historic first in planetary exploration – never before has the interior of a rock on another world been probed in such a way.
The US space agency said the drilling was an immense achievement.
“This is the biggest milestone accomplishment for the Curiosity team since the sky-crane landing last August, another proud day for America,” said Prof. John Grotizinger, the mission’s chief scientist.
Drilling is absolutely central to the rover’s mission in Gale Crater, a deep bowl sited on Mars’ equator.
Curiosity is investigating whether past environments at this location could ever have supported life, and getting inside rocks to analyze their make-up will provide some of the most telling evidence.
Engineers have waited a full six months before deploying the drill tool, which is held on the end of the rover’s 2.2 m-long robotic arm.
Its first action was just to hammer down briefly on a rock target last weekend – a simple check to prove the machinery was behaving as it should.
This was followed in the week by the drill turning in the chosen rock to cut a shallow, 2cm hole.
It produced a fine powder that engineers deemed suitable to try to pick up. So, the command was given to drill a second hole that was deep enough to push some tailings into the tool’s sample acquisition chamber.
NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars has finally drilled deep enough into a rock to acquire a powdered sample for analysis
Some of this material will be used to scrub the machinery’s innards of any contamination that may have travelled with the rover from Earth.
The rest will be sorted to a size and volume that can be put inside Curiosity’s Chemin and Sam labs.
These instruments will determine the rock sample’s precise chemistry and mineralogy, and identify any interesting carbon chemistry that may be present.
Chemin will likely set to work on the powder first. This is because its findings can influence the settings run the Sam experiments..
“We may alter our temperatures depending on what they see in Chemin,” said Paul Mahaffy, the principal investigator on Sam.
The flat slabs of rock currently being investigated by the rover have been dubbed “John Klein”, the name of a Curiosity engineer who died in 2011. They lie in a small depression referred to as Yellowknife Bay, about half a kilometre from the robot’s point of touchdown last year.
The rocks contain very fine-grained sediments but are cut through with pale veins of what could be calcium sulphate.
Curiosity has already seen plenty of evidence for past running water in Gale Crater and the results from the drill-hole analysis are expected to reveal further information about that wet history.
[youtube 3_q1YZnUTQo]
Astronomers say that one in six stars host an Earth-sized planet in a close orbit – suggesting a total of 17 billion such planets in our galaxy.
The result comes from an analysis of planet candidates gathered by NASA’s Kepler space observatory.
The Kepler scientists also announced 461 new planet candidates, bringing the satellites’ total haul to 2,740.
Their findings were announced at the 221st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in California.
Since its launch into orbit in 2009, Kepler has stared at a fixed part of the sky, peering at more than 150,000 stars in its field of view.
It detects the minute dip in light coming from a star if a planet passes in front of it, in what is called a transit.
But it is a tricky measurement to make, with the total light changing just tiny fractions of a percent, and not every dip in light is due to a planet.
So Francois Fressin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics – who discovered the first Earth-sized planets set about trying to find out not only which Kepler candidates might not be planets, but also which planets might not have been visible to Kepler.
Artistic illustration of different types of planets in the Milky Way detected by NASA Kepler spacecraft
“We have to correct for two things – first [the Kepler candidate list] is incomplete,” said Francois Fressin.
“We only see the planets that are transiting their host stars, stars that happen to have a planet that is well-aligned for us to see it, and [for each of those] there are dozens that do not.
“The second major correction is in the list of candidates – there are some that are not true planets transiting their host star; they are other astrophysical configurations.”
These might include, for example, binary stars, where one star orbits another, blocking some of the light as the stars transit each other.
“We simulated all the possible configurations we could think of – and we found out that they could only account for 9.5% of Kepler planets, and all the rest are bona fide planets,” Dr. Francois Fressin explained.
The results suggest that 17% of stars host a planet up to 1.25 times the size of the Earth, in close orbits lasting just 85 days or fewer – much like the planet Mercury.
That means our Milky Way galaxy hosts at least 17 billion Earth-sized planets.
Even as Dr. Francois Fressin reported an analysis of the most recent Kepler catalogue, it was increased substantially by results reported by Christopher Burke of the Seti Institute.
Dr. Christopher Burke announced 461 new candidate planets, a substantial fraction of which were Earth-sized or not much larger – planets that have until now been particularly difficult to detect.
“What’s particularly interesting is four new planets – less than twice the size of Earth – that are potentially in the habitable zone, the location around a star where it could potentially have liquid water to sustain life,” said Dr. Christopher Burke.
One of the four, dubbed KOI 172.02, is a mere 1.5 times the size of the Earth and around a star like our own Sun – perhaps as near as the current data allow to finding an “Earth 2.0”.
“It’s very exciting because we’re really starting to pick up the sensitivity to these things in the habitable zone – we’re just really getting to the frontier of potentially life-bearing planets.”
William Borucki, the driving force behind and principal investigator on the Kepler mission, said he was “delighted” by the fresh batch of results.
“The most important thing is the statistics – not to find one Earth but to find 100 Earths. That’s what we’ll be seeing as the years go on with the Kepler mission, because it was designed to find many Earths.”
[youtube jHHqv–UrOw]
NASA’s Curiosity rover is very close to drilling into its first Martian rock, with the set-up operation likely to begin next week.
After breaking for the holidays, the mission team would be raring to undertake the task in the coming days, said lead scientist John Grotzinger.
The robot has driven about 650 m from its landing site, dropping down into a depression known as Yellowknife Bay.
It is in this depression that the target rock will probably be chosen.
All of Curiosity’s instruments have been commissioned. The drill is the only tool that has yet to be deployed.
Its hammer action will enable the device to retrieve powdered samples from up to 5 cm inside the rock, which can then passed to the rover’s onboard laboratories for analysis.
“We are firing on all cylinders now and our last thing to do is drilling, and we really hope to start on that process beginning next week,” said the California Institute of Technology professor.
As Curiosity trundled through Yellowknife Bay in December, it used its survey instruments to try to identify the most promising candidate rock. This equipment comprises the mast-mounted color cameras and laser spectrometer, and the arm-held “hand lens” camera and X-ray spectrometer.
Yellowknife was chosen as a destination because it represents a different type of rock terrain to the one on which Curiosity landed in August and on which it has done most of its driving. Satellite observations indicate this landscape has a high thermal inertia – that is to say, at night it loses heat more slowly than the terrains that about it in the local area.
Pictures returned to Earth from inside Yellowknife Bay appear to show copious sedimentary deposits.
“We’re down at the very lowest layer – what would be the oldest layer that we would see in this succession that might be five to eight metres thick, and that is very likely where we are going to choose our first drilling target, because suddenly we’ve come into an area that represents a very high diversity of things we haven’t seen before,” said Prof. John Grotzinger.
In 2012, Curiosity examined the dusty soils that gave it an insight into the processes that drive the dry and cold environment that dominates Mars today. Drilling into rock this month will allow scientists to glimpse processes that held sway in ancient times, hopefully ones where water played key roles.
“The place where Curiosity is right now is a small stack of layers – very impressive – and they could be 3-3.5 billion years old, and so we’re very excited about this because unlike the soil which we were analyzing before the holiday season – a loose, windswept patch of dirt on the surface of Mars – we’re now going to start digging down into the very ancient bedrock which we really built the rover to look at,” explained Prof. John Grotzinger.
“We use these layers as a sort of recording device of past events and conditions, and the rover has the same kind of analytical capability that we would use here on Earth to tell us about the early environmental conditions; and, if life had ever evolved, [whether it would] be the kind of environment that would have been conducive towards sustaining that life.”
The panorama of Yellowknife Bay at the top of this page was assembled by US-based scientist and journalist Ken Kremer and Italy-based physicist and photographer Marco Di Lorenzo. Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo are routinely stitching together the stream of images returned by Curiosity to make vistas that NASA itself does not always find the time to produce and place in the public domain.
The top picture incorporates shots from the rover’s black-and-white navigation cameras that have subsequently been colored.
Below is a panorama looking away into the distance towards the foothills of Mount Sharp, the 5 km rise that is the eventual destination of Curiosity. Once the rover has finished investigating Yellowknife Bay, it will climb back out and begin the drive to the mountain. This journey is likely to take many months.
NASA is to test color-changing lights on the International Space Station (ISS) as part of efforts to help astronauts on board sleep.
The US space agency will initially swap a fluorescent panel with a solid-state lighting module (SSLM) containing LEDs which produces a blue, whitish or red-colored light depending on the time.
It says the move may help combat insomnia which can make depression, sickness and mistakes more likely.
The test is due to take place in 2016.
News site Space.com reported that the equipment is being made by Boeing and the project has an $11.2 million budget.
Studies on Earth suggest humans and other creatures follow what is known as a circadian rhythm – a 24-hour biological cycle involving cell regeneration, urine production and other functions critical to health.
Research indicates that it is regulated by a group of cells in a portion of the brain called the hypothalamus which respond to light information sent by the eye’s optic nerve, which in turn controls hormones, body temperature and other functions than influence whether people feel sleepy or wide awake.
The aim of the experiment is to simulate a night-day cycle to minimize sleep disruption caused by the loss of its natural equivalent on the station.
NASA is to test color-changing lights on the ISS as part of efforts to help astronauts on board sleep
When the SSLMs are colored blue the aim is to stimulate melanopsin – a pigment found in cells in the eye’s retina which send nerve impulses to parts of the brain thought to make a person feel alert.
Blue light is also believed to suppress melatonin – a hormone made by the brain’s pineal gland which makes a person feel sleepy when its levels rise in their blood.
By switching from blue to red light – via an intermediary white stage – this process should be reversed, encouraging a feeling of sleepiness.
NASA has previously warned sleep problems among its crews on other missions were also common.
“On some space shuttle missions up to 50% of the crew take sleeping pills, and, over all, nearly half of all medication used in orbit is intended to help astronauts sleep,” it said in 2001.
“Even so, space travellers average about two hours sleep less each night in space than they do on the ground.”
Derk-Jan Dijk, professor of sleep and physiology at the University of Surrey, said NASA’s test reflects the latest findings closer to home.
“It hasn’t been until recently that we started to realize that artificial light, as we see it or are exposed to it in the evening, will have an effect on our alertness and subsequent sleep.
“It turns out there are receptors in the eye which are tuned toward blue light. Adding blue light to artificial lights visible during the day can actually help us to be alert, but if there is too much blue light in the artificial lights at night that may disrupt sleep.
“So, varying the spectral composition of light does make sense from a circadian perspective, and better regulating artificial sleep-wake cycles may indeed benefit astronauts’ sleep in space.”
NASA adds there could be spin-off benefits for the population at large.
“A significant proportion of the global population suffers from chronic sleep loss,” said Daniel Shultz at the Kennedy Space Center.
“By refining multipurpose lights for astronauts safety, health and well-being in spaceflight, the door is opened for new lighting strategies that can be evolved for use on Earth.”
NASA has admitted it mistook a mountain in India for Mount Everest when it posted online a picture taken from space.
NASA initially said the photo – by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko – showed the world’s tallest summit.
The image was quickly picked up by a number of media outlets, but NASA removed it after a Nepalese expert spotted the error.
Everest, which is 8,848 m (29,028 ft) high, straddles the Nepal-China border.
“It is not Everest. It is Saser Muztagh, in the Karakoram Range of the Kashmir region of India,” a Nasa spokesman said.
“The view is in mid-afternoon light looking north-eastward,” the spokesman added.
NASA has admitted it mistook a mountain in India for Mount Everest when it posted online a picture taken from space
NASA said that Yuri Malenchenko had taken the picture from the International Space Station (ISS) earlier this month.
The photo quickly spread on Twitter, triggering criticism from the Nepalese community.
Journalist Kunda Dixit, an authority on the Himalayas, tweeted: “Sorry guys, but the tall peak with the shadow in the middle is not Mt Everest.”
However, he himself first wrongly guessed that it was “Xixapangma in Tibet”.
On Thursday, Ron Garan – a US astronaut who lived aboard the ISS last year – tweeted: “We r still looking 4 a good view of illusive #Everest #FromSpace Apparently Yuri’s ISS pic’s not Everest It’s Saser Muztagh.”
The first commercially contracted re-supply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) has begun.
A Falcon rocket carrying a Dragon cargo capsule lifted clear of Cape Canaveral in Florida at 20:35 (00:35 GMT).
The robotic Dragon ship will deliver 400 kg of food, clothing, experiments and spares to the orbiting platform’s six astronauts.
It is the maiden flight in a sequence of 12 missions that California’s SpaceX company is performing for NASA.
NASA is looking to the private sector to assume routine transport duties to and from low-Earth orbit.
It has given SpaceX a $1.6 billion contract to keep the ISS stocked up with essentials, restoring a re-supply capability that the US lost when it retired the shuttles last year.
The terms of the contract kicked in following a successful test of Dragon’s systems in May.
That demonstration saw the capsule berth with the ISS – the first commercially designed and built vehicle to do so – and then return safely to Earth.
NASA has a second company it hopes also can soon begin operational cargo deliveries to the station.
The Orbital Sciences Corporation (OSC) will shortly test its new Antares rocket before undertaking its own ISS demonstration with a robotic vessel called Cygnus.
If that mission – tipped to take place next year – goes well then it will trigger a $1.9 billion contract for Orbital.
NASA wants eventually to put astronaut transport in the hands of the private sector, too.
SpaceX is eyeing this business as well, and is developing the critical life-support and safety systems that would turn Dragon into a human-rated vehicle. The company says it is just a few years away from being able to provide an astronaut “taxi” service.
NASA’s policy of outsourcing its cargo and crew transport needs is intended to find savings that can be ploughed back into building a rocket and capsule system capable of taking humans beyond low-Earth to more challenging destinations.
“We’re handing off to the private sector our transportation to the International Space Station so that NASA can focus on what we do best – exploring even deeper into our Solar System, with missions to an asteroid and Mars on the horizon,” explained agency administrator Charles Bolden.
Sunday’s nine-minute, 14-second ascent to orbit appeared flawless.
The Falcon dropped the Dragon off in an elliptical path running from 197 km above the Earth out to 328 km.
“Dragon was inserted into a picture-perfect orbit,” said SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell.
“Its solar arrays deployed and it’s driving its way to station. So, that’s just awesome.”
Dragon must raise itself to the ISS’s altitude, which is presently at more than 400 km.
It is scheduled to arrive at the station on Wednesday. It will follow the routine established in May of parking itself just below the platform so that it can be grabbed by a robotic arm and pulled into a berthing port.
The attachment should take place at about 05:40 GMT.
Dragon is expected to return to Earth at the end of the month.
Its cargo then will include broken machinery and science materials that need to be handed back to researchers.
Curiosity rover has completed its first close-contact science on Mars.
The robot pushed its arm instruments up against a pyramidal rock to assess the atomic elements that were present.
The rock – dubbed “Jake Matijevic” after a late rover engineer – was not expected to have high research value. Rather, it was regarded as an early opportunity to demonstrate the performance of the arm’s “hand lens” and X-ray spectrometer.
Curiosity has now continued driving.
Curiosity rover has completed its first close-contact science on Mars
On Monday, it moved some 42 m (138 ft), the single biggest roll for the robot since landing seven weeks ago in Mars’ equatorial Gale Crater.
The vehicle is endeavoring to get to location that scientists have nicknamed Glenelg, which satellite images have indicated is a junction between three types of geological terrain.
It is at Glenelg that Curiosity will likely use one of its key arm tools – its drill – for the first time.
Even before the rover gets to the junction, it will look for some suitable soil to scoop and deliver to its onboard laboratories for analysis.
NASA’s $2.6 billion mission touched down on the Red Planet on 6 August (GMT).
Much of the time since then has been spent commissioning the immensely complex, six-wheeled machine and its suite of 10 instruments.
The Jake Matijevic investigation allowed the science team to use the X-ray spectrometer (APXS) and the hand lens (Mahli) in unison with the rover’s infrared laser instrument (ChemCam).
The laser, which sits atop the rover’s mast, also determines the chemical composition of targets, and the rock experiment meant researchers could do some cross-calibration of APXS and ChemCam.
Little information has been released by NASA about what it saw, but then the pyramidal rock was not expected to be anything more than a standard lump of Martian basalt.
As the mission progresses, APXS and ChemCam, along with the keen eye of Mahli, will be used to survey the crater’s surface for more interesting rocks. When they identify a fascinating target, it is at that point that the drill will be commanded to acquire a sample for detailed scrutiny in the onboard laboratories.
Curiosity’s mission has been funded for one Martian year (two Earth years) of study. It will try to determine in that time whether past environments at Gale Crater could ever have supported microbial life.
[youtube W1p2PwHz2XA]
Russian Soyuz capsule has returned to Earth with its three-man crew after they spent 123 days at the International Space Station.
Two Russians, Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin, and their American colleague Joe Acaba made the safe return in Kazakhstan on Monday morning.
Another crew of three who took off in May remain on the International Space Station.
Russian Soyuz capsule has returned to Earth with its three-man crew after they spent 123 days at the International Space Station
Next month, another three are due to take off from Kazakhstan to join them.
The capsule landed at 08:53 local time and all three crew members “are safe and adjusting to gravity,” according to the Twitter feed of the US space programme NASA.
“I feel great,” Gennady Padalka told attending recovery staff, Reuters news agency reports.
The Soyuz craft is the only means for astronauts to reach the International Space Station since the US shuttle fleet was retired last year.
[youtube oewQ3WuMn2Y]
Curiosity rover has measured the Red Planet’s atmospheric composition.
NASA’s robot sucked the air into its big Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument to reveal the concentration of different gases.
It is the first time that the chemistry of the atmosphere has been tested from the surface of the planet since the Viking landers in the 1970s.
The SAM analysis is ongoing but no major surprises are expected at this stage – carbon dioxide will dominate.
CO2 is the chief component of the Martian air, as the Viking probes found. Of keener interest will be whether a signal for methane has been detected by Curiosity.
The gas has recently been observed by satellite and by Earth telescopes, and its presence on the Red Planet is intriguing.
Methane should be short-lived and its persistence suggests a replenishing source of some kind – either biological or geochemical. It is hoped SAM can shed light on the issue.
Curiosity rover has measured the Red Planet's atmospheric composition
The results from this first test could be announced next week, said Curiosity deputy principal scientist Joy Crisp, but she cautioned that it would be some time before definitive statements could be made about the status of methane on Mars.
“When SAM is at its best it can measure various parts per trillion of methane, and the expected amounts based on measurements taken from orbit around Mars and from Earth telescopes should be in the 10 to a few 10s of parts per billion,” she told reporters.
“But it’s so early in the use of Sam, which is a complicated instrument, and we have to sort through the data.”
Curiosity – also known as the Mars Science Laboratory, MSL – has now driven more than 100 m from the location on the floor of Gale Crater where it landed a month ago.
A new picture from the overflying Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft shows its progress.
“You can see the rover with the white deck on top and the black wheels, and you can see our tracks behind us,” explained mission manager Mike Watkins.
“We’re about a football field or so away from the touch-down point – from Bradbury Landing.”
Curiosity is heading to a point dubbed Glenelg by scientists.
This is about 300 m further to the east from its current position. Satellite pictures point to Glenelg being an intersection of three distinct types of rock terrain. Researchers think it will be a good place to start to characterize the geology of Gale Crater.
The rover’s arrival at the junction is still some weeks away, however.
Engineers have parked the vehicle for a few days to practice using the 2 m-long robotic arm. This carries a 30 kg tool turret on its end and the mission team needs to learn how to move the device in the weaker gravity conditions that exist on Mars.
“Mars has about 38% of Earth gravity,” said Matt Robinson, the lead engineer on Curiosity’s arm.
“Under Earth gravity, the arm sags to a certain position. On Mars, if you were to command the arm to the exact same joint angles, the turret would be at a higher position than it was on Earth.
“To compensate, we have flight software that does the mathematics to position the arm lower to recreate the exact same pose of the turret with respect to the hardware on the rover.
“So a big part of this exercise is to verify that flight software is doing that compensation properly,” he said.
Once the arm check-out is done, Curiosity will pick up the pace to get to Glenelg.
En route, the rover will watch for an early opportunity to test its turret instruments on a rock.
This will involve putting the “hand lens” known as Mahli (Mars Hand Lens Imager) close to the test object.
Mahli is essentially a close-up camera that can resolve rock minerals down to the size of a grain of talcum powder.
The other turret instrument engineers want to see in action is APXS, an X-ray spectrometer that can determine the abundance of chemical elements in rocks.
Also in line to make its debut soon is the turret’s scoop mechanism (Collection and Handling for Interior Martian Rock Analysis, or Chimra). The robot arm will pick up a sample of soil and deliver it to the labs inside the rover body for analysis.
[youtube uRod4vTyzkg]
NASA’s Dawn satellite has left the giant Asteroid Vesta after 13 months of study.
A signal from Dawn probe confirming that it had escaped the gravitational bounds of the 530 km-wide rock was received by NASA on Wednesday.
The spacecraft’s ion engine is now pushing it on to an even bigger target in the belt of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter – the dwarf planet Ceres.
Dawn is expected to reach this 950 km-wide body in early 2015.
Before departing on its long cruise to the new destination, the probe trained its camera system on Vesta’s northern pole.
The pictures reveal mountains and craters that are being seen for the very first time. Only now, as Dawn heads away, has the Sun risen high enough in the sky to illuminate the highest latitudes.
Dawn satellite has left the giant Asteroid Vesta after 13 months of study
Scientists are poring over the images to see what interpretation they can put on the terrain.
Vesta has the appearance of a punctured football – the result of two mighty impacts that removed huge volumes of rock from its southern pole.
These collisions sent shockwaves rippling across the asteroid, producing a deep system of troughs that extends around the object’s equator.
Researchers have speculated that this disturbance might also be reflected in the features hitherto obscured at the northern pole.
However, Dawn’s principal investigator Prof. Chris Russell said a definitive statement on such matters would have to wait on a detailed assessment of the new pictures.
“We haven’t got together to discuss it carefully yet,” he said.
“[The region] is not as jumbled as I had expected; it’s more subtle than I had expected – but the people who are experts in this particular area do feel that there is an effect of the southern impact.”
The Dawn mission has returned a great swathe of data to transform our understanding of Vesta.
Before the probe’s arrival in July last year, the best views of the asteroid were some fuzzy pictures acquired by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Dawn studied in detail the pattern of minerals exposed at Vesta’s surface and also mapped the diverse geological features shaping its terrain.
These observations have enabled scientists to elucidate a history for the colossal rock.
They now regard it as a unique body – the only remaining example of the original objects that came together to form the rocky planets, like Earth and Mars, some 4.6 billion years ago.
It is clear now that Vesta has a layered interior, with a metal-rich core that takes up some 18% of the body by mass.
All of the other objects like it at the Solar System’s birth were either obliterated in the intense collisional environment that existed back then or were incorporated into successively larger aggregations of material that eventually produced the planets we recognize today.
Perhaps the stand-out discovery is the definitive association that can now be made between Vesta and the howardite-eucrite-diogenite, or HED, class of meteorites that regularly fall to Earth.
From telescopic observations, researchers had always suspected these meteorites came from Vesta. But the signatures of pyroxene – a mineral rich in iron and magnesium – in those meteorites have now been matched precisely with the mineral signatures spied in Vesta’s surface by Dawn’s instruments.
It is highly likely that much of the HED material was thrown off Vesta in those two big impacts at the southern pole.
“We have used those meteorites and their chemical analysis to tell a story about the formation of the Solar System and its evolution, and if that was wrong we’d have had a lot of explaining and new work to do. The fact that it is right, and we’ve confirmed it, is really very good. It makes our lives a lot simpler,” said Prof. Chris Russell, who is affiliated to the University of California, Los Angeles.
[youtube AukUnVkx9ZY]
NASA has discovered the Arctic has lost more sea ice this year than at any time since satellite records began in 1979.
Scientists involved in the calculations say it is part of a fundamental change.
What is more, sea ice normally reaches its low point in September so it is thought likely that this year’s melt will continue to grow.
NASA says the extent of sea ice was 1.58 m sq miles (4.1 m sq km) compared with a previous low of 1.61 m sq miles (4.17 m sq km) on 18 September 2007.
The sea ice cap grows during the cold Arctic winters and shrinks when temperatures climb again, but over the last three decades, satellites have observed a 13% decline per decade in the summertime minimum.
The thickness of the sea ice is also declining, so overall the ice volume has fallen far – although estimates vary about the actual figure.
Joey Comiso, senior research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said this year’s ice retreat was caused by previous warm years reducing the amount of perennial ice – which is more resistant to melting. It’s created a self-reinforcing trend.
“Unlike 2007, temperatures were not unusually warm in the Arctic this summer. [But] we are losing the thick component of the ice cover,” he said.
“And if you lose [that], the ice in the summer becomes very vulnerable.”
Walt Meier, from the National Snow and Ice Data Center that collaborates in the measurements, said: “In the context of what’s happened in the last several years and throughout the satellite record, it’s an indication that the Arctic sea ice cover is fundamentally changing.”
Professor Peter Wadhams, from Cambridge University, said: “A number of scientists who have actually been working with sea ice measurement had predicted some years ago that the retreat would accelerate and that the summer Arctic would become ice-free by 2015 or 2016.
“I was one of those scientists – and of course bore my share of ridicule for daring to make such an alarmist prediction.”
But Prof. Peter Wadhams said the prediction was now coming true, and the ice had become so thin that it would inevitably disappear.
“Measurements from submarines have shown that it has lost at least 40% of its thickness since the 1980s, and if you consider the shrinkage as well it means that the summer ice volume is now only 30% of what it was in the 1980s,” he added.
“This means an inevitable death for the ice cover, because the summer retreat is now accelerated by the fact that the huge areas of open water already generated allow storms to generate big waves which break up the remaining ice and accelerate its melt.
“Implications are serious: the increased open water lowers the average albedo [reflectivity] of the planet, accelerating global warming; and we are also finding the open water causing seabed permafrost to melt, releasing large amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, to the atmosphere.”
Opinions vary on the date of the demise of summer sea ice, but the latest announcement will give support to those who err on the pessimistic side.
A recent paper from Reading University used statistical techniques and computers to estimate that between 5-30% of the recent ice loss was due to Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation – a natural climate cycle repeating every 65-80 years. It’s been in warm phase since the mid 1970s.
But the rest of the warming, the paper estimates, is caused by human activity – pollution and clearing of forests.
If the ice continues to disappear in summer there will be opportunities as well as threats.
Some ships are already saving time by sailing a previously impassable route north of Russia.
Oil, gas and mining firms are jostling to exploit the Arctic – although they’re being strongly opposed by environmentalists. Greenpeace has been protesting at drilling by the Russian giant Gazprom.
Among the many threats, the warming is bad for Arctic wildlife. Thanks to the influence of sea ice on the jet stream the changes could affect weather in the UK.
The changes – if they happen – could unlock frozen deposits of methane which would further overheat the planet.
Warmer seas could lead to more melting of Greenland’s ice cap which would contribute to raising sea levels and changing the salinity of the sea, which in turn could alter ocean currents that help govern our climate.
NASA’s Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars two weeks ago, turned its six wheels briefly on Wednesday to satisfy engineers that its locomotion system was in full working order.
Curiosity is a sophisticated mobile science laboratory.
It has been built to drive at least 20 km across the Martian landscape to investigate whether the planet ever had the conditions necessary for life.
Wednesday’s drive saw the rover roll forward 4.5 m, turn clockwise on the spot, and then reverse up 2.5 m. It took about five minutes to complete the manoeuvre.
NASA’s Curiosity rover turned its six wheels briefly on Wednesday to satisfy engineers that its locomotion system was in full working order
It is now pointing south in the general direction of Mount Sharp, the big mountain at the centre of Mars’ equatorial Gale Crater.
Scientists expect to find rocks at the base of the peak that were laid down billions of years ago in the presence of abundant water.
Curiosity – also known as the Mars Science Laboratory, MSL – will not journey to Mount Sharp immediately, however.
The mission team first wants to visit a piece of ground some 400 m to the east; a location researchers have dubbed Glenelg.
Satellite pictures have shown this place to be an intersection of three distinct types of rock terrain.
Scientists think Glenelg will be a good place to start to characterize the geology of Gale Crater.
On its way to the intersection, Curiosity will “sniff” the atmosphere and analyze the composition of its gases.
It will likely also scoop a soil sample to examine in its onboard laboratories.
[youtube T2Sn2GLAYdk]
NASA has reported its first setback in its Curiosity rover mission to Mars.
A sensor on the robot’s weather station that takes wind readings has sustained damage.
The mission team stresses this is not a major problem and will merely degrade some measurements – not prevent them.
It is not certain how the damage occurred but engineers suspect surface stones thrown up during Curiosity’s rocket-powered landing may have struck sensor circuits and broken the wiring.
NASA is describing the news as an isolated “disappointment” in what has otherwise been a spectacular start to the mission.
Javier Gomez-Elvira, the principal investigator on the broken instrumentation – the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) – said he was hopeful of finding a good way to get past the issue.
NASA has reported its first setback in its Curiosity rover mission to Mars
“We are working to recover as much functionality as possible,” he told reporters.
Curiosity – also known as the Mars Science Laboratory, MSL – touched down in the equatorial Gale Crater two weeks ago.
It will operate on Mars for at least two Earth years, looking for evidence that the planet may once have had the conditions suitable to host microbial life.
Engineers are close to completing their programme of post-landing check-outs on Curiosity.
This has involved powering up all of the machine’s instruments, and it was during this testing that the problem was found on REMS.
The weather station is a Spanish contribution to the rover project.
It records air and ground temperature, air pressure and humidity, wind speed and direction, as well the amount of ultraviolet radiation falling on the surface.
These parameters are measured from sensors distributed around the rover, but a number are held on two finger-like mini-booms positioned halfway up the vehicle’s camera mast. This is where the wind sensors are located.
The REMS team first noticed there was something wrong when readings from the side-facing boom were being returned saturated at high and low values.
Further investigation suggested small wires exposed on the sensor circuits were open, probably severed. It is permanent damage.
No-one can say for sure how this happened, but engineers are working on the theory that grit thrown on to the rover by the descent crane’s exhaust plume cut the small wires.
The wind sensor on the forward-facing mini-boom is unaffected. With just the one sensor, it makes it difficult to fully understand wind behavior.
“It degrades our ability to detect wind speed and direction when the wind is blowing from a particular direction, but we think we can work around that,” said Curiosity’s deputy project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada.
All the other REMS measurements look good.
Air temperatures in Gale Crater have been up to about minus 2C in the Martian afternoon, and down to minus 75C in the middle of the Martian night.
In general, the rover is in rude health. On Monday, it wiggled its front and back wheels to check its steering capability.
Commands will now be sent up to initiate the first drive.
“We’re going to drive forward a few metres, turn in place about 90 degrees and then back up,” said mission manager Mike Watkins.
“We should make tracks.”
Another major engineering milestone passed this week has been the unpacking of Curiosity’s robotic arm.
It was flexed to exercise its joints. The arm holds a 30 kg tool turret on its end that includes a drill to take powered samples from rocks.
Curiosity rover is getting ready to zap its first Martian rock.
A small stone lying just to the side of the vehicle at its landing site on the floor of Gale Crater has been selected as a test target for the ChemCam laser.
The brief but powerful burst of light from this instrument will vaporize the surface of the rock, revealing details of its basic chemistry.
Dubbed N165, the object is not expected to have any science value, but should show ChemCam is ready for serious work.
“I’d probably guess this is a typical Mars basalt – basaltic rocks making up a large fraction of all the igneous rocks on Mars,” said Roger Wiens, the instrument’s principal investigator.
“A basalt, which is also common under the ocean on Earth, typically has 48% silicon dioxide and percent amounts of iron, calcium and magnesium, and sodium and potassium oxides as well. We’re not expecting any surprises,” said the Los Alamos National Laboratory researcher.
Curiosity rover is getting ready to zap its first Martian rock
Curiosity touched down in its equatorial crater two weeks ago.
Its mission is to investigate the rocks at its landing site for evidence that past environments could have supported life.
The rover carries a suite of instruments for the purpose, but its Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) experiment has probably garnered most attention because nothing like it has ever been flown to Mars before.
ChemCam sits high up on the rover’s mast from where it directs a laser beam on to rocks up to 7 m (23 ft) away.
The spot hit by the infrared laser gets more than a million watts of power focused on it for five one-billionths of a second.
This produces a spark that the instrument observes with a telescope. The colors tell scientists which atomic elements are present in the rock.
ChemCam is going to be a key part of the process of selecting science targets during Curiosity’s two-year mission.
If the laser shows up an interesting rock, the vehicle will move closer and deploy its other instruments for a more detailed investigation.
Assuming the test with the 7 cm-wide N165 object goes well, ChemCam will move on to its first science target.
This will be rock exposed on the ground next to the rover by the rocket-powered crane used to lower the vehicle to the crater floor.
Exhaust from this descent stage scattered surface grit and pebbles to reveal a harder, compact material underneath.
The crane made four scour marks in the ground – two either side of Curiosity. These have been dubbed Burnside, Goulburn, Hepburn and Sleepy Dragon.
The names, all related to fire, are taken from ancient rock formations in Canadian North America.
Goulburn Scour will be zapped by ChemCam.
“There’s bedrock exposed beneath the soil with interesting patterns of color,” said John Grotzinger, Curiosity’s project scientist.
“There’re lighter parts; there’re darker parts, and the team is busy deliberating over how this rock unit may have formed and what it’s composed of. We’ll aim the ChemCam [at Goulburn Scour], as well as taking even higher resolution images.”
Curiosity has not moved since landing on 6 August (GMT). That is about to change.
The rover is going to roll forward briefly to test its locomotion system in the next few days. A reverse manoeuvre is planned, also.
Researchers want eventually to drive several kilometres to the base of the big mountain at the centre of Gale Crater to study sediments that look from satellite pictures to have been laid down in the presence of abundant water.
This journey to the foothills of Mount Sharp is going to have to wait a few months, however, because the science team intends first to go in the opposite direction.
Several hundred metres to the east of Curiosity’s present position is an intersection of three geological terrains.
Again, this location has been given a name – Glenelg. And, again, it is taken from the geology of North America.
The intersection is intriguing and a good place to compare and contrast with the bedrock exposed in Goulburn Scour.
In addition, it may provide access to older, harder rocks. These could make for a first opportunity for Curiosity to use its drill.
“Even though it is in the opposite direction from the path to Mount Sharp, it’s the one place we can go to capture a lot of the information that’s persevered in our landing [location],” said Prof. John Grotzinger.
Hypersonic jet X-51A WaveRider has been tested by US military in a bid to reach Mach 6 (4,300 mph; 6,900 km/h) above the Pacific Ocean.
At that speed it could travel from London to New York in about an hour. Results from the test flight have not yet been released.
The Pentagon and NASA hope to use the project to develop faster missiles.
During a test in June 2011, WaveRider travelled at Mach 5, but failed to reach the target speed.
It is one of several projects currently under way to create a hypersonic aircraft.
The research could also be used to build a commercial plane, able to reach much higher speeds than today’s jets, after Concorde was decommissioned in 2003.
Hypersonic jet X-51A WaveRider has been tested by US military in a bid to reach Mach 6 (4,300 mph; 6,900 km/h) above the Pacific Ocean
The military intended to use a B-52 bomber to lift the wingless unmanned jet from US Edwards Air Force Base in California to 50,000 feet (15,250m).
The craft was then to be dropped and after a free fall of about four seconds, its engine is supposed to ignite.
X-51A WaveRider was then expected to climb to 70,000 ft (21,300 m) and eventually reach Mach 6.
The Mach number is the ratio of the speed of an object to the speed of sound. Mach 1 is the speed of sound – approximately 768 mph, depending on various factors including temperature and altitude.
So Mach 6 is six times the speed of sound. Concorde’s cruising speed was Mach 2 – it flew from London to New York in just over three hours.
The WaveRider test flight was expected to last for about five minutes before the craft falls into the Pacific.
The test is essentially a repeat of last summer’s attempt, when the hypersonic aircraft reached Mach 5, but the engine failed to attain full power.
Military officials said the results would be available later on Wednesday.
European aerospace and defense giant EADS believes that hypersonic passenger flights are likely to appear in the near future. In 2011, EADS presented its own concept of a commercial high-speed aircraft designed to fly at Mach 4.
“The business community who wanted to be in New York in three hours made Concorde highly viable, and now there’s interest on both sides of the Atlantic to jump a generation and go from supersonic flight to hypersonic flight,” said EADS’ vice-president of business development, Peter Robbie.
“Such an aircraft will be very expensive, of course, because of the enormous amounts of energy that is required to get to such speeds.
“But the idea of going from Tokyo to Paris in two-and-a-half hours is very attractive for the business and political community – and I think that by about 2050, there may be a viable commercial aircraft.”
In August 2011, US military scientists attempted to get another unmanned hypersonic experimental aircraft to reach Mach 20 – 20 times the speed of sound.
However, they lost contact with the Falcon Hypersonic Test Vehicle 2 (HTV-2) after it had separated from its rocket.
NASA has released the first full color mosaic from its Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars.
Scientists have remarked that the rover’s surroundings resembled parts of the southwestern US.
Curiosity’s ultimate goal is to drive towards a peak – informally known as Mount Sharp – to study its rocks.
NASA has released the first full color mosaic from its Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars
Shown in the mosaic is a section on the crater wall where a network of valleys is believed to have formed through water entering from the outside.
This is the first view scientists have had of a fluvial system – one relating to a river or stream – from the surface of Mars.
Team members are also studying a section looking south of the landing site that provides an overview of the eventual geological targets Curiosity will explore, including the rock-strewn, gravelly surface nearby, a dark dune field and the sedimentary rock of Mount Sharp.
The rover will also study a patch of ground where rocks have been uncovered by the blast of the rockets used on the “sky crane”, which lowered Curiosity to the surface.
[youtube _nFK5DphO9Y]
NASA’s Curiosity rover has lifted its mast and used its high navigation cameras for the first time.
The robot vehicle has returned black and white images that capture part of its own body, its shadow on the ground and views off to the horizon.
Spectacular relief – the rim cliffs of the crater in which the rover landed – can be seen in the distance.
Curiosity – also known as the Mars Science Laboratory, MSL – put down on the Red Planet on Monday (GMT).
The NASA mission came to rest on the floor of a deep depression on Mars’ equator known as Gale Crater, close to a 5.5 km-high mountain.
The plan eventually is to take the robot to the base of this mountain where it is expected to find rocks that were laid down billions of years ago in the presence of liquid water.
Curiosity rover on Mars has returned black and white images that capture part of its own body, its shadow on the ground and views off to the horizon
Curiosity will probe these sediments for evidence that past environments on Mars could once have favored microbial life.
Since its landing, engineers have been running through a list of health checks and equipment tests.
These have included deploying a high-gain antenna to provide a data link to Earth additional to the UHF satellite relays it uses most of the time. This antenna failed to point correctly at first, but the problem has now been fixed.
The mast was stowed for the journey to Mars, lying flat on the deck of the rover.
Raising it into the vertical was the main task of Sol 2 – the second full Martian day of surface operations.
Locked in the upright position, the masthead and its cameras stand some 2m above the ground.
Curiosity has two pairs of black and white, greyscale, navigation cameras which can acquire stereo imagery to help the rover pick a path across the surface.
These Navcams sit just to the side of two science cameras – one wideangle, one telephoto. It is these Mastcams that will provide the really exquisite, true color views of the Martian landscape. We should see something of their output following Sol 3.
Most of the pictures we have seen so far have been low-resolution thumbnails – easy to downlink. But we are now starting to get one or two hi-res versions also.
Mike Malin, the principal investigator on Mardi (Mars Descent Imager), has released a detailed view taken of the heatshield as it fell away from the rover’s capsule during Monday’s entry descent and landing (EDL).
Eventually hundreds of Mardi pictures will be run together to make a movie of the descent.
With the rover now on the ground and Mardi still pointing downwards, Mike Malin has also got a good shot of the gravel surface under the vehicle.
One instrument on the rover has already had a chance to gather some data. This is the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD).
Indeed, this instrument has acquired quite a lot of data so far, as it was working for periods even during the rover’s cruise to Mars.
It is endeavoring to characterize the flux of high-energy atomic and subatomic particles reaching Mars from the Sun and distant exploded stars.
This radiation would be hazardous to any microbes alive on the planet today, but would also constitute a threat to the health of any future astronauts on the Red Planet.
In other news, NASA reports it has now found more components of the landing system discarded by the rover during EDL.
These are a set of six tungsten blocks that the rover’s capsule ejected to shift its centre of mass and help guide its flight through the atmosphere.
Satellite imagery has identified the line of craters these blocks made when they slammed into the ground about 12 km from Curiosity’s eventual landing position.
NASA has also confirmed the precise timing of Monday’s touchdown.
The rover’s computer put this at 05:17:57 UTC on Mars. With a one-way light-travel time of 13 minutes and 48 seconds to cover the 250 million km to Earth, this equates to a receive time here at mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of 05:31:45 UTC (GMT).
Images of the surface of Mars taken by the Curiosity rover as it made its historic descent yesterday have now been released.
NASA has provided almost 300 thumbnails from a sequence of pictures that will eventually be run together as a color hi-def movie.
Visible in the timelapse is the heatshield discarded by the vehicle as it neared the ground.
It was the crane that finally settled the robot on to the surface.
A signal confirming the Curiosity rover had landed on Mars was received here at mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at 05:32 GMT (22:32 PDT Sunday).
Curiosity – also known as the Mars Science laboratory (MSL) – put down in a deep equatorial depression known as Gale Crater.
Pictures from the Mars Descent Imager (Mardi), even in their thumbnail form, have now allowed engineers to work out Curiosity’s precise position on the planet – a latitude of -4.5895 and a longitude of 137.4417.
Pictures from the Mars Descent Imager (Mardi), even in their thumbnail form, have now allowed engineers to work out Curiosity's precise position on the planet
The full set of high-resolution pictures from Mardi will take some weeks to downlink.
The mission team has also got its best view yet of Mount Sharp, the 5.5 km-high peak sitting in the middle of Gale.
This comes from a hazard avoidance camera mounted on the lower-front of the vehicle.
Ordinarily, hazcam pictures are very wide-angle in view and therefore distorted, but image processing software has been used to correct the geometry.
The mountain is the ultimate destination for this $2.5 billion mission.
Satellite data has indicated that sediments at the base of Mount Sharp were laid down in the presence of abundant water.
Curiosity, with its sophisticated suite of 10 instruments, will study those rocks to try to determine if ancient environments on Mars were ever favorable for life.
Released earlier on Monday was a spectacular shot acquired not by the rover but of the rover. This came from one of the US space agency’s satellites at the Red Planet – the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
MRO played a key role in Monday’s landing by recording telemetry from the robot as it approached the ground.
But NASA also tasked it with trying to get a picture of the new arrival. The rover is seen when still inside its protective shell.
Moments after this image was acquired, the vehicle would have dropped out of the capsule to ride its rocket-powered crane to the base of the crater. The resolution in the picture is such that it is even possible to pick out the discarded heatshield.
The mission team is now in its first full day of Martian operations (Sol 1). One of the key activities will be to deploy Curiosity’s high-gain antenna. This unit will allow the vehicle to talk direct to Earth, in addition to relaying data via satellites like MRO.
Another action planned for Sol 1 will be to get a color shot from the Mars Hand Lens Imager (Mahli).
This camera is mounted on the rover’s tool-bearing turret at the end of its robotic arm. The picture, which should be released on Tuesday, will provide the most detailed view of the rover’s surroundings to date.
[youtube 9oLaC1VYoTM]
[youtube UcGMDXy-Y1I]
[youtube N9hXqzkH7YA]
NASA’s Curiosity rover has just landed on Mars.
The one-ton vehicle was reported to have landed in a deep crater near the planet’s equator at 06:32 BST (05:32 GMT).
It will now embark on a mission of at least two years to look for evidence that Mars may once have supported life.
A signal confirming the rover was on the ground safely was relayed to Earth via NASA’s Odyssey satellite, which is in orbit around the Red Planet.
The success was greeted with a roar of approval here at mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
The mission has even already sent its first low-resolution images – showing the rover’s wheel and its shadow, through a dust-covered lens cap that has yet to be removed.
A first color image of Curiosity’s surroundings should be returned in the next couple of days.
NASA’s Curiosity rover has just landed on Mars
Engineers and scientists who have worked on this project for the best part of 10 years punched the air and hugged each other.
The descent through the atmosphere after a 570-million-km journey from Earth had been billed as the “seven minutes of terror” – the time it would take to complete a series of high-risk, automated manoeuvres that would slow the rover from an entry speed of 20,000 km/h to allow its wheels to set down softly.
The Curiosity team had to wait 13 tense minutes for the signals from Odyssey and the lander to make their way back to Earth.
After the landing, the flight director reported that Curiosity had hit the surface of Mars at a gentle 0.6 metres per second.
“We’re on Mars again, and it’s absolutely incredible,” said NASA administrator Charles Bolden.
“It doesn’t get any better than this.”
The mission team will now spend the next few hours assessing the health of the vehicle (also referred to as the Mars Science Laboratory, MSL).
This is the fourth rover NASA has put on Mars, but its scale and sophistication dwarf all previous projects.
Its biggest instrument alone is nearly four times the mass of the very first robot rover deployed on the planet back in 1997.
Curiosity has been sent to investigate the central mountain inside Gale Crater that is more than 5 km high.
It will climb the rise, and, as it does so, study rocks that were laid down billions of years ago in the presence of liquid water.
The vehicle will be looking for evidence that past environments could have favored microbial life.
Scientists warn, however, that this will be a slow mission – Curiosity is in no hurry.
For one thing, the rover has a plutonium battery that should give it far greater longevity than the solar-panelled power systems fitted to previous vehicles.
“People have got to realize this mission will be different,” commented Steve Squyres, the lead scientist of the Opportunity and Spirit rovers landed in 2004.
“When we landed we only thought we’d get 30 sols (Martian days) on the surface, so we had to hit the ground running. Curiosity has plenty of time,” he said.
Initially, the rover is funded for two years of operations. But many expect this mission to roll and roll for perhaps a decade or more.
Prev123Next 
Page 2 of 3
