Daily Archives: February 21, 2022

Friday, February 18th marked the first anniversary ofNASAsPerseverance roversMarslanding.

The rover first touched down in the planets Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021.

The Mars 2020 missionlaunchedJuly 30, 2020, from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

Since then, NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)noted in a statement, it has racked up a series of accomplishments, including new distance records.

The2,263-pound robotic geologistcollected the first rock core samples from anotherplanet, tested the first prototype oxygen generator on Mars and deployed Ingenuity, the first robotic helicopter to take off on another planet.

According to the agency, Percy also recently broke a record for the most distance driven by a Mars rover in a single day, traveling almost 1,050 feet using its AutoNav software on Feb. 14.

Perseverance which carried the most cameras ever sent to Mars has nearly wrapped up its firstsciencecampaign in the crater, which contained a lake billions of years ago.

It is currently gathering rock cores from the crater floor the first step in theMars Sample Return campaign.

Two more samples will be collected in the coming weeks that scientists believe could provide an age range for Jezeros formation and lake.

The samples Perseverance has been collecting will provide a key chronology for the formation of Jezero Crater, Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASAs Science Mission Directorate, said in a statement. Each one is carefully considered for its scientific value.

Perseverances journey has run into a couple of snags thus far.

Itsfirst attemptat drilling a rock core was unsuccessful and somepebbleshindered progress last month.

In subsequent missions in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), NASA would send spacecraft to Mars to collect the sealed samples and return them to Earth.

A key objective for the Perseverance mission is astrobiology and the hunt for signs of ancient microbial life.

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Perseverance Mars rover marks a year on red planet - New York Post

Clouds can be seen passing through the Martian sky in new images taken by NASA's Curiosity rover.

Curiosity is one of NASA's Mars exploration vehicles which has been on the planet's surface since August 2012. It is the predecessor to the newer Perseverance rover which touched down on Mars almost exactly one year ago in February, 2021.

While Perseverance may be more technically advanced, Curiosity is still operating to this day, and is conducting valuable research on the Red Planet.

Last week, NASA released new images from Curiosity that were taken in mid-December last year at a time when the rover was more than 3,300 Martian days into its ongoing mission.

The images, taken using Curiosity's navigation camera, are snapshots of Mars' clouds. Taken some time apart, the images have been stitched together to form two eight-frame videos.

Taken from two different perspectives, one of the videos shows the clouds passing directly overhead while the other shows the clouds passing over the landscape.

They can be seen below.

The presence of clouds on Mars does not mean liquid water, however. By comparing the two perspectives, scientists were able to calculate that the clouds were around 50 miles high and were probably made out of carbon dioxide ice due to the extremely low temperatures at that altitude.

Scientists should also be able to calculate how fast the clouds are moving, though NASA did not disclose a figure.

Mars is a cold, inhospitable planet with an average temperature of around -81 degrees Fahrenheit, and an atmosphere largely composed of carbon dioxide with some water vapor.

It's not the first time that Curiosity has photographed clouds on Mars. In May 2021, NASA released images of "shining clouds" taken by the rover in March of that year.

The space agency described the Martian clouds as "wispy puffs filled with ice crystals that scattered light from the setting Sun, some of them shimmering with color."

By studying images of Mars' clouds, scientists can understand how they form on Mars and why some are different to others.

NASA's Mars rovers have a habit of exceeding their initial planned operation times. Curiosity's primary mission was due to last just 23 months, but the rover continues to work nearly a decade later.

While this is no doubt an impressive feat of endurance, Curiosity is yet to surpass the marathon efforts of the Opportunity rover, which was designed to last just 90 Martian days and travel around 3,300 feet after landing on Mars in 2004.

But Opportunity just kept on going and its mission was finally declared over in February 2019 after failing to communicate with Earth following a severe dust storm.

By this time the rover had surpassed all expectations, surviving for more than 60 times its life expectancy and travelling more than 28 miles.

More here:

Incredible NASA Mars Images Show Clouds Passing Across Martian Sky - Newsweek

For almost sixty years, robotic missions have been exploring the surface of Mars in search of potential evidence of life. More robotic missions will join in this search in the next fifteen years, the first sample return from Mars (courtesy of the Perseverance rover) will arrive here at Earth, and crewed missions will be sent there. Like their predecessors, these missions will rely on mass spectrometry to analyze samples of the Martian sands to look for potential signs of past life.

Given how much data we can expect from these missions, NASA is looking for new methods to analyze geological samples. To this end, NASA has partnered with the global crowdsourcing platform HeroX and the data-science company DrivenData to launch the Mars Spectrometry: Detect Evidence for Past Life challenge. With a prize purse of $30,000, this Challenge seeks innovative methods that rely on machine learning to automatically analyze Martian geological samples for potential signs of past life.

Despite sixty years of concerted efforts by multiple space agencies, the search for life on Mars has yielded little more than inconclusive results (as demonstrated by the Viking 1 and 2 landers). Nevertheless, modern surveys have found that Mars was a much warmer and wetter place billions of years ago. This discovery is one of the most profound breakthroughs in planetary science and has led to renewed efforts to find evidence of past (and maybe even present) life on Mars.

During the Noachian Period (ca. 4.1 to 3.5 billion years ago), Mars had a denser atmosphere, and surface conditions were warm enough that liquid water flowed on its surface. Evidence of this is preserved today in the form of river channels, sedimentary deposits, delta fans, and other features known to form in the presence of flowing water. By knowing how long these conditions persisted, scientists hope to determine how long life could have existed.

Unfortunately, conducting chemical analysis on soil and rock samples is time-consuming work. Moreover, analyses can suffer from false positives when they are strictly reliant on human interpretation. By leveraging machine-learning techniques, where analytical models are created from huge datasets, scientists hope to automate the chemical analysis process, making it more efficient and less time-consuming.

For this Challenge, NASA is looking innovative methods to automatically analyze data obtained by the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument aboard the Curiosity rover. This data is provided by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and Johnson Space Center (JSC), and the SAM science team. For years, Curiosity has used the SAM instrument to gather Martian soil and rock samples and subject them to evolved gas analysis (EGA).

This consists of heating samples until they emit gases that can be analyzed by spectrometers for specific chemical signatures. The SAM instrument accomplishes this with a gas chromatograph that separates gases to aid in identifying them, a mass spectrometer that detects elements necessary for life, and a tunable laser spectronometer that detects water vapor and analyzes methane to see if it is biotic in origin (produced by living things).

As Greg Lipstein, the Principal of DrivenData, said in the Challenge press release:

This is a fascinating research question where machine learning tools can have a real impact on how we can learn more about our place in the universe. Its a great chance to harness the collective intelligence and passion of the data community to advance the state of open science.

According to the Challenge page, the best methods should be able to detect certain families of chemical compounds that are of interest to astrobiologists. These include nitrogen, phosphorous, sulfur, oxygen, and carbon, the chemical building blocks of life, and volatiles such as water, ammonia, and methane, which are associated with biological processes. Competitors will also be able to advantage of the many experimental runs done on analog samples.

From this, competitors are tasked with developing machine learning methods that will support scientists in analyzing and interpreting data collected by missions (in-situ samples) and laboratory instruments (from sample-return missions). It is also hoped that these advancements will help scientists conduct future mission operations with greater speed and efficiency. The competition launched on February 18th and will remain open to submissions until April 18th, 2022.

The winning techniques will receive $15,000 (first place), $7,500 (second), $5,000 (third), with a bonus prize of $2,500. In addition, the winning entries may be used to help analyze data from Mars and potentially even inform future instruments conducting in-situ analysis. This includes the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars 2022 mission, consisting of the Russian Kazachok lander, the ESA Rosalind Franklin rover, and NASAs Dragonfly mission to Titan (Saturns largest moon).

Its exciting to think there might be clues of past life on Mars, said HeroX CEO Kal K. Sahota. These challenges are so inspiring as we search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.

The Challenge is open to anyone aged 18 or older, and participants may compete as individuals or as a team. The competition is open to individuals and teams from anywhere in the world, provided federal sanctions do not prohibit participation (some additional restrictions may apply). For more information on the rules, or to accept the Challenge, visit https://mars.drivendata.org

Further Reading: HeroX, DrivenData

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NASA and HeroX are Crowdsourcing the Search for Life on Mars - Universe Today

Landscape near Hooke Crater in Mars southern highlands captured by the CaSSIS camera onboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) on February 1, 2021. Credit: ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Chaotic mounds, wind-sculpted ripples and dust devil tracks: this image shows a fascinating and otherworldly landscape near Hooke Crater in Mars southern highlands.

The image was taken by the CaSSIS camera onboard the ESA/Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) on February 1, 2021, and shows part of Argyre Planitia, centered at 46.2S/318.3E.

This type of scenery is similar to chaotic terrain: a kind of broken, disrupted terrain seen across Mars where haphazard groups of variously sized and shaped rocks irregular knobs, conical mounds, ridges, flat-topped hills known as mesas clump together, often enclosed within depressions. There are around 30 regions of chaotic terrain defined on Mars (see ESA Mars Express views of Ariadnes Colles, Pyrrhae Regio, and Iani Chaos for just a small sample); while this small patch has not been defined as one of these, its appearance is certainly chaotic.

Perhaps the most striking feature here is the wispy, snaking tendrils stretching out across the frame. These dark traces of past activity were caused by dust devils, whirlwinds of dust that occur on both Mars and Earth when warm air rises quickly into cooler air. These devils leave tracks on a planets surface as they travel through dusty landscapes. The tracks here appear to have a north-south orientation, indicating a possible local wind pattern.

The bluish tinge to the dust devil tracks seen here is a result of the three filters that were combined to create this image; while not representative of what an observer would see with the naked eye, these filters produce a color infrared image with greater sensitivity to variations in surface mineralogy.

TGO arrived at Mars in 2016 and began its full science mission in 2018. The spacecraft is not only returning spectacular images like this one, but also providing the best ever inventory of the planets atmospheric gases, and mapping the planets surface for water-rich locations. It will also provide data relay services for the second ExoMars mission, comprising the Rosalind Franklin rover and Kazachok platform, when it arrives on Mars in 2023.

Continued here:

The Devils in the Detail: Fascinating and Otherworldly Landscape on Mars - SciTechDaily

Yes, you read that correctly.

It is now possible to reach Marsin as little as 45 days, which is nothing short of a science enthusiast's dream.

According to Canadian engineers, a laser-based technology for reaching Mars might drastically reduce the time it takes to reach the Red Planet.

At current rates, it would take around 500 days for a person to reach Mars, according to NASA projections.

However, engineers at McGill University in Canada claim to have created a "laser-thermal propulsion" technology that employs lasers to heat hydrogen fuel and claims to decrease journey time by half to 45 days.

The US space agency wants to send a crew to Mars in the mid-to-late 2030s, around the same time China plans to place humans on the Red Planet.

Watch: One year since Perseverance rover landed on Mars

It's called "directed-energy propulsion" because it uses enormous lasers shot from Earth to transmit power to photovoltaic panels aboard a spacecraft, which generate electricity and thrust.

While near Earth, the spacecraft accelerates rapidly, then races toward Mars during the next month, releasing the main vehicle to land on Mars and returning the rest to Earth to be recycled for the next launch.

Reaching Mars in six weeks was previously thought to be conceivable only with nuclear-powered rockets, which pose greater radiation hazards.

(With inputs from agencies)

Originally posted here:

Earth to Mars in just 45 days: New tech promises shorter trip to red planet - WION

This illustration depicts NASAs Perseverance rover operating on the surface of Mars. Credit: NASA

The first set of middle-schoolers in the agencys Youve Got Perseverance! campaign was honored with a message from the Red Planet and a chat with the rover team at JPL.

A group of 20 young students who have shown the character trait that NASAs Perseverance rover is named for received messages of encouragement directly from that six-wheeled scientist on Mars.

Nominated by educators and community leaders from across the country, the cohort is the first group in the agencys Youve Got Perseverance! awards, which honor U.S. students in sixth through eighth grade who have shown that nothing will deter them from their educational journey.

Twenty students along with their parents, teachers, and classmates met virtually with Mars rover team members at JPL, where they received personalized messages beamed from NASAs Perseverance rover as part of the Youve Got Perseverance campaign. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

On a February 15 video conferencing call, the students got to see the rover team working in a control room at the agencys Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California as Perseverance Surface Mission Manager Jessica Samuels walked them virtually through the facility. In the 60-minute program, students got to ask questions of dozens of rover team members and learn how Perseverance used its Seq. Echo capability to send the messages (generated by the team on Earth, then relayed to Mars and back). Samuels introduced a video featuring the individualized text messages the rover had sent to the students from some 200 million miles (320 million kilometers) away. This is the first time students have received personalized messages from a rover on another planet.

Perseverance had this message for Shannon Hayes, an eighth-grader from Lake Worth, Florida: Shannon, you show nothing will stop you if you put your mind to it. Way to go!

Jennifer Trosper, Mars Perseverance project manager, leads rover team members at JPL in a round of applause for students who were honored through the Youve Got Perseverance campaign for overcoming obstacles in pursuit of their educational goals. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Shannon has a genetic condition that makes her medically fragile and prevents her from attending school in person, her teacher said in nominating her for the opportunity. Despite the students severe physical limitations, her work is impeccable and detailed, and shows amazing grasp of concepts. Her maturity and positive attitude are the best I have ever seen, the teacher wrote.

For her part, when it came to the Q&A, Shannon wanted to know about the difficulty of driving the rover in Mars low gravity. Other students had questions about evidence of water on Mars, the types of samples Perseverance has collected, how the rover uses plutonium for power, and how its designed to survive the harsh environment on the Red Planet. Perseverance Project Manager Jennifer Trosper told the kids their questions made her certain they were on a path to success, and she said she teared up reading nomination forms for the students, some of whom have overcome serious obstacles.

I read your stories and I was so inspired, Trosper told the kids, going on to say, That perseverance and grit and determination thats what it takes to succeed.

The program connects students with the rover team at JPL, whose members have faced several challenges during the rovers development, journey to Mars, white-knuckle landing, and mission on the surface all during a global pandemic that has prompted much of the team to work remotely.

Students who have likewise persisted, showing tenacity, self-motivation, and the ability to overcome obstacles in pursuit of their goals, are eligible to be honored by the rover team and NASA.

Candidates must be nominated by an educator or community leader with firsthand knowledge of the students academic improvement through adversity, and a second nominator must validate the submission. After entries are screened to ensure students meet the criteria, selection for participation is made through a lottery.

The Youve Got Perseverance program is continuing through the rest of this school year. Three more nomination windows are planned, including a window thats open now and closes February 28. The next groups awardees will be announced March 24.

More About Perseverance

A key objective for Perseverances mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planets geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASAs Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.

JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.

Link:

Students With Perseverance Receive Personalized Messages From Mars Courtesy of NASA - SciTechDaily

Electrolysis of water to produce oxygen to breathe on bases on the moon or Mars could be up to 11% less efficient due to their lower gravities compared with the Earth, UK researchers have found. The finding supports the viability of the approach but it highlights the importance of limiting the effects of low gravity in the development of such systems for future missions.

Gravity on the moon and Mars is only 0.16g and 0.37g respectively, compared with the Earths 1g. Scientists knew that electrolysis of water is less efficient at zero-g, owing to oxygen bubbles being less buoyant and collecting around electrodes. However, technical challenges had meant that no one had studied the process at micro-g levels between 0.01g and 1g, and therefore how lunar or Martian gravity would affect oxygen production.

Now, a team led by Mark Symes at the University of Glasgow, UK, have conducted water electrolysis experiments within this range for the first time. They used a centrifuge system on board freefall flights with the help of the European Space Agencys Fly Your Thesis! programme.

The extent of this reduced efficiency at lunar gravity is comparably mild: maybe only 11% or so less efficient, says Symes. That means electrolysis of water could be a viable route to producing oxygen on the moon, at least in terms of efficiency.

The centrifuge system, which included an electrolysis cell, can be spun to simulate gravitational forces anywhere from 1g to 8g. The researchers mounted this system inside Frances Novespaces Zero-G airbus, which flew in parabolic arcs to bring the system and the researchers into zero gravity. The centrifuge was then spun to simulate gravitational forces between 0.01g and 1g.

The results suggest that mitigating the 11% drop in the efficiency of oxygen production under lunar gravity would require around 1% more power to match production on Earth. It is important to know what sort of performance and efficiency can be expected as every watt of power needs to be budgeted for on space missions, says Symes.

The work demonstrates once more that electrolytic oxygen production on the moon and Mars is feasible, says Katharina Brinkert, who studies oxygen production in microgravity at the University of Warwick, UK. However, challenges regarding the required additional energy input due to hindered gas bubble desorption remain.

Symes suggests solutions to overcome the effects of low gravity could include structuring electrodes so that bubbles detach more easily or simply shaking the electrolyser to dislodge bubbles. Our cell is by no means optimised, so more realistic cells definitely need to be built and tested, adds Symes.

Testing and optimising electrolysis systems could now be much quicker and easier thanks to the results that the team obtained. As a benchmark, it means oxygen evolution on the moon or Mars can be predicted without always taking costly and time-consuming parabolic flights. It would just require ground-based high g centrifuge experiments and extrapolating the results to lunar and Martian gravity levels. This is particularly beneficial given the long-term testing requirements for oxygen-evolving systems before their application on the moon and Mars, adds Brinkert.

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Freefall flights test feasibility of making oxygen on the moon and Mars - Chemistry World

So many of us can live the rest of our lives in blissful satisfaction now that Netflix has released Rabbids Invasion: Mission to Mars, a spinoff special of the animated series in which little rubbery rabbit-like aliens gibber nonsense-speak and participate in endless cartoon violence. Theyre indestructible squeak toys that never shut up and constantly smack each other around. And now theyre going to Mars! That these obnoxious creations deserve the feature-length treatment is dubious at best but will they inspire a few laughs, or make us wish they were truly being shot into outer space? Lets find out.

The Gist: Theres this Rabbid who isnt like the other Rabbids. For starters, he has an Amish beard/combover combo, and looks like your ninth-grade earth science teacher. Hes also not an unapologetically raving moron with the IQ of a hammer (a peen hammer of some kind, Id wager). In fact, hes a math maniac and science wiz. And when he learns that big-tech CEO Frank Nebula wants to send Rabbids to Mars their indestructible nature allows them to survive Mars harsh atmosphere, see our bearded protagonist does everything he can to prove hes worthy of the mission. It shouldnt be hard, right? I mean, the other Rabbids couldnt be dumber, unless they were QAnon devotees.

So our guy makes his way to Nebula HQ, where a roomful of Rabbids take part in incessant antics: screaming, trying to eat fireworks, dancing to brainless instrumental electro-disco, making fart noises and watching Sunny Love Beach, a Magnum P.I.-meets-Baywatch TV show that makes Emily in Paris look like The Wire. Beardo earns the trust of a couple lower-rung scientists who name him Scribbles, and, after many false starts, finally get him a seat on the rocket to the Red Planet. Scribbles will be joined by a shrieking baby Rabbid, a Rabbid obsessed with taking selfies and the disco Rabbid in legwarmers and a butthugger speedo. They could be more obnoxious, they could be less. Lets just say their obnoxiousness inspires ambivalence.

Of course, nothing goes according to plan. Antics on the rocket turn into antics on the surface, especially after the Rabbids discover bloblike tri-eyed Martians, who also participate in antics. But, as anyone smarter than a Rabbid suspected, Frank Nebula has an ulterior motive, a nefarious plan-beneath-the-plan that cements his status as the bad guy. Whatd you expect from a big-tech CEO? The selfless non-capitalist pursuit of scientific discovery for the good of all humankind?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Id say Rabbids are outright ripoffs of Minions, but the bulging-eyed noseless little white things predate the bulging-eyed noseless little yellow things by four years. I will say Shaun the Sheep says a lot more while saying nothing than any of these characters, though.

Performance Worth Watching: Kudos to Scribbles for staying true to himself even when he doesnt fit in with others of his ilk. Theres a moment where he pretends to be your run-of-the-mill stumbling-idiot Rabbid, and hes either really bad at being stump-stupid, or a lousy actor.

Memorable Dialogue: Mm mm-mmm? Ba BA ba. this could be Rabbid Shakespeare for all we know

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Well, antics do not make for compelling drama. It takes half the runtime of RI:MtM for the flibbertigibbet to wane before the plot gets in gear and things start happening. Not that six-year-olds will give a crap; flibbertigibbet is their life, and perhaps in the Rabbids random lunacy, young children will see themselves. But hopefully those selves will never try to eat fireworks.

My theory for this special, one that perhaps extends to Rabbids Invasion in general cartoon shorts, video games, etc. is that its creators are actively seeking to convey no message whatsoever. No subtext, no moralizing, no lessons in civic duty a la those self-righteous little shit dogs on Paw Patrol. Maybe Mission to Mars brushes up against satire, of 1980s TV series, of the big-tech CEO as a cartoon villain. But I assert that such things are byproducts of my being older than 11.

Our Call: Rabbids Invasion: Mission to Mars is jabberwocky for jabberwockys sake. If that appeals to you, then STREAM IT after you get off the bus from elementary school.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.

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Stream It Or Skip It: Rabbids Invasion: Mission to Mars on Netflix, a Spinoff Special of the Cartoon Series That Extends the Silliness to Feature...