Monthly Archives: March 2024

A small rover built in Europe has arrived in Japan in preparation for its voyage to Mars.

The autonomous 55-pound (25-kilogram) rover is called IDEFIX and is part of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Martian Moon Exploration (MMX) probe that aims to collect samples of the Mars' moon, Phobos.

The little, four-wheeled rover recently arrived in Japan, according to a Feb. 26 post on X (formerly known as Twitter) written by the MMX mission account.

Related: New Japanese spacecraft aims to explore the mysterious moons of Mars

IDEFIX, named for the small white dog in the Asterix comics, was jointly built by the German Aerospace Center (known by the German acronym DLR) and the French space agency Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES).

The main MMX spacecraft aims to grab 0.35 ounces (10 grams) of Phobos' material in 2029. It will then send the precious cargo towards Earth; arrival is expected to occur in 2031. IDEFIX will play a part in this overall objective by landing on Phobos first and gathering key information in preparation for the landing of the main spacecraft. The rover will also analyze the Martian moon's surface composition and texture at selected locations, according to DLR if it can land and operate successfully in a near zero-gravity environment all by itself, that is.

"The biggest challenge for IDEFIX is that it has to carry out many operations particularly the uprighting after landing on Phobos fully autonomously in order to survive," Stphane Mary, CNES Project Manager for IDEFIX, said in a DLR statement. "It wouldn't survive if it waited for commands from Earth to arrive."

A key goal of MMX is to determine whether Phobos and its fellow Martian satellite Deimos are captured asteroids or a coalescence of fragments that were blown into orbit after a giant impact struck Mars.

MMX was originally scheduled to launch in September of this year, yet doubts over the readiness of the new Japanese H3 rocket meant JAXA took the decision to delay the mission until the next Mars launch window in 2026.

H3 has since reached Earth orbit for the first time, bouncing back from the failure of its debut launch in 2023. The mission will launch on an H3 rocket from Tanegashima Space Center in 2026, hopefully arriving in Mars orbit in 2027 to begin mapping and analyzing Deimos and Phobos. IDEFIX and the main MMX spacecraft will then be able to land on Phobos in 2029.

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This little rover will ride shotgun on Japan's ambitious Mars moon sample-return mission - Space.com

For all the wonders robotic space missions have to offer, they are limited by mass, power, and size requirements. We cant carry all our large, precise laboratory equipment to space. That limits us when we want to precisely know a rocks age, the conditions in which it formed, and whether it carries signatures of past life, said Jeffrey Johnson, a planetary geologist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Many Martian science objectives can only be achieved by analyzing returned samples in laboratories on Earth, he said. The sophisticated instruments at such facilities can detect subtle chemical, mineralogical, and morphological signatures with greater precision and accuracy than is possible with miniaturized robotic instruments on the Martian surface.

Whereas a single spacecraft instrument tends to be designed for one particular function, the samples we return from Mars can be subjected to the full range of current and future scientific tools available on Earth.

Its not that we cant miniaturize and flight-harden one instrument, its that we cant do it for all the instruments and analyses that wed be able to perform on these rocks once theyre returned to Earth, said Amy Williams, an assistant professor in geological sciences at the University of Florida.

Many important analytical tests performed on rock and soil samples require careful preparation using fluids or slicing at ultrafine, nanometer scales. That just cant happen on Mars. Nor can we bring to Mars the full range of equipment found in a single geosciences department, let alone the scope of advanced laboratories around the Earth. With returned samples, multiple labs will work together to validate, verify, and confirm key findings multiple lines of evidence for, and confidence in, important scientific discoveries. This level of certainty and reproducibility is critical for bombshell results such as a possible sign of past life.

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The science value of Mars Sample Return - The Planetary Society

As it trundles around an ancient lakebed on Mars, NASAs Perseverance rover is assembling a one-of-a-kind rock collection. The car-sized explorer is methodically drilling into the Red Planets surface and pulling out cores of bedrock that its storing in sturdy titanium tubes. Scientists hope to one day return the tubes to Earth and analyze their contents for traces of embedded microbial life.

Since it touched down on the surface of Mars in 2021, the rover has filled 20 of its 43 tubes with cores of bedrock. Now, MIT geologists have remotely determined a crucial property of the rocks collected to date, which will help scientists answer key questions about the planets past.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

In a study appearing today in the journal Earth and Space Science, an MIT team reports that they have determined the original orientation of most bedrock samples collected by the rover to date. By using the rovers own engineering data, such as the positioning of the vehicle and its drill, the scientists could estimate the orientation of each sample of bedrock before it was drilled out from the Martian ground.

The results represent the first time scientists have oriented samples of bedrock on another planet. The teams method can be applied to future samples that the rover collects as it expands its exploration outside the ancient basin. Piecing together the orientations of multiple rocks at various locations can then give scientists clues to the conditions on Mars in which the rocks originally formed.

There are so many science questions that rely on being able to know the orientation of the samples were bringing back from Mars, says study author Elias Mansbach, a graduate student in MITs Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.

The orientation of rocks can tell you something about any magnetic field that may have existed on the planet, adds Benjamin Weiss, professor of planetary sciences at MIT. You can also study how water and lava flowed on the planet, the direction of the ancient wind, and tectonic processes, like what was uplifted and what sunk. So its a dream to be able to orient bedrock on another planet, because its going to open up so many scientific investigations.

Weiss and Mansbachs co-authors are Tanja Bosak and Jennifer Fentress at MIT, along with collaborators at multiple institutions including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech.

Profound shift

The Perseverance rover, nicknamed Percy, is exploring the floor of Jezero Crater, a large impact crater layered with igneous rocks, which may have been deposited from past volcanic eruptions, as well as sedimentary rocks that likely formed from long-dried-out rivers that fed into the basin.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

Mars was once warm and wet, and theres a possibility there was life there at one time, Weiss says. Its now cold and dry, and something profound must have happened on the planet.

Many scientists, including Weiss, suspect that Mars, like Earth, once harbored a magnetic field that shielded the planet from the suns solar wind. Conditions then may have been favorable for water and life, at least for a time.

Once that magnetic field went away, the suns solar wind this plasma that boils off the sun and moves faster than the speed of sound just slammed into Mars atmosphere and may have removed it over billions of years, Weiss says. We want to know what happened, and why.

The rocks beneath the Martian surface likely hold a record of the planets ancient magnetic field. When rocks first form on a planets surface, the direction of their magnetic minerals is set by the surrounding magnetic field. The orientation of rocks can thus help to retrace the direction and intensity of the planets magnetic field and how it changed over time.

Since the Perseverance rover was collecting samples of bedrock, along with surface soil and air, as part of its exploratory mission, Weiss, who is a member of the rovers science team, and Mansbach looked for ways to determine the original orientation of the rovers bedrock samples as a first step toward reconstructing Mars magnetic history.

It was an amazing opportunity, but initially there was no mission requirement to orient bedrock, Mansbach notes.

Roll with it

Over several months, Mansbach and Weiss met with NASA engineers to hash out a plan for how to estimate the original orientation of each sample of bedrock before it was drilled out of the ground. The problem was a bit like predicting what direction a small circle of sheetcake is pointing, before twisting a round cookie cutter in to pull out a piece. Similarly, to sample bedrock, Perseverance corkscrews a tube-shaped drill into the ground at a perpendicular angle, then pulls the drill directly back out, along with any rock that it penetrates.

To estimate the orientation of the rock before it was drilled out of the ground, the team realized they need to measure three angles, the hade, azimuth, and roll, which are similar to the pitch, yaw, and roll of a boat. The hade is essentially the tilt of the sample, while the azimuth is the absolute direction the sample is pointing relative to true north. The roll refers to how much a sample must turn before returning to its original position.

In talking with engineers at NASA, the MIT geologists found that the three angles they required were related to measurements that the rover takes on its own in the course of its normal operations. They realized that to estimate a samples hade and azimuth they could use the rovers measurements of the drills orientation, as they could assume the tilt of the drill is parallel to any sample that it extracts.

To estimate a samples roll, the team took advantage of one of the rovers onboard cameras, which snaps an image of the surface where the drill is about to sample. They reasoned that they could use any distinguishing features on the surface image to determine how much the sample would have to turn in order to return to its original orientation.

In cases where the surface bore no distinguishing features, the team used the rovers onboard laser to make a mark in the rock, in the shape of the letter L, before drilling out a sample a move that was jokingly referred to at the time as the first graffiti on another planet.

By combining all the rovers positioning, orienting, and imaging data, the team estimated the original orientations of all 20 of the Martian bedrock samples collected so far, with a precision that is comparable to orienting rocks on Earth.

We know the orientations to within 2.7 degrees uncertainty, which is better than what we can do with rocks in the Earth, Mansbach says. Were working with engineers now to automate this orienting process so that it can be done with other samples in the future.

The next phase will be the most exciting, Weiss says. The rover will drive outside the crater to get the oldest known rocks on Mars, and its an incredible opportunity to be able to orient these rocks, and hopefully uncover a lot of these ancient processes.

This research was supported, in part, by NASA and the Mars 2020 Participating Scientist program.

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Study determines the original orientations of rocks drilled on Mars - MIT News

If you suddenly found yourself standing on the surface of Mars, it would feel like youd been transported into a dusty space western. The arid soil lays a rocky palette of red powder across the horizon, where youd see sprawling canyons and old volcanoes with edges whipped sharp by unforgiving wind storms. But, 4.5 billion years ago, this barren wasteland was home to a rich system of groundwater, vast oceans and galloping rivers. And in the the past month, a growing tide of scientific research has begun uncovering a hidden history of Mars once-rushing waters.

Evidence of an ancient planet-wide groundwater system, previously only theorized, was discovered in 2019. But only recently, in early February, a NASA spacecraft brought back exciting images of Mars surface which contained evidence the planet teemed with flowing water across an ancient spread of now-dry lake beds, channels, valleys and gullies. The same week, the European Space Agencys Mars Express discovered ice buried under the equator, hinting at massive groundwater aquifers.

Unlocking the secret of how those aquifers recharge (or refill) is the next step in exploring a possible human future on Mars. Last November, a team of Chinese scientists found a way to create oxygen out of the water found on Mars. Now, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have combined a number of methods from new computer models to simple back-of-the-envelope calculations to uncover something curious about how that ice came to be in the first place. Despite a climate full of surging rainstorms, the scientists said, early Martian soil simply didnt absorb much of it. The groundwater systems refilled themselves, but we have no idea how.

Understanding groundwater flow can help inform where to find water today, said lead study author Eric Hiatt, in a university release. Whether youre looking for signs of ancient life, trying to sustain human explorers, or making rocket fuel to get back home to Earth, its essential to know where the water would most likely be.

"Understanding groundwater flow can help inform where to find water today."

The new findings, published in the journal Icarus, raise even more questions about how water systems work on Mars compared to those which exist on Earth today. And, because these groundwater systems likely fed Mars ancient network of lakes, finding out how long it took those lakes to fill up and overflow onto the surface could help us figure out whether, and where, life on Mars may have existed in the past.

The fact that the groundwater isnt as big of a process could mean that other things are, Hiatt said. It might magnify the importance of runoff, or it could mean that it just didnt rain as much on Mars. But its just fundamentally different from how we think about [water] on Earth.

Much of the groundwater mystery centers on one of Mars most notable features, called the great dichotomy. The term describes the stark difference in land height between two of the planets regions the northern lowlands and the southern highlands. This contrast in elevation is where we can see how groundwater aquifers surged up to the surface, creating markers and leaving a trail of evidence for scientists to follow today.

Researchers said most of the liquid water that existed on Mars billions of years ago resided in a vast ocean in the northern lowlands. But when Hiatts team used their new combination of computer modeling techniques to analyze the great dichotomy, they were able to estimate how much groundwater recharge occurred in the Martian southern highlands.

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The mystery deepened when researchers found the groundwater aquifers in the southern highlands on Mars only recharged about 0.03 millimeters (0.001 inches) per year. The Trinity and Edwards-Trinity Plateau aquifers which provide water for the city of San Antonio range between 2.5 to 50 millimeters (0.1 inches to 2 inches) per year. Thats 80 to 1600 times more annual recharge than Martian groundwater.

While other studies have simulated groundwater flow on Mars using similar techniques, this research by [Hiatt] published in [Icarus] is the first to incorporate the influence of the oceans that existed on Mars more than three billion years ago, in the Hellas, Argyre, and Borealis basins, the university said in a tweet.

Even as the sharp differences between Mars and Earths water systems emerge in the teams latest findings, research like this could also help us understand how to survive water and climate changes on our own planet. The technology were using to find water on Mars now, for instance, can also double in value for our own planets inhabitants. Using it to find leaks in public water systems has already proven to be a more effective and inexpensive than traditional methods.

"When we think about what Mars looked like 3.5 billion years ago, we probably should be thinking about an environment that in some ways looks a lot like Earth," said University of Texas Associate Professor Tim Goudge in a 2021 interview.

Mars atmosphere was thick and wet, with four times more pressure than Earths today and resulting raindrops that were so tiny they looked more like a dense fog and couldnt even penetrate the soil. As that pressure waned, though, rainfall came down hard on the Red Planets surface, carving grooves and valleys. Just as floods on Earth carved out the Grand Canyon, catastrophic floods accounted for a quarter of Mars surface erosion, according to UTA researchers.

Then things changed. Mars lost its magnetic field, and with it the vast oceans which contained more water than contained in the Earths Artic Ocean today. A new theory from the University of Chicago emerged on Feb. 14 after a duo of scientists examined sediment and erosion evidence on Mars and noticed a pattern in the planets history.

Like Earth, which has over the past billion years experienced periods of global glaciations and hyperthermals, the climate history of early Mars may have been intermittent, the study authors write in Nature Geosciences.

We suggest that Mars did not undergo a single wet-to-dry transition, but rather experienced seven major climate transitions, with the planet intermittently under climates warm enough to support surface liquid water even after 3.0billion years ago (Ga). However, there is evidence for long dry spells, with some locations fully dry after 3.6Ga.

The study also looks into the reasons driving these climate shifts testing hypotheses about volcanic eruptions and changes in the planets axial tilt. This new wave of Martian water research is quickly expanding our base of knowledge about alien climates, and understanding how a procession of climate changes could dramatically shape Mars could give us key insight into the challenges Earth may face as it encounters its own climate upheaval.

Critically, though, the more we can figure out about the mystery of Martian water, the sooner we can figure out how human life on a new planet could work and how, if ever, it worked in the past.

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about water and life on Mars

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The secret history of water on Mars: What ancient climate change tells us about the future on Earth - Salon