Category Archives: Mars

One thing Im dying to try is cooking the food thats already in my fridge. I dont need it to become a habit. I just want to try it. Just once. Just once in my stupid, pointless life Id like to skip the takeout and say to myself, OK you self-righteous, needy, two-faced, unfunny, lecherous baritone, eat your groceries. That might sound small, but I believe in being gentle with myself. Cole Escola, 35, comedian and actor

I was thinking about New Years resolutions and how everyone wants to be fit and look great and also feel young. And the one thing Id like to try that Ive never done that will help me feel young in some ways is TikTok. Opera is in a constant state of emergency and TikTok has a thinly-veiled chaos. So I think theres some similarities, but to be an opera singer, you have to live this very disciplined life. And Im attracted and drawn to the kind of spontaneity that seems like its required for TikTok. And Im always trying to get insight into what different communities and different generations are thinking and try to find bridges between that and this kind of seemingly foreboding world of classical music. Anthony Roth Costanzo, 39, Grammy-nominated opera singer with the Metropolitan Opera and artist-in-residence at the New York Philharmonic

I think 2022 is maybe going to be the year that I learn how to drive. I never learned how to drive. My wife and I bought a car during the first pandemic summer, and I have been insisting to her ever since that I would learn how to drive it. And I think as much as I love being driven, I think its finally time that I need to learn how to contribute my weight. Mars Hobrecker, 28, tattoo artist

I want to learn how to cook. I think as a 45-year-old man, its embarrassing that I dont know how to cook. Because right now, if society collapses, all I could do is tell jokes, and I dont know if thats going to get the job done. I want to have something tangible to offer. Right now I can make scrambled eggs, and I used to be able to make spaghetti really good. Oh yeah, and toast. People underestimate the technique involved to make the perfect toast, and I am not one of those people. I take it very seriously: The thing about toast is you want to put the dial between 2 and 3, and then you want to push it down, but you cannot let it pop out. You have to look at it. And just when you see a little bit of brown on there, thats when you pop it up. You want it to be firm and yet soft in the middle, so then you could put that butter on there. Bashir Salahuddin, 45, writer, comedian and co-creator and star of South Side on HBO Max

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Instead of Making a New Years Resolution, Try Something New - The New York Times

Mars is a hard science fiction television series produced by National Geographic, which premiered on November 14, 2016, on their channel, and FX.[1][2] Prior to its official air date, it was launched in a streaming format on November 1, 2016.[3] It blends elements of real interviews with a fictional story of a group of astronauts as they land on the planet Mars.[citation needed]

The series is based on the Stephen Petranek book How We'll Live on Mars (2015). The fictional narrative alternates initially between the years 2016 and 2033, using present day non-fiction interviews to explain events unfolding in the story. The series was filmed in Budapest and Morocco.[4]

A companion book to the series, Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet (October 2016), details the science behind the show.[1] A prequel episode, called Before Mars, was produced and released conjointly with the series. It tells the fictional story of a moment in the life of one of the astronauts, and the decisions she made to get involved in science.[5]

On January 13, 2017, it was announced that National Geographic had renewed the series for a second season, which premiered on November 12, 2018.[6][7]

The lead actress, Jihae, confirmed via her official Instagram that the series was cancelled after only two seasons.[8]

In the year 2033, a crew of six astronauts launch from Florida on a journey to be the first people to set foot on Mars. During the descent into the Martian atmosphere, there is a malfunction with their spacecraft, the Daedalus. They land 75.3 kilometres away from their planned habitat. On Earth their progress is being monitored. In the second season, the story jumps ahead several years into the future after the Daedalus astronauts have built a full-fledged colony called Olympus Town. Having established humankind as an interplanetary species, Season 2 examines the impact that humans have on the Red Planet and the consequences the planet has on us.[citation needed]

Intermixed with the story is interview footage real-life figures in the present, as well as of the fictional crew and their mission control. The real-life present-day interviews are with various scientists, engineers, and other public figures, such as Elon Musk, Susan Wise Bauer, Andy Weir, Robert Zubrin, and Neil deGrasse Tyson, among others, about the difficulties that the crew might face on a journey to, and living on, Mars.[4]

The cast for the fictional part of the first season includes:[9][10]

With the exception of Martinez and Cotton, all of these actors joined the second season, which started production in July 2017.[10]

The series music is composed by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. The soundtrack for the first season was released on November 11, 2016.[11]

For the second season, Dee Johnson took over as showrunner. Stephen Cragg and Ashley Way joined returning director Everardo Gout. Esai Morales, Roxy Sternberg, Gunnar Cauthery, Levi Fiehler, Evan Hall, Akbar Kurtha and Jeff Hephner joined the Season 2 cast.[10]

The second season premiered in the UK and Belgium[12] on November 11, 2018,[13] and in the US on November 12.[7]

The first season of Mars received mixed reviews, holding a 61% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an average score of 7.33/10 based on 18 reviews; in 2018, the critical consensus stated:

"Ron Howard's direction ensures that Mars is an attractive endeavor, even if the show struggles to move smoothly between its documentary and fictional elements."[29]

On Metacritic, the first season has received a score of 59 out of 100 based on 14 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[30]

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Mars (American TV series) - Wikipedia

Mars exploration took some big steps forward in 2021.

During this very eventful year, two nations joined the Mars club, a helicopter plied Red Planet skies for the first time ever and humanity kicked off an ambitious interplanetary sample-return campaign.

A lot of the action took place in February, which saw the arrival of three high-profile missions at the Red Planet. The United Arab Emirates' Hope mission, the Arab world's first interplanetary effort, slipped into orbit around Mars on Feb. 9.

A day later, Tianwen 1, China's first fully homegrown Mars mission, followed suit. And on Feb. 18, NASA's car-sized Perseverance rover touched down inside the Red Planet's Jezero Crater. (Earth and Mars align properly for interplanetary launches just once every 26 months. The last such window opened in summer 2020, which explains why these three missions all reached Mars around the same time.)

Related: A brief history of Mars missions

All three missions are still going strong. Hope continues to scrutinize Mars' atmosphere, gathering data that will help scientists better understand the planet's weather and climate.

Tianwen 1 is hunting for buried water ice, mapping out Mars' magnetic field and analyzing the composition of surface rocks, among other tasks. And in May, a rover named Zhurong separated from the orbiter and touched down successfully on the huge Martian plain Utopia Planitia.

The landing was a huge milestone for China, which had put two rovers down on the moon but had never before pulled off an interplanetary touchdown. Zhurong is looking for water ice and gathering geological and climate data, among other tasks. The rover has also snapped a few striking selfies as it has rolled across Utopia Planitia's vast expanse.

Perseverance is hunting for signs of ancient Mars life in the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater, which harbored a big lake and a river delta billions of years ago. The six-wheeled robot is also collecting and caching samples that will be returned to Earth, perhaps as early as 2031, by a joint NASA-European Space Agency (ESA) campaign.

Perseverance carries 43 sample tubes and has sealed up six of them to date, mission team members have said.

The big rover didn't travel to Mars alone; it flew with a 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) helicopter named Ingenuity attached to its belly. Shortly after the duo landed, Ingenuity embarked on five pioneering flights above Jezero's floor, showing that aerial exploration is possible on Mars despite the relative wispiness of the planet's atmosphere. (Mars' air is just 1% as dense as that of Earth at sea level.)

That was supposed to be it for the technology-demonstrating Ingenuity. But NASA granted the little chopper an extended mission, and it's now flying scouting sorties for Perseverance. To date, Ingenuity has performed 18 flights on Mars, racking up more than 30 minutes of air time and covering 2.37 miles (3.81 km) of ground.

"The helicopter has become a real asset and partner to our science team," Perseverance surface operations mission manager Jessica Samuels, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, said in a video about the rover and helicopter that JPL posted on YouTube on Dec. 28.

The new arrivals aren't the only robots studying Mars up close, of course. NASA's Curiosity rover has been exploring the 96-mile-wide (154 km) Gale Crater since August 2012, for example, and the agency's marsquake-detecting InSight lander recently marked three years on the Red Planet.

Then there are the orbiters. NASA's Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) probe have been circling the planet since 2001, 2006 and 2014, respectively. India's Mars Orbiter Mission arrived about the same time as MAVEN.

ESA's Mars Express has been circling Mars since late 2003. And the Trace Gas Orbiter part of the ExoMars program, a joint effort of ESA and Russia's federal space agency Roscosmos arrived at the Red Planet in October 2016 to sniff for methane and other low-abundance gases in the planet's air.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or on Facebook.

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2021 was an epic year for Mars exploration - Space.com

A new video looks back on the six-wheeled scientists first 10 months on the Red Planet and all that its accomplished so far.

NASAs Perseverance rover has been busy since its harrowing touchdown in Mars Jezero Crater this past February.

In the 10 months since, the car-size rover has driven 1.8 miles (2.9 kilometers), set a record for the longest rover drive in a Martian day, taken more than 100,000 images, and collected six samples of Martian rock and atmosphere that could eventually be brought to Earth for further study.

And then theres NASAs Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, which hitched a ride to the Red Planet with Perseverance: Proving that powered, controlled flight is possible in Mars thin atmosphere, the 4-pound (1.8-kilogram) rotorcraft has logged 18 flights and counting.

In a new video, Jessica Samuels the Perseverance surface operations mission manager at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California looks back on a year filled with groundbreaking discoveries. She also explains the next phase of Perseverances mission: to explore the delta that formed in Jezero Crater billions of years ago from sediment that an ancient river carried into the lake that once existed in the crater.

It feels great to be a part of making history and enabling the start of a Mars Sample Return campaign, said Samuels. What motivates us as engineers and scientists exploring another planet is the opportunity to learn more.

More About the Mission

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.

For more about Perseverance:

mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

and

nasa.gov/perseverance

News Media Contacts

Karolyn PearsonJet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.818-354-5011karolyn.j.pearson@jpl.nasa.gov

Karen Fox / Alana JohnsonNASA Headquarters, Washington301-286-6284 / 202-358-1501karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov

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Biggest Moments on Mars: NASA's Perseverance Rover 2021 Year in Review NASA's Mars Exploration Program - NASA Mars Exploration

Wendy Calvin, Professor and Chair of the Department of Geological Sciences and Engineering, is a planetary scientist specializing in optical and infrared spectroscopy of minerals and ices. She has been working with data from Mars since she completed her doctorate in 1991 and has been a member of the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) team since 2002. As part of the Discover Science at Home series, a virtual adaptation of the Discover Science Lecture Series, Calvin presented her lecture titled Roving Mars: From Sojourner to Perseverance about the scientific discoveries made on Mars since the first rover landed on its surface in 1997. The following is a transcript of the Question and Answer portion following Calvins lecture.

The Allan Hills meteorite was really controversial. What I said to the team at the time and what I still think is that we have so little evidence on Earth about what happens in the time between the formation of the planet and when we actually have self-replicating organisms. We just have no idea what that intermediate stuff is. I thought what we found on Allan Hills might be one of those intermediate steps.

I also dont think that Mars was habitable for long enough. We had water, but I dont know that those environments persisted long enough for the process to really get started. If we do find anything, were going to find the most primitive forms, from the base of the tree of life, some of these things that are not even multicellular.

In some ways, I hope we dont find life because then the public would just tell us, No, no. Its going to contaminate us. We cant bring it back. So, in some sense I hope we dont find too much more than the typical organic molecules that we find in the oldest meteorites.

Mars had a magnetic field early on, but then it disappeared. Its still controversial how thick the atmosphere was, how hot it was early on and if the surface could support liquid water for sustained periods. The Maven Orbiter has done a lot to understand how much water has been lost over time. I dont know the total mass or volume, but we know that Mars has lost a large portion of its original atmosphere.

I think it all went underground and its frozen. We now have evidence from the two orbiting radars that Mars has massive buried ice sheets and rock glaciers that actually have glacial flow features. The radar actually confirms that theyre probably insulated by a layer of regolith or dirt and then under that is some pretty pure water. We have gamma ray information that says we have strong concentration of water in the polar regions and also buried ice, which is what the Phoenix Lander also found. So, I think that Marss water went underground and froze.

Theyve actually looked at that a lot and tried to understand what is the environmental conditions for the sample return canisters and is that really going to change what they get. The rocks have already been subject to the temperature extremes of the Martian surface and they will have a fairly stable thermal environment in the ascent vehicle. That should not be worse than the extremes that theyve actually already seen on the surface of Mars.

There are no plate tectonics on any other planet in the solar system or even any moon, although maybe people have proposed something kind of like that for Europa. Earth is unique. A lot of what makes Earth unique and why plate tectonics are on Earth is because we have water. We have a ton of water and that water actually lubricates the plate cycle and it helps things move around in a way that doesn't happen on Venus or Mars. Mars probably didnt have enough water for things to actually start happening. When and how plate tectonics got started on Earth is one of those things that is still a subject of active research.

I would probably head to the ocean worlds. I think Europa is a prime site to send a rover. Venus would be an interesting place to send a rover too but its really hot and the surface of Venus is really inhospitable so it might be trickier. Although, Europa is not a cakewalk either.

Also, the OSIRIS-REx sample return where they did a touch-and-go on the surface of that asteroidthat was an amazing piece of engineering to actually capture a bunch of asteroids samples and bring them back. It could be cool to roam around on the surface of that asteroid.

I saw The Martian and I read the book. What bothered me the most was I think the final scene, where theyre launching that rocket without a nose cone, right? Theyve just got some tarp over it. That was so incredibly ridiculous.

The dust storms and the wind storms, are also pretty bad. Theres not that much wind velocity on Mars. The dust just goes up and it just turns into this sort of cloud in the sky, but its not like theres gale-force winds that go with it. I think those two things were probably what bothered me the most.

NASA is working on the Moon to Mars program in a lot of detail. I think they have goals, but it depends on each administration. Every administration comes in and has different big plans that they want to do. Its been something of a political football, but NASAs working on it. I think that SpaceX has really ambitious plans. Theyve been really successful and Ive been really impressed with a lot of the things that theyve accomplished, but landing people on Mars and bringing them back, you need a lot of rocket fuel to do that.

When I look back, I have to connect the dots. I majored in physics and math because they were easy and I was good at it. Then I went to work for an aerospace company for a couple of years, but working mostly on Earth spacecraft systems. When I started back in graduate school, one of the first research projects I had was with a planetary scientist. That kind of gave me the planetary bug. For my Ph.D. thesis, I worked with data from the Mariner 6 and 7 spectrometers which flew by Mars in 1969 when I was in grade school. And then 30 years later, here I am.

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Is there life on Mars? - Nevada Today

This year, scientists learned more about COVID-19 as the virus continued to circulate and mutate.

There were medical breakthroughs in treating other conditions and diseases. The cicadas emerged from underground, and Perseverance landed on Mars.

Laura Helmuth, editor in chief of Scientific American, says the biggest science story of the year if not the decade or century is the success of COVID-19 vaccines in protecting people from serious illness and death. Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna used mRNA, a new vaccine technology, to produce the vaccines.

Even though we're getting new variations with delta and omicron, Helmuth says, it should be pretty straightforward to just make minor changes to these vaccines so that they'll work against the worst new virus variants as they evolve.

First-ever malaria vaccine approved by the World Health Organization

Oh, this is huge. And you know, I take it back. Maybe these two stories together [COVID-19 vaccines and the malaria vaccine] are the biggest stories of the decade, possibly century. It's astonishing. People have been trying for decades to figure out how to create a vaccine for malaria. It is so much harder than creating a vaccine for a bacterial disease or for a virus because the malaria parasite is a whole organism.

It's really complicated and it has all these different stages of its life cycle, and it lives in the blood, it lives in the liver. It's just really hard to find and hard for the immune system to stop it. And so it was really hard to come up with a vaccine that worked. And finally, we have one. It's been in the works. It's been through clinical trials. There are others that are in the works that seem to be even more effective. And none of these are quite as effective as the COVID vaccines. But they seem to really, really be able to protect especially children from coming down with this terrible disease.

CRISPR successfully treats some blood diseases

The CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system, the discoverers of this won the Nobel Prize just last year in 2020. It's not that old a discovery. From the beginning, scientists were saying, OK, well, it looks like this is something that could very precisely change genes, especially genes that are responsible for diseases based on just a single mutation or a very simple problem in the genome.

This year, we have some of the first results showing that the technique can be used safely and apparently effectively to treat sickle cell disease. It's been used in another blood disease called beta thalassemia and then a really nasty disease called transthyretin amyloidosis. It's a fatal condition, and there was a trial using CRISPR-Cas9 to protect people from this basically a misfolded protein that causes terrible disease and death. Theyre all still in the early stages. We're talking like dozens of people in the trials, but it looks very promising that this is a technique that could be safe and effective. There have been no serious side effects reported so far to treat diseases that start from basic genetic mutations.

Brood X cicadas emerge this summer after nearly two decades underground

Oh, it was amazing. These bugs spent 17 years underground waiting to emerge by the billions. They were so loud. They were just buzzing and shrieking and bouncing against things all summer long. So we learned a lot about their life cycle. Every time they emerge, scientists get really excited. This year especially, they were studying this nasty fungus that infects male cicadas and causes their genitals to fall off. But the males still try and mate with the female cicadas, and unfortunately, this spreads the fungus and causes a lot of dead cicadas. They were going to die anyway, but unfortunately, they die before they can do what they were waiting 17 years to do, which is reproduce and lay their eggs. So that was kind of gross but interesting.

And there's a lot of new research on how the tunnels they dig in the ground as they're emerging have changed how water percolates through the soil, so they just have this huge effect. Especially on any birds or chipmunks and squirrels that eat insects, they had a really good year because they were just so many fat, juicy cicadas to dine on.

Out-of-this-world discoveries on Mars

The Marsquakes are cool. We've learned so much about Mars in the past few years. We've heard the first sounds of the Martian atmosphere and the wind and storms whipping across Mars's atmosphere, which is much thinner than ours. And in February, the Mars Perseverance rover, which is nicknamed Percy, landed in Jezero Crater, which is a big crater on Mars that has a river delta. An ancient river used to flow there, and it created a delta, just like you'd see at the end of the Mississippi River. And so this little rover is just trundling along in this crater and taking soil samples. It's collecting them, which someday we'll try to figure out a way to send them back to Earth and analyzing, just like a little geologist, a cute little robotic geologist, that's analyzing the rocks. Some of the scientists on the Perseverance mission reported that the rocks that they're sampling are actually from an ancient lava flow. They thought they might have been sedimentary rocks put there by the ancient lakebed, the ancient river delta, but it looks like it was a great big magma flow like from a volcano.

Then as part of this mission, there's a helicopter called Ingenuity. [NASA] always has very inspirational, aspirational names for their project names. It's a helicopter that we're flying on another planet, which is just mind boggling. It's hard enough to fly a helicopter on Earth, but you know, you're flying it with a joystick on Mars. And Mars has a very thin atmosphere, so it's hard to get the lift to make the helicopter fly. But it's been up 17 times so far, and it's sort of scouting around the crater as the rover kind of trundles along the base of this crater. So they're working as a team to explore Mars.

The successful James Webb Space Telescope launch

The James Webb Space Telescope, which a lot of astronomers are calling The Just Wonderful Space Telescope rather than using the James Webb name to sort of emphasize [that] this is a really big deal. It's been in the making for about 30 years. It was initially supposed to launch in 2007, but you know, it's complicated. It's a process. A lot of things went wrong. It's this really expensive, complicated, exciting project.

It's designed to see the oldest things in the universe, so the very first stars and galaxies that formed right after the Big Bang, and it's going to have a much larger telescope. It'll have a great big mirror that has to unfold in space. So it's really just [an] engineeringly complicated project. And if it works, we're going to have the best understanding that we've ever had of how the universe began and what's happened in the past billions and billions of years.

Discovering that a certain type of lemur has rhythm

A lot of what we just enjoy about science is understanding strange animal behavior. You know, quirky new things. And one of the things I've gotten a kick out of is a study this year on a kind of lemur called indri lemurs. And it turns out they're the only primates besides humans known to have a sense of rhythm. Scientists analyzed their songs, and they found predictable patterns, both in the sequences of the sort of notes, the sounds that they make, and the timing, and they match their rhythms to sing basically with one another. The reason they do this seems to be for bonding and communication. It's like a sweet sound, too. It kind of reminds us of why we sing together.

Julia Corcoranproduced this interview and edited it for broadcast.Serena McMahonadapted the interview for the web.

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From discoveries on Mars to lemurs with rhythm: Unpacking the top 2021 science stories - Here And Now

Its the beginning of a new year and we start the year with a new moon on January 2, just the first week of the year. Head outside at night for a look at Quadrantid meteor showerpeaks on the night of January 2nd and the morning of the 3rd.

This tends to be one of the better meteor showers of the year, and often produces a number of bright meteors called fireballs. This year the peak coincides with the new moon, making for great viewing conditions, provided the skies are clear.

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In addition, stargazers will be able to watch a crescent moon in a close pairing with Jupiter on January 5. Towards the end of January, Astro enthusiasts will be able to catch a clear sight of the Moon near the Red Planet Mars on January 29.

Joining the pair in the southeastern sky will be Venus. Having left the evening skies last month, Venus is now rising before the Sun as the Morning Star. Now, Mars is slowly returning to view after passing behind the Sun over the past few months. In fact, NASA stops communicating with our spacecraft at Mars for about 2 weeks every two years, when the planet is directly opposite the Sun. That event, called solar conjunction, took place back in October, read a NASA report.

Also read: NASA Psyche: What looks like a potato and spins on its side?

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NASA: Start the year with a new moon, midnight meteors, and Mars! - EastMojo

Are there rainbows on Mars? NASA decided to answer this questions in the latest episode of its Ask The Expert' series. Shared on Instagram, the video features the US space agency's planetary scientist and Mars expert Mark Lemmon.

The answer is no. But several other conditions on Mars are similar to Earth. Lemmon explained that the formation of a rainbow requires more than just water. Rainbows are formed when sunlight passes through a spherical droplet, reflects off the back and comes towards the human eye, usually after rainfall.

Lemmon said for rainbows to form, water droplets are needed as they are spherical. On Mars, there are not adequate water droplets. The scientist said tiny droplets available on Mars are 20 times smaller than human hair and 10 times smaller than the droplets found in Earth's clouds. The droplets have to be at least 10 times bigger to create a rainbow, said Lemmon, adding that even though snow could be found in Martian clouds, it is of no use to form rainbows.

So, what was that the Perseverance rover saw arcing across the dusty Martian sky in early April? After a lot of speculation on social media, NASA dismissed the idea, saying that the arc was a lens flare. NASA also said that there isn't enough water on Mars to condense and it's too cold for liquid water in the atmosphere to take the shape of spherical water droplets.

Lemmon, too, referred to this incident in the video. While there are no rainbows on Mars, there are many Earth-like phenomena on the red planet, including clouds, storms, and winds.

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Why Are There No Rainbows on Mars? NASA Expert Explains - Gadgets 360

Some time ago, weve decided to give our neighboring planet Mars more than the customary 15 minutes under the spotlight. Using the many images sent back by the HiRISE camera in orbit around the planet, were trying to create a comprehensive picture of the strange place some humans might be soon visiting, hopefully during our lifetime.

The general impression is that HiRISE, being a scientific instrument that cost $40 million to make, can only be used by its operators, in this case NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the University of Arizona.

That impression is, of course, correct, but these guys are willing to share and have been accepting suggestions on what regions of Mars to immortalize on digital film. From time to time, if they find the suggestion interesting enough, they might even do it, like they did with the pic we used as the main photo of this piece.

Were looking at a portion of an unnamed crater in the Arabia Terra region, one which contains rhythmically layered bedrock that seems to indicate cyclic deposition.

The area was deemed of being of interest because, first, cyclic deposition of sediments could unravel some of the mysteries Mars still keeps out of our reach.Secondly, the member of the public who requested this image is interested in these deposits and will study them further by making a digital elevation model and measuring the thickness of the layers, thus helping scientists with their research.

So, if you happen to have a great location in mind for NASA to study sometime during this brave new year, you can head over to this link and have your say (registration or an account required).

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You Can Have NASA Take an Orbital Picture of Mars, This Guy Did - autoevolution

We'll have to wait a bit longer for the orbital debut of SpaceX's Starship Mars rocket.

SpaceX had been aiming to launch Starship on its first orbital test flight in January or February, provided that the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) wrapped up a programmatic environmental assessment (PEA) of the company's South Texas launch site by Dec. 31 as planned.

But that timeline no longer applies. The FAA announced on Tuesday (Dec. 28) that it has pushed the release of the final PEA back to Feb. 28, citing "the high volume of comments submitted on the draft PEA" and "discussions and consultation efforts with consulting parties."

Photos: SpaceX lifts huge Super Heavy rocket onto launch stand

Members of the public submitted more than 18,000 comments about the draft PEA, which was released on Sept. 17, FAA officials wrote in an update Tuesday.

SpaceX is developing Starship to get people and cargo to the moon, Mars and other deep-space destinations. NASA has already signed up for a ride, choosing Starship as the first crewed moon lander for the agency's Artemis lunar exploration program.

The huge vehicle consists of two fully reusable elements: a first-stage booster called Super Heavy and a 165-foot-tall (50 meters) spacecraft known as Starship. Both will be powered by SpaceX's next-generation Raptor engine six for Starship and about 30 for Super Heavy.

Starship prototypes have flown before, on roughly 6.2-mile-high (10 kilometers) hops into the skies above Starbase, SpaceX's facility near the South Texas village of Boca Chica. But the upcoming orbital test flight will be a much more ambitious endeavor, launching a Starship atop a Super Heavy for the first time ever.

If all goes according to plan, the Super Heavy will splash down in the Gulf of Mexico shortly after liftoff, while the Starship vehicle will complete one loop around Earth and splash down in the Pacific Ocean, off the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

We could see that launch as soon as early March, because SpaceX plans to be ready when it gets the green light. "FAA approval is the schedule driver," SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said via Twitter Wednesday (Dec. 29) in response to a question about the test flight's target date.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or on Facebook.

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1st orbital test flight of SpaceX's Starship Mars rocket pushed to March at the earliest - Space.com