Category Archives: Mars

Martian "blueberries" are rocky spheres that form on the surface of Mars.

Mars is very in right now. NASA's Perseverance rover is up there searching for life, and the agency's Ingenuity Mars helicopteris pulling off daring aerial feats. But on Wednesday, Mars appeared in the news for all the wrong reasons. According to websites like the Daily Mail, scientists were making a pretty wild claim:Fungi were alive and well on the red planet.

The first thought: Ah shit, here we go again.

The "mushrooms on Mars and fungi on Venus" theory is a worn-out, debunked idea that appears like clockwork, about once a year. The headlines certainly are interesting: Imagine if we found fungi on Mars or Venus! It would literally rewrite our ideas about life in the cosmos -- but the articles rarely interrogate the scientific evidence for the wild claims.

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Part of me wants to let it slide because in some cases any publicity really is good publicity, but this is bad science and some websites have erroneously headlined articles with "Scientists Found Evidence of Fungus Growing on Mars" when that is simply not the case.

So let's pull back the curtain and explain what is really going on (again!)

At the center, or sometimes just off to the side, of these outlandish claims is a man named Rhawn Gabriel Joseph.

According to his webpage "brainmind.com," Joseph is a lapsed neuroscientist who made major contributions to the field of neuroplasticity in the 1970s. Joseph has, for over a decade, published claims about life on other planets on his website and in pseudo-scientific journals he oversees.

His assertions sometimes make it to the big leagues and spill over into the press but, for the most part, they haven't landed in legitimate scientific journals or been scrutinized by other experts in space science.

Until 2019, when Joseph's claims really hit the big leagues. In November of that year, Joseph got a piece through peer review and into the journal Astrophysics & Space Science. Last June,I published a piece on Joseph and these claims, which eventually led to the journal retracting Joseph's article, stating "the article proffers insufficient critical assessment of the material presented and literature cited, and fails to provide a solid underpinning for the speculative statements made in the article which, in their view, invalidates the conclusions drawn."

But on Wednesday, Joseph's claims made it into another journal, known as Advances in Microbiology.

Advances in Microbiology is a relatively obscure journal published by Scientific Research Publishing, which is headquartered in China and has previously been caught out for republishing scientific articles, according to Nature. It has been accused of being a predatory publisher, charging scientists fees to be published in its journals without checking the quality of the submitted papers.

The new paper, dubbed "Fungi on Mars? Evidence of Growth and Behavior From Sequential Images" and available on ResearchGate, rehashes some of the old arguments for life on Mars, using inaccurate methodology to draw its conclusions. For the most part, Joseph and his co-authors use images obtained by NASA rovers and draw red lines and arrows to point out features they believe correspond to fungal growth.

"Claiming that mushrooms are sprouting all over Mars is an extraordinary claim that requires better evidence than an analysis of photographic morphology by a known crank who has claimed, on the basis of the same kind of analysis, that he has seen fields of skulls on Mars," says Paul Myers, a developmental biologist at the University of Minnesota, Morris, who has followed Joseph's work in the past.

One experiment, performed by the authors, is to analyze the size and movement of "spherical specimens" in the paper. It routinely references previous work by Joseph as evidence for its conclusions. The team suggests it "would be surprising" if there were no life on Mars -- but this is not true. We have mountains of data showing the conditions of Mars are not conducive to life as we know it. Could fungi get around these conditions? Perhaps, but the evidence for that is thin.

After being alerted to the new paper on Wednesday, I sent emails to the associate editors-in-chief of Advances in Microbiology, asking for clarification around the peer review process. They have not responded to requests for comment.

I also emailed members of the editorial board listed on SCIRP's website, including Jian Li, a microbiologist at Monash University in Australia. He says he has not been on the journal's editorial board "for at least five to six years" and has not handled any of the papers in the journal.

One of the bigger problems in publishing about Joseph's claims is allowing bad science to make its way to the public.

The pandemic has shown us that misinformation can be harmful, eroding the confidence in science, researchers and institutes. We've seen, time and again, how erroneous reports can go viral and then later be used to suggest scientists are backflipping on previous claims. To be clear, there's no backflip here. The majority of scientists agree that the conditions on Mars' surface are not great for fungi to flourish.

"All available evidence suggests the surface of Mars is not hospitable to life," says Brendan Burns, an astrobiologist from the University of New South Wales in Australia.

When publications promote the unscientific "mushrooms on Mars" theory without critique, it can be damaging for scientists like Burns and organizations like NASA, who are attempting to find legitimate signs of life on other planets.

If we were to find life elsewhere in the solar system, it wouldn't first appear in the Advances in Microbiology journal. Readers should remain skeptical of any fungi claims they see -- especially those promulgated by a single group of scientists.

And look, I'm totally happy to be wrong here. If it turns out this is fungus on Mars, I will be the first to say "we stuffed up."

I'm hopeful that NASA's Perseverance rover, which is rolling along an ancient Martian lakebed, might be able to find the first signs life once existed on the red planet. China's soon-to-be-delivered rover, Zhurong, could also help understand whether Mars harbored alien life forms. We'll have to wait and see.

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No, NASA photos are not evidence of fungus growing on Mars ...

Evidence of what may be the youngest eruption seen yet on Mars suggests the Red Planet may still be volcanically active, raising the possibility it was recently habitable, a new study finds.

Most volcanism on Mars occurred between 3 billion and 4 billion years ago, leaving behind giant monuments such as Olympus Mons, the tallest mountain in the solar system. At 16 miles (25 km) high, Olympus Mons is about three times as tall as Mount Everest, Earth's highest mountain.

Previous research suggested the Red Planet may still have flared with smaller volcanic eruptions as recently as 2.5 million years ago. Now scientists have found evidence that Mars may still be volcanically active, with signs of an eruption within the past 50,000 years or so.

"This being the youngest documented volcanic eruption on Mars, the potential that Mars could potentially be volcanically active at present is exciting," study lead author David Horvath, a planetary scientist now at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, told Space.com.

Related: 10 incredible volcanoes in our solar system (images)

Using data from satellites orbiting Mars, researchers analyzed relatively featureless equatorial plains of a region known as Elysium Planitia. They discovered a previously unknown smooth dark volcanic deposit about 8 miles (13 kilometers) wide, covering an area slightly larger than Washington, D.C. It surrounds a volcanic fissure about 20 miles (32 km) wide, one of the cracks making up the fissure system known as Cerberus Fossae.

"I first noticed this volcanic deposit when I was looking over some images of this region. I had looked at this area many times before but somehow had always overlooked this feature," study senior author Jeff Andrews-Hanna, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona at Tucson, told Space.com. "Once this odd dark deposit centered on a volcanic fissure came to my attention, I knew it was telling us something important."

Specifically, this deposit looked unlike anything else found in the region, or indeed on all of Mars, Andrews-Hanna said. Instead, it more closely resembled features created by older volcanic eruptions on the moon and Mercury.

Related: Weird volcanoes are erupting across the solar system

Most signs of volcanism previously seen in Elysium Planitia and elsewhere on Mars consisted of lava flowing across the surface, similar to recent eruptions in Iceland. However, this newfound eruption looks different it appears to be a relatively fresh deposit of ash and rock on top of surrounding lava flows.

This volcanic deposit may be the most recent seen yet on Mars, the scientists noted. "If we were to compress Mars' geologic history into a single day, this would have occurred in the very last second," Horvath said in a statement.

The researchers found the properties, composition and distribution of material from the eruption match what they would expect from a pyroclastic eruption an explosive outburst of magma driven by expanding gases, not unlike the opening of a shaken can of soda. On Earth, deadly avalanches of scalding ash, toxic gas and pulverized rock from pyroclastic eruptions, known as pyroclastic flows, entombed the ancient Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum after Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD.

"This eruption could have spewed ash as high as 10 kilometers (6 miles) into the Martian atmosphere," Horvath said in the statement.

Although there are numerous examples of explosive volcanism on Mars, those occurred long ago. It is possible such pyroclastic deposits were once more common, but most have eroded or gotten buried, Horvath said.

The newfound volcanic deposit is located about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from NASA's InSight lander, which has investigated tectonic activity on Mars since 2018. Two Marsquakes InSight detected in the region originated around Cerberus Fossae.

"We now know that this region is both the most volcanically and seismically active area on the planet today," Andrews-Hanna said.

Previous research suggested magma might still be moving deep underground the region around Cerberus Fossae.

"If lava was erupting to the surface only 50,000 years ago, and the area is still rumbling with seismicity today, that means that it could erupt again," Andrews-Hanna said.

One potential mechanism driving this eruption was gases trapped in magma, said study co-author Pranabendu Moitra, a research scientist at the University of Arizona. Another was contact between magma and permafrost, with ice in the permafrost melting to water, mixing with the magma, and then vaporizing, triggering a violent explosion, he added.

Intriguingly, this newfound eruption also happened only 6 miles (10 km) from the youngest large impact crater on Mars a meteor crater 6 miles (10 km) wide named Zunil. "The ages of the eruption and the impact are indistinguishable, which raises the possibility, however speculative, that the impact actually triggered the volcanic eruption," Moitra said in the statement.

Prior work found that on Earth, seismic waves from large quakes can force magma stored beneath the surface to erupt. The collision that created Zunil could potentially have shaken Mars like an earthquake, triggering an eruption, Moitra suggested.

"To be clear, we cannot state that the eruption was triggered by an impact only that the timing and magnitude are right," Andrews-Hanna said.

These new findings raise the possibility the warmth from recent volcanic activity could have made the Red Planet more habitable to life as we know it. Magma rising from deep underground could have melted ice near the surface, which could have provided favorable conditions for microbial life fairly recently.

"This does not necessarily confirm past life on Mars, but does imply an environment conducive to habitability," Horvath said.

The big question the scientists now have, Andrews-Hanna said, is "why is this particular area such a hotspot for activity on Mars?"

"Mars has a number of giant volcanoes, including nearby Elysium Mons, but this eruption and the volcanic fissures it is associated with are in an otherwise featureless plain," Andrews-Hanna added. "Is this area underlain by a plume of hot mantle material? Will the next great Martian volcano rise from this spot?"

The scientists detailed their findings online April 21 in the journal Icarus.

Originally published on Space.com.

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Mars may still be volcanically active, study finds - Space.com

Think about the number of times your computer on Earth has crashed. Now imagine how challenging that would be during a rover mission on Mars.

From time to time, the Curiosity rover has gone into "safe mode" to deal with glitches and software problems since it landed on Mars in August 2012. But each time, the mission has recovered to continue its epic climb up a Martian mountain in search of habitable environments.

All those "lessons learned" from safe mode incidents are now embedded into the new Perseverance rover, the more powerful cousin of Curiosity that started rolling on Mars on March 5.

Related: Mars helicopter Ingenuity spots Perseverance rover from the air (photo)

Recovering from glitches takes technical skill, especially on Mars' dusty, radiation-soaked surface. In many cases, radiation and circuits mix poorly. But that can't be allowed to happen on Mars, where circuits on Perseverance control everything from the cameras to the laser, to the complex system that will cache potentially habitable rock samples for a future sample-return mission.

So what's the solution? Xilinx the company providing integrated circuits for several of Perseverance's instruments has had its technology on Mars since NASA's Opportunity and Spirit rovers in 2004. Xilinx can't give away all of its "secret sauce" that keeps the circuits safe it's proprietary but a lot of it comes down to appropriate shielding and backup.

"We build the hardness in," Minal Sawant, Xilinx's director of the aerospace and defense vertical market, said of the company's approach to keeping the circuits resistant to radiation. Sawant noted that several classified satellites have also used Xilinx circuits for long-standing missions in the harsh environment of radiation belts near Earth, so Xilinx has experienced radiation first-hand in Earth orbit and on Mars, and knows how to deal with it.

On Perseverance, the circuits are "triple-module redundant," which means that Xilinx manufactures three copies of each circuit powering an instrument or a camera on the rover. "If one [circuit] gets hit, the other two still function. That's how you ensure it's hardened," Sawant said.

The job gets harder with each successive generation of rover because the circuitry gets denser. That's because each rover is tasked with gathering and transmitting more information to Earth than previous missions. "As we innovate more and more, there's more density added," Sawant explained.

There also are more possible points of failure with each generation of rover. For example, Spirit and Opportunity each carried only nine cameras; Perseverance has 23. The instruments and tasks have grown ever-more complex, too. Remarkably, however, Xilinx's circuitry has stood the test of time.

Spirit and Opportunity were supposed to last 90 Earth days on Mars, but each lasted several years. Curiosity which also carries Xilinx products had a two-year prime mission after landing in 2012, but is still going strong after nearly seven Earth years on the Red Planet. Given that track record, Sawant is hopeful Perseverance will also survive for a long time.

One way to make the integrated circuits more responsive is to design them to be easily adjustable. We all know the value of applying software updates to our computer, and doing the same for a rover on Mars is tremendously helpful. On Curiosity, for example, a software update in 2016 allowed the rover to be more autonomous in picking targets to laser. Xilinx aims to offer similar flexibility for its integrated circuits.

"We make these chips that are very configurable," Sawant said. "A designer or a user can put a specific algorithm or design in it, and do the function. It's not a fixed function, but more of a programmable function an ability to change as needed."

Xilinx's systems have already survived a powerful test with Perseverance. The circuits were used in the "vision compute" element of Perseverance's landing system that enabled it to pick the right spot to land on Mars. Specifically, Xilinx products handled visual tasks like image filtering, detecting and matching. Another crucial part of the landing involved Perseverance's range and velocity measurements, using a radar terminal descent sensor powered by Xilinx technology.

Sawant pointed out that even though those landing systems don't need to survive for years on the surface, they have to go through several months of travel, experiencing the shaking of launch, the extreme cold and hot environments of space, and space radiation.

Xilinx's integrated circuits are used in four instruments on Perseverance, all designed to withstand years of Mars radiation. These instruments are the Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry, or PIXL, which identifies chemical elements; a UHF transceiver to relay telecommunications; Mastcam-Z, which takes panoramic pictures of the surface; and Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals, or SHERLOC, which performs fine-scale detection of minerals, organic molecules and potential signs of life.

Xilinx circuitry is also working well on the NASA OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) mission to asteroid Bennu, which has been in space since 2016 and won't return with samples to Earth until 2023. Xilinx aims to launch its technology on the NASA Europa Clipper mission to orbit the icy Jupiter moon, too, which may require six years of cruise time in space after its planned 2024 launch.

Xilinx is one of several companies powering systems and instruments on the Perseverance rover. Another is Vaisala, working with the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI). The collaboration provided sensors for the Spanish-led Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer on board the rover a Red Planet weather station that examines temperature, wind speed and direction, relative humidity and dust particles, and more. This group is also aware how challenging Mars can be.

"The rover's equipment needs to operate in the harsh Martian environment, with very low pressure conditions and cold temperatures, and it must be able to resist possible global dust storms," Maria Genzer, FMI's head of planetary research and space technology group, said in a statement in February. "In addition to the environmental aspects the distance between Mars and Earth makes the mission challenging. There is no one to fix the instrumentation if something goes wrong."

As for Xilinx, the newest generation of its integrated circuits released in May 2020 will not only be resistant to radiation in multiple orbits around Earth or missions across the solar system, but will also include a machine-learning ecosystem. Machine learning (a facet of artificial intelligence) enables computers to learn from a dataset and to apply that information to make decisions.

With an Earth-orbiting satellite, for example, one application could be discarding optical images that include clouds, and only sending down images with clear conditions, Sawant said. More broadly, machine learning has already been used on Mars for applications such as identifying new craters.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Radiation resistance is baked into the Perseverance Mars rover. Here's why that's important. - Space.com

A group of scientists claim they have found proof of life in the form of fungi on Mars, according to a blog post and posts on social media.

"Scientists Claim to Spot Fungus Growing on Mars in NASA Rover Photos," read a Futurism article headline. "MARS MAGIC MUSHROOMS Life on Mars shock claim as growing FUNGI spotted in Mars Curiosity Rover snaps," read another in The Sun.

The articles point to a study published by a group of scientists titled, "Fungi on Mars? Evidence of Growth and Behavior From Sequential Images."

The posts were flagged as part of Facebooks efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

Are the images in the paper proof of life on Mars? No, experts say.

The paper referenced by these articles was uploaded to ResearchGate. In it, the scientists say that "Fungi thrive in radiation intense environments," and imply that Mars provides such an environment.

"Sequential photos document that fungus-like Martian specimens emerge from the soil and increase in size, including those resembling puffballs," the paper reads. The researchers claim to have studied photos of the same location on Mars several days apart as proof that fungus "grew" over time.

In the papers "conclusions" section, the researchers acknowledge that "minerals, weathering and unknown geological forces that are unique to Mars" could be causing the changes captured in the images.

But the paper still goes on to conclude: "However, growth, movement, alterations in location and shape, constitute behavior, and coupled with life-like morphology, strongly support the hypothesis there is life on Mars."

The paper has caused false headlines and social media posts that claim scientists have found "proof of life" on Mars to emerge.

A number of news outlets have debunked claims that emerged because of this study, which experts have said isnt credible.

When asked if there was any credible evidence that fungi were discovered on Mars, scientists agreed there wasnt.

"No especially for a claim of this magnitude," said Dr. Kenneth Nealson, a professor emeritus of earth sciences and an expert at the University of Southern California on microbial life in extreme environments. "I dont know who reviewed the paper, but I would take away their license as a biologist especially as a microbiologist."

Dr. Edwin Kite, an assistant professor in the department of the geophysical sciences and a planetary geoscientist and Mars expert at the University of Chicago, said the formations photographed were examples of something else entirely.

"These features are well understood," he said, before linking to a photo example. "They are abiotic features caused by saltation abrasion (wind erosion). Numerous examples have been inspected by rovers [...] They are not fungi."

Rhawn Joseph, the lead researcher in the study, has been challenged over his prior planetary research as well. One paper he published related to "life on Venus" was later retracted by the journal Astrophysics and Space Science.

In 2014, it was reported that Joseph was suing NASA over what he claimed were attempts to "deceive the public" by downplaying signs of life found on Mars.

Although other outlets have reported that the paper was accepted for publication in the journal "Advances in Microbiology," Kite pointed out that the study is currently only found on ResearchGate, a website to which anyone can upload their work.

Another author of the paper Wei Xinli from the Institute of Microbiology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences told the South China Morning Post that the paper was "conjecture instead of results based on tangible examination of samples."

The likelihood that photos presented in the paper actually depict fungi growing on the surface of Mars "is somewhere around zero," according to Nealson. Claims of life on Mars "have never been substantiated," and the atmosphere doesnt suggest that there is life, he said. Nealson also said that the paper lacked "compositional data" that would indicate the makeup of the formations in the photos.

"Get some data before you publish conclusions," he said. "This conclusion section should be renamed speculations."

Our ruling

A paper published online has led to claims that there are mushrooms growing on Mars or proof of life on the red planet.

"Growth, movement, alterations in location and shape, constitute behavior, and coupled with life-like morphology, strongly support the hypothesis there is life on Mars," the paper concluded.

Experts say that there is no substantiated evidence of life on Mars. They said there is "around zero" likelihood that the photos presented in the study actually reveal fungi growing on Mars, and noted that the features in the photos are "abiotic," or not derived from living organisms.

We rate these claims False.

Continued here:

No, rover photos aren't proof that scientists have found fungi growing on Mars - PolitiFact

These days, education is sometimes criticized because there is little real-world application. It also faces criticism that historical events are either glossed over or simply learned by rote memorization. Then there is the argument that too much emphasis is put on computers and the information not used for practical purposes.

But none of those criticisms apply to Jim Gilmans art class.

This year, the Powell High School senior art class did some double duty because, after COVID-19 closed school after spring break last year, there was still a project to complete.

That was the Cultivating our future mission to Mars project, complete with a Space X John Deere tractor/rover.

The class projects begin as an idea or concept. Gilman frequently posts those topics on an online forum and people from all over the world comment or make suggestions. Some of the ideas are practical, others just plain campy. For instance, the Mars project includes Marvin the Martian from Looney Tunes, riding a rocket ala Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove. In one hand, Marvin has his cowboy hat, positioned exactly the way it is in the University of Wyoming logo.

However, the spotting scope he is using is another matter altogether. Its manufacturer, Vortex Optics, asked what the company could do to help the project along. Gilman said he needed an obsolete or ruined scope. Instead, the company sent a brand new, $2,500 scope, T-shirts for all the students and a nice check as well. The only stipulation was that the students had to use the scope and Marvin had to go along on the expedition, complete with photos.

Senior Matthew Hobbs used the scope during elk season, bringing down a nice 7x6 bull. Sure enough, Marvin the Martian appears in the photos.

Other areas in the display show the Powell landscape, complete with Heart Mountain in the background, and what a Martian landscape might look like with the cultivation of crops in a greenhouse. It includes a Marvs Barley factory, too, with the product being exported to Earth for inclusion in Martian beer. The futuristic simulation also includes harvesting natural resources in the form of methane gas, produced in a chemical reaction between ultraviolet radiation from the sun and comet dust that drops chemicals from space.

The methane that is mined is used to power the space X rockets (and the tractor) for travel and export uses. The students also built a rocket, set to be test fired last week.

A big part of the class project is problem solving. For instance, the tractor windshield would be covered with red dust from the red planet. A regular wiper would not be practical because the dust carries a heavy load of iron particles, which are responsible for the red tint to the planet. A regular wiper would just grind the iron into the windshield, damaging the surface without improving visibility.

So senior Lane Franks, with input from the internet community, devised an ion-charged wiper. Basically, it works like a magnet, attracting and trapping the iron particles away from the glass. Smaller non-metallic particles are swept away, and when the charge is disconnected from the wiper, the iron particles drop away as well, usually when the tractor is shut down.

The wheels on the tractor run, powered by a chain drive set on a timer. The robotics classes did the programming to make it run as it does. The whole contraption is suspended from the ceiling.

Most of our problems are solved with lots of trial and error, Gilman said.

And a lot of blood, sweat and tears, Hobbs quipped back.

The group becomes more sober as they near the second project, which normally would have had an entire year devoted just to it. For this project, the class members up to 40 of them constructed two replicas of World War II Liberty ships. These ships were quickly constructed of prefabricated sections from a modified British design. During 1942, three ships were completed each day.

The Germans couldnt sink them fast enough to keep them from supplying the troops, Gilman said. While 2,700 were built, only four remain intact.

To build the replicas, students studied videos and photographs. Footage of the Jeremiah OBrien, an operational ship used as a museum and docked in San Francisco, was employed to get the ships rigging just right. Hobbs, who Gilman teased about his compulsive need for authenticity, spent untold hours researching the ships.

It just bugs me if something isnt right, Hobbs said. The closer to realistic we could get it, the better it looks.

Gilman and his students didnt feel it would be respectful to name their ship after a real ship on which men fought and died, so they turned to a local hero: The ship is named the William F. Cody. The prow, rather than bearning the image of a nude female as some of the real ships did, instead carries a likeness of Annie Oakley. The Cody is a 1:32 replica, measuring 14 feet long. It flies a Powell Panther flag, a submarine spotted flag and a Class of 2021 flag. The second ship, Edward Avila, is a 1:64 replica, 7 feet in length.

The project started with computer aided drafted drawings from the CAD class and cut out frames from the woodworking shop. Many pieces of both projects are made with the use of a 3-D printer.

The two ships are on display with a submarine built back in 2015. The Cody has a gaping hole blown in its side, it has capsized and is headed to the bottom of the ocean. That meant the students had to work out mathematically what its angle would be, where air bubbles would escape and what size the hole would be in relation to the size of the replica.

They used math, science, physics, problem solving, Gilman said. The classes had to work together on the project and with other classes, communicating their needs. They did much research to learn the history of the ships, how they were constructed and what their jobs were during the war. And because it could only weigh 55 to 60 pounds, like the original Liberty ships, the Cody had to be light but strong.

Later that afternoon, the replica was to be hoisted from its build platform, inverted and hung from the ceiling. Architects had been in to check that the brackets were strong enough and correctly positioned to be safe for those passing underneath or stopping to observe the obsolete ship preserved for future generations.

Just as the Liberty ships transported the Allies to victory in WWII, this project will transport the student builders toward success in life wherever it takes them. And Jim Gilman couldnt be prouder.

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Students excel on Mars and at sea - Powell Tribune

From left: Andrew West, Gwen Whitney, John Wolfe, Reid Stowe, Kate Wicks, Oliver Parody, and Eric Goss aboard the Anne. Photo by Gaige Davila.

By Gaige DavilaSpecial to the PRESS

Port Isabel is no stranger to sailors, but the depths of one group of sailors mission could not be more stranger.

The schooner Anne and its crewAndrew West, Gwen Whitney, John Wolfe, Reid Stowe, Kate Wicks, Oliver Parody, and Eric Gosssailed from Miami, Florida, to Port Isabel early April, to tell SpaceX CEO Elon Musk that they can train astronauts via sea travel.

Oliver Peabody and John Wolfe show the ships navigation system. Photo by Gaige Davila.

This training is called an analog mission, meant to replicate the physical and mental conditions of space. The Annes journey from Florida to Port Isabel was the second voyage in the Mars Ocean Analogs, the first being from Cape Fear River, North Carolina, to West Palm Beach, Florida. From Miami to Port Isabel, the crew spent two weeks at sea in the 70 foot ship, built by Stowe, who used the same schooner to sail for 1,152 days between 2007 and 2010. It was the longest continuous sea voyage without resupplying and without docking on land in history.

But these journeys do have a destination in mind, whether metaphorical or Martian.

We felt like we were heading to the heart of where we should be, Stowe said aboard the Anne. It was so exciting for us to come here, considering whats happening here. This is a destination, I say, that something few people in the world know about, but we felt that we were in on something and we were coming to the greatest place we could possibly come.

Andrew West slices apples in the ships galley. Photo by Gaige Davila.

That heart was the Laguna Madre, towards Boca Chica Beach, where SpaceX has a rocket launching facility. Stowe and the entire crew insist that extended sea travel, on one vessel, in one communal area, without resupplying, is the closest astronauts can come to experiencing traveling to Mars on Earth.

The missions, which are two weeks long, would extend gradually, Stowe said, noting that any group going to Mars likely needs to spend at least a year at sea together. Travel to Mars takes 9 months, according to a calculation by space.com. Earth and Mars realign every two years, creating a short window for a nearly-year-long return journey .

The Anne was docked at the Port Isabel Logistical Offshore Terminal (PILOT) at the southernmost end of Port Road. The crew docked there after contacting Port Director, Scott Brown, who allowed the crew to stay there, thinking their journey and idea were incredible, Wolfe said. From the deck of the Anne, SpaceXs Boca Chica facility can be seen in the distance.

Oliver Peabody stands near his bunk, fitted with a tarp to prevent him from falling out during rough seas. Photo by Gaige Davila.

The crew explored Port Isabel while docked at PILOT, roaming Market Square and eating at Will & Jacks Burger Shack on Maxan St, they said. The crew is very close with one another, unsurprisingly, after thousands of ocean miles among them. Outside of space training, these analog missions are a powerful bonding experience.

The lessons that are learned on analogs we hope can be put into practice for the people who do actually go (to Mars), thats what were aiming for, Wolfe, who is the longest serving of Stowes crew, said. An important thing, too, the analog astronauts who sail with us help pitch in and do the work of the boat, because thats what were really trying to teach. Its how you can find that power within yourself to do what needs to be done.

Kate Wicks ascends the mast of the Anne. Photo by Gaige Davila.

The crew has uniforms and patches, too, meant to display a sincere effort for group dynamics and team building while completing analog missions aboard the Anne. All the crew have captains licenses, meaning either all or some can be present during an analog mission.

After seven months of planning, the Mars Ocean Analog made their way to Boca Chica Beach, sailing the Anne into South Bay and docking on a marsh. The crew hiked through the sand dunes, put their uniforms on while on the beach, and marched to SpaceXs entrance, carrying a flag bearing their mission name. Stowe, using a conch shell, blew a long note at SN15, the current SpaceX prototype rocket.

As of this articles writing, the Anne, Stowe, Peabody, and four new crew membersLuis Diaz, from Peru; Marcos Bruno, from Argentina; Danton Bazaldua, from Mexico; and David Mateus, from Columbiaare sailing back to West Palm Beach, Florida, the third mission of the Mars Ocean Analogues. In June, Stowe is leading an all-women crew from Florida to New York City, led by space enthusiast Alyssa Carson.

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Mars-bound and down: Aboard the Anne with the Mars Ocean Analogs - Port isabel south padre

New research looking at images and other measurements made from orbit strongly suggests that Mars may still be volcanically active now. Like, today now. This fits in pretty well with other indicators that the Red Planet may not yet be the Dead Planet.

The observations were made using various instruments on board the wonderful Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (or MRO), which has been circling the planet since 2006. The images targeted an area called Elysium Planitia (literally the Plains of Heaven), specifically a region called Cerberus Fossae that's loaded with parallel cracks in the Martian crust.

These fissures in the crust are called fossae, and are due to tectonic extension, where the ground is pulled apart from pressure under the surface. As I've written before:

What caused these cracks? They are most likely due to tectonic extension, when the surface is stretched for some reason. You've seen something like this before if you've ever made a cake or muffins. The top will brown and harden first before the middle. As the interior of the cake cooks, it expands, pushing up against the already-cooked top. That pressure can cause the top to split and pull apart, creating a crack or rift.

The surface of Mars is littered with volcanic material globally, but volcanism peaked on the planet probably 23 billion years ago. However, there has been some evidence that activity continued into geologically recent times; some features have been dated to be as young as 2 million years.

A team of planetary scientists studied one of these cracks, an unnamed 34-kilometer long fissure some hundreds of meters wide, and it stands out in the images. There are lobes or wings of dark material extending for many kilometers on either side of the fissure along about half its length. The surface farther out around it is much lighter in tone, probably covered in fine dust.

Using other instruments on board MRO they found the material is rich in pyroxene, a mineral commonly found in volcanic flows. They also found that the material has a high thermal inertia, meaning it's slow to warm up during the day and to cool at night. Plain old rocks have low thermal inertia, heating and cooling rapidly. This indicates the material is fluffier, grainier, typical of some volcanic eruptions.

The total amount of dark material there is about 20 million cubic meters, or a cube roughly 270 meters on a side, but it's spread out over a lot of area, and is probably up to a few dozen centimeters thick near the fissure (this was determined by looking at craters from impacts that happened after the material was deposited; they reveal how deep the material is).

The scientists conclude that this is likely a deposit from a pyroclastic flow, the most terrifying thing I can imagine when talking about volcanoes. These are incredibly hot gas and particle flows (common on Earth when, for example, an explosive plume of ash collapses) that can move at hundreds of kilometers per hour across the ground, burning and suffocating everything in their path.

They note it's possible this isn't volcanic at all, but actually dust and sand blown out of the fissure by wind, but they judge this unlikely. The wind blows to the southwest in this part of Mars, and in the image you can see the lobes extend to the SW and NE. The SW lobe stretches farther than the NE lobe (about 12 versus 6 km) but that's consistent with it being blown by wind after it formed; the fact that material is to the NE at all indicates this isn't a solely wind-driven feature.

Where this gets really interesting is when they tried to figure out how old it is. One way to do this is to look at craters: The longer an area is exposed the more craters it accumulates. By counting craters and measuring their sizes you can get an estimate of the age of surface... and what they find is that it may be roughly 50200 thousand years old.

Whoa. Geologically speaking, that's now.

The fissure appears to point toward the 10-km-wide crater Zunil that's been dated to 100,0001 million years old. Perhaps the impact weakened the rock there, allowing magma to rise up through the crack. I'm speculating, though. The authors don't make any connection between the two other than relative youth.

Also interesting? NASA has a lander called InSight on the other side of Elysium Planitia, about 1700 km to the southwest of this area. InSight has a seismograph, and it has detected quite a few marsquakes, including two fairly big ones (about magnitude 3) in Mach 2021 coming from the direction of Cerberus Fossae! These are consistent with magma moving around under the crust there.

Together, this evidence points toward possible magma activity going on in that area right now.

That's pretty interesting. The pyroclastic deposit seen around the fissure may indicate the magma hit some water ice on its way up. When that happens the ice turns to steam that expands explosively, which could have been what propelled the material so far. But if that's the case that means there's a source of warmth and a source of water under the surface there.

Hmmm. NASA is looking for evidence of life on Mars, and not just ancient fossils but extant life, things living there now. Cerberus Fossae might be a good place to eventually look. This is pretty speculative, don't get me wrong, but it's interesting.

It seems clear that Mars is at least a little active today. The questions are how much, and where, and what this means for geology and biology on the planet.

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More evidence that Mars is volcanically active right now. Today. - SYFY WIRE

SpaceX founder Elon Musk landed on late-night TV Saturday (May 8) to joke about space exploration, the popular Dogecoin cryptocurrency, which arose from a meme he once began, and more as the host of "Saturday Night Live."

Musk, known for his space company, Tesla electric cars and colorful comments on Twitter, hosted SNL with singer Miley Cyrus as the musical guest. He said he was the first SNL host to have Asperger's syndrome as he opened the sketch comedy show in New York City late Saturday. Asperger's is one of a range of conditions under autism spectrum disorder that "is a condition related to brain development that impacts how a person perceives and socializes with others, causing problems in social interaction and communication," according to the Mayo Clinic.

"It's an honor to be hosting 'Saturday Night Live.' I mean that," Musk said. "Sometimes after I say something I have to say, 'I mean that' so people really know that I mean it. That's because I don't always have a lot of intonational variation in how I speak which I'm told makes for great comedy."

He added: "I'm actually making history tonight as the first person with Asperger's to host SNL. Or at least the first to admit it."

His opening monologue included a reference to Mother's Day, which is Sunday (May 9) in which he promised he would gift his mother Dogecoin. He probably should have briefed her, as Musk's mother, Maye, came on stage proclaiming: "I'm excited for my Mother's Day gift. I just hope it's not Dogecoin."

One of the comedy routine's most pointed highlights was a nod to the falling Chinese rocket booster that plummeted uncontrollably to Earth Saturday, luckily with no casualties as it fell into the ocean. SNL pointed some fun at the situation with a nod to SpaceX's recent rocket debris crash; "And for once, we know it's not Elon's fault," opened a three-minute skit on the discussion.

Perhaps the funniest part of the night was a sketch about SpaceX's proposed Mars settlement plans and an astronaut called Chad.

Other highlights included Musk using his elite Generation Z slang (Generation Z being people ranging from teenagers to mid-20 somethings) in a Gen Z hospital:

Musk also mused on what it might be like to be a producer on an Icelandic pop culture talk show:

And there was the obligatory skit about Dogecoin, a meme-inspired cryptocurrency hailed by Musk, during the Weekend Update.

Another sketch nodded toward Musk's tunnelling Boring company, portraying him as an eccentric cowboy trying to take down a gang.

Finally, if you've ever wondered what Elon Musk would look like as the Super Mario Brothers villain Wario, wonder no more.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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SpaceX's Elon Musk lands on 'Saturday Night Live' to talk space, Mars (and yes, Dogecoin) - Space.com

Back in March, NASAs InSight lander detected two large quakes from a geologically active region of Mars called the Cerberus Fossae. Now, using imagery from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which circles the red planet at an altitude of about 300km, researchers have discovered that the Cerberus Fossae region holds the most recent evidence of volcanic activity ever seen on Mars.

The newly observed volcanic deposit could have been created as recently as 46,000 years ago, though outer estimates suggest that, at the oldest, it might be 200,000 years old. In either case, on geological time scales, this is a very young deposit. Most of the volcanic rock elsewhere on Mars is orders of magnitude more ancient, forming during a period of heavy geological activity between 3 and 4 billion years ago. More recent volcanic eruptions occurred with regularity on Mars up to about 3 million years ago, but until now, we have never seen any evidence of volcanism that can be dated in the thousands of years. This new deposit is unique. As lead researcher David Horvath from the Planetary Science Institute explains, if we were to compress Mars geologic history into a single day, this would have occurred in the very last second.

The eruption that created the deposit appears to have been explosive in nature, with a pyroclastic cloud that could have reached as high as 6km. The dark layer of ash and volcanic material leftover from the explosion now covers a 13km wide region on either side of one of the large fissures from which the Cerberus Fossae takes its name.

Most volcanic rock found on Mars today is the result of lava flowing slowly across the surface. Explosive volcanism like this seems much rarer, though its rarity is not necessarily a result of it occurring less frequently. Instead, it is because explosive volcanism leaves behind thinner layers of material, so it is more easily eroded by wind and other geological activity, or hidden beneath sand and dust. In other words, the only reason we can see this new deposit at all is because its so young it hasnt yet vanished from the geological record.

When the observations from orbit are combined with the seismic data from InSight, they offer the tantalizing possibility that the Cerberus Fossae region could still see future eruptions, and that magmatic activity is still ongoing just beneath the surface there.

One speculative, but not altogether unreasonable hypothesis, suggests that this ongoing underground magma flow might have melted ice embedded in the nearby Martian subsurface, creating habitable environments for microbial life in the present day.

The researchers believe that these environments would be analogous to locations on Earth where volcanic activity occurs in glacial environments such as Iceland, where chemotropic [bacteria that gains energy from oxidizing inorganic molecules], cryophilic [cold-loving], and thermophilic [heat-loving] bacteria thrive.

For now, we have no way of testing this theory, though InSight will continue to listen for further seismic activity from its position about 1,600km away. In the ongoing search for microbial extra-terrestrial life, however, the Cerberus Fossae may be a promising location for future missions to explore.

The researchers published their findings in Icarus. You can read more about it here:

Volcanoes on Mars Could Be Active, Raise Possibility of Recent Habitable Conditions. Planetary Science Institute.

David G. Horvath, Pranabendu Moitra, Christopher W. Hamilton, Robert A. Craddock, Jeffrey C. Andrews-Hanna. Evidence for geologically recent explosive volcanism in Elysium Planitia, Mars. Icarus.

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Volcanoes on Mars Might Still be Active - Universe Today

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Kyle Richards is known to host over-the-top gatherings for her family members, so for Mother's Day, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills mom's daughters ensured she had the most incredible celebration at home. "Such a beautiful Mother's Day with family," Alexia Umansky captioned an Instagram Story video showing the group eating chicken, salad, asparagus, pasta, corn, and more delicious food in their idyllic backyard. As seen in a video from Alexia earlier in the day, the family also enjoyed bagels with cream cheese, lox, onion, tomato, cucumber, and capers. In addition to eating in the gorgeous outdoor space (which you can check out in the video above), some of the family members also got plenty of use out of their epic backyard tree swing. For the special day, Kyle's kids also gifted her dozens of vibrant flowers. Farrah Aldjufrie gave a close look at the gorgeous florals in addition to a balloon featuring the text "Best Mom Ever" placed atop the family's chic home bar. In her own Instagram Story, Kyle showed off some of the flowers and added text reading, "Grateful" and "Living My Best Life." Photo: Alexia Umansky/Instagram; Farrah Aldjufrie/Instagram Photo: Farrah Aldjufrie/Instagram; Alexia Umansky/Instagram Photo: Farrah Aldjufrie/Instagram In separate Instagram Stories, Kyle shared that she started her day by sipping coffee outside and spending time with her dogs. Shortly after, she did a "Mother's Day ride" on the Peloton bike in her home gym. Following the fun-filled day, Kyle shared a sweet tribute to her daughters on Instagram. "There are no words to express how grateful I am to be a Mother to these 4 incredible human beings," she wrote. "Thank you for making me a Mother and for showing me what life is really about. All of you teach me so much every day and I am eternally grateful. You are my favorite people in the entire world and you make this world a better place! You are my everything." To get a full look at Kyle's backyard, check out the video above! Want more The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills? Catch up through the Bravo app.

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Jose Figueroa Jr. Sings Bruno Mars' "Talking to the Moon" - The Voice Live Top 17 Performances 2021 - Yahoo Entertainment