Category Archives: Mars

FLORENCE Joey Barriers introduction to Mars Hill soccer came in 1995, when he was a senior playing the sport for the first time and falling in love with it.

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Panthers of Progress: 3 years after rough season, Mars Hill wins playoff game - Times Daily

Uninvited passengers and secret hitchhikers in sci-fi films (whether intentional or unintentional) is a well-worn trope in pop culture offerings, often witnessed in TV shows and films like "Lost in Space," "The Astronauts" or "Jurassic Park: The Lost World."

Adding to the tradition, "Stowaway" is a new outer space thriller that begins streaming today on Netflix starring Toni Collette, Anna Kendrick, Shamier Anderson, and Daniel Dae Kim.

Written by Joe Penna and Ryan Morrison, and directed by Joe Penna ("Arctic"), the film follows the three-person crew of a spacecraft destined for Mars who discover an accidental stowaway shortly after takeoff. The surprising presence of this launch-plan engineer immediately puts the rest of the Mars-bound team in peril due to the limitations of their craft's life support system for their two-year, round-trip trek to the Red Planet. Fateful decisions must soon be made to guarantee survival of the mission and its astronauts before the oxygen ends.

To its credit, this serious German-American production manages to detour around some of the more clich plot contrivances in similar fare and instead infuses the story with genuine scenes of courage, heroism, and sacrifice under dire circumstances in an inhospitable environment.

"We wanted this film to be as close to reality as possible," Penna said in a Netflix statement. "We talked to around twenty different experts aerospace engineers, astronauts, space shuttle commanders, algae experts, launch engineers, solar radiation researchers, and medical professionals. We spoke to as many people as possible to create a story that takes place in a setting that will very closely resemble what this mission will truly be one day."

20 sci-fi movies and TV shows to binge watch on Netflix

Penna's feature is a satisfying cinematic odyssey punctuated by solid performances from the cast and adorned with authentic-looking sets and special effects worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster.

Special accolades go out to Academy Award-nominated composer Volker Bertelmann ("Lion") for the films stirring musical score.

"Stowaway" is currently available on Netflix.

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Netflix launches new Mars mission thriller 'Stowaway.' But will the air last? - Space.com

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on Sol 3092. The image was taken at ~35 centimeters standoff from the brushed drill target Bardou on top of "Mont Mercou," after the drill preload test. Download image

Congratulations to the Perseverance and Ingenuity teams on the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. This technology demonstration opens up new and exciting possibilities for the future of planetary exploration.

Meanwhile at Gale crater Curiosity is preparing to attempt drilling hole #31 (Bardou) on Mars, a feat we thought might not be possible more than 4 years ago when a key part of the drill stopped working. However, the perseverance, ingenuity and hard work of the JPL team meant that a work around was devised to enable drilling on Mars to resume more than a year later. We have since drilled a further 15 holes, doubling our inventory! Analysis of the Bardou drilled sample by CheMin, SAM and other instruments will help us to understand the transition from the clay-bearing rocks that we have been investigating in "Glen Torridon," to the overlying sulfate-bearing rocks that we are soon to encounter.

Power was low coming into this plan, and because the drilling activities consume a lot of power, there were no other science activities planned. Instead, the geology and environmental planning groups focused on desired activities in the upcoming plans and for the longer term.

As the APXS payload uplink/downlink and strategic planning representative today it was a relatively quiet day for me. I reported on the downlink and the health of the APXS instrument, but while drilling we are not able to deploy the APXS, which is also on the end of the arm. However, we did use the APXS data already acquired in this area to help inform the discussion of what we would like to do after drilling.

We will hopefully have confirmation of a new drill hole on Mars tomorrow!

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Sol 3094: Perseverance and Ingenuity Pay Off on Mars Again! NASA's Mars Exploration Program - NASA Mars Exploration

NASA is one step closer to achieving the first-ever flight on another planet. Over the weekend, the space agency successfully deployed the Ingenuity helicopter onto the surface of Mars just days away from its historic takeoff.

NASA confirmed the tiny helicopter's safe delivery onto the Martian surface on Saturday night, marking its successful deployment from the belly of thePerseverance rover, where it's been safely stored.

Scientists were concerned about Ingenuity's ability to survive the frigid Martian night, which reaches temperatures as low as minus-130 degrees Fahrenheit. It's been connected to the rover, using its heater to stay warm now, it's exposed to the elements.

"No more free power from the rover!" Bob Balaram, Chief Engineer for the Mars Helicopter Project, wrote on Friday.

"The team will check the temperatures and the battery recharge performance over the next couple of days," Balaram said. "If it all looks good, then it's onto the next steps: unlocking the rotor blades, and testing out all the motors and sensors."

A photo taken by Perseverance shows the solar-powered chopper a short distance away from the rover.

Weighing in at just four pounds, Ingenuity's long journey aboard the rover ended with a final drop of 4 inches onto the surface. It's now in position to make history when it attempts flight sometime this month, marking the first powered takeoff and landing on another world.

NASA calls the $80 million helicopter a "high-risk, high-reward" mission.

While scientists have operated plenty of rovers on Mars over the years, Ingenuity will be their first attempt at flight. The first of up to five test flights could come as early as Thursday, depending on winds and weather.

For its first flight, Ingenuity will hover just a few feet from the ground for about 20 to 30 seconds before landing. If successful, the team will then attempt up to four other tests within a month's time frame, each gradually pushing the limits of distance and altitude, like a baby bird learning to fly.

Flight controllers at JPL won't be able to control Ingenuity while it's actually flying. Due to significant communication delays, commands will be sent in advance of flights, and the team won't know how the flight went until it's over. Ingenuity will be able to make its own decisions about how to fly and keep itself warm.

The helicopter is not equipped with any science instruments and its mission is not part of Perseverance's hunt for signs of ancient life. Rather, it is considered strictly a technology demonstration.

If successful, drones could become standard equipment forfuture planetary exploration.

In a tribute to aviation accomplishments here on Earth, Ingenuity carries a small piece of fabric from the Wright Flyer, the first aircraft the Wright brothers successfully flew at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903.

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NASA's Ingenuity helicopter touches down on surface of ...

NASA's fancy new Perseverance Mars rover may be getting all the attention these days, but its predecessor, Curiosity, is still making breakthroughs.

More than 2,000 miles away from Perseverance's landing spot, Curiosity has been roaming Mars' Gale Crater for the last nine years. Since 2014, it's been slowly climbing the 3-mile-high mountain at the crater's center: Mount Sharp. There, Curiosity has discovered signs that ancient Mars experienced wild climate fluctuations it oscillated between being a water world rich with rivers and a dry desert planet, according to a study published Thursday.

Scientists have known for decades that Mars lost its water about 3.5 billion years ago, but the new discovery suggests that the planet's lakes and rivers may have vanished and come back several times before disappearing completely. Piecing together the history of water on Mars can help scientists figure out whether it ever hosted life.

Curiosity will likely uncover more secrets about Mars' past as it explores the foothills of Mount Sharp, where billions of years of Martian history are embedded in 3 miles of rock layers. Each era of the planet's history left different marks on the mountain layers of sediment from the flow of an ancient river, clay that once settled at the bottom of the lake, or dust and sand blown across a dry valley. As the rover climbs, it's getting a chronological tour of Mars' climate history.

Recently, the rover got to the base of half-mile-thick mountain of sediment in the area.

"We are arriving now in a very interesting location," William Rapin, a planetary scientist at the French National Center for Scientific Research and the lead author of the new study, told Insider.

NASA assigned Curiosity this extended mission, which has an indefinite timeline, after the rover completed its original mission in 2014. In those first two years on Mars, Curiosity confirmed that the Gale Crater was once a lake filled with the chemical ingredients for life. (Perseverance is now exploring a similar ancient Martian lake bed in search of fossils of ancient microbial life.)

Since then, Curiosity has discovered organic material, sniffed out mysterious spikes in the Martian atmosphere's methane levels, measured the red planet's gravitational fields, and unearthed evidence that small, salty ponds were left behind as Mars dried out. Curiosity is still piecing together the puzzle of Martian history, bit by bit.

An illustration of Jezero Crater as it may have looked billions of years ago on Mars, when it was a lake. NASA/JPL-Caltech

As Curiosity crawls up Mount Sharp, its ChemCam instrument has been zapping the surrounding rock beds with lasers. This vaporizes bits of the rock, and the instrument can then analyze the light wavelengths of the resulting gases. From there, scientists can determine which chemicals are in the rock. The instrument also includes a telescope that can spot rock features five to 10 times smaller than what previous rovers could capture in high resolution.

"That's why we aimed for this site with this rover, to be able to explore, for the first time, a kilometer-thick stratigraphy of ancient Martian history," Rapin said. "We could see for the first time how the sediment had been laid."

Using its telescope, Curiosity's ChemCam has discovered drastic changes in the rock bed as it ascends the mountain. An ancient lake left mineral deposits at the foot of Mount Sharp. Above that lake layer, Curiosity discovered horizontal stripes that were likely made by wind blowing sand dunes across the crater. Above that, there's another lake layer.

The sedimentary structures observed in ChemCams telescope images. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/CNES/CNRS/LANL/IRAP/IAS/LPGN

Taken together, this suggests that the Gale Crater went from being a lake to a dry, arid desert, then back to a lake. Rapin and his team think that such drastic climate fluctuations may have happened several times before Mars' surface water completely dried up. It's not clear how long these periods of wet and dry lasted, but Rapin thinks it's on the order of millions of years.

"It's really the first time that we can start to lay down a climatic history at the scale of millions of years," he said.

Understanding how Mars transformed from a water world full of habitable environments to a barren planet could help scientists better assess the likelihood that alien life exists, and where to hunt for it.

"I'm not surprised that we are making discoveries, and I'm really hoping the rover is staying well and keeps roving," Rapin said. "We have a lot to learn."

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NASA's Curiosity rover is still probing secrets about Mars' past water - Business Insider

By Krista Charles

Mount Sharp on the Martian surface

NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/CNES/CNRS/LANL/IRAP/IAS/LPGN

Ancient Mars fluctuated between arid and humid periods, before taking on its current dry state.

This conclusion comes from the study of high-resolution images captured by a telescope on the Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012. The images reveal details of the geology of Mount Sharp, a 6-kilometre-high mountain at the centre of Gale crater.

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Its kind of the first time that we have details on outcrops on Mars that are important because they are very ancient rocks, says William Rapin at the Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology in France, who studied the images with his colleagues in the US. They are more than 3.5 billion years old, and from this critical time when Mars still had water, but was in the process of a huge climate transition that we know occurred on Mars globally.

Moving up the mountain, the horizontal layers of rock become increasingly younger. The layers near the bottom of Mount Sharp carry geological features that suggest they formed in an ancient lake present in Gale crater. But above, the rocks have features suggesting they formed in an ancient dune field in a desert-like environment. Even higher up, there are more geological changes back to wetter conditions and then back to dry conditions.

What you would have expected is that things dry out gradually as you move forward in time, looking at the Mars timeline, but to see the reoccurrence of wetter conditions, thats exciting and a very interesting find, says Christian Schroeder at the University of Stirling in the UK.

Curiosity is scheduled to ascend Mount Sharp, which could provide more detail on these ancient environmental fluctuations.

It will be very interesting to dig into that further and find out what the driving force between these different conditions was, says Schroeder.

Journal reference: Geology, DOI: 10.1130/G48519.1

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Mars swung between humid and arid conditions before it dried up - New Scientist News

"Mont Mercou" as seen by Left Navigation Camera onboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 3074. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Download image

Sol 3081 will be a busy one for Curiosity. The rover is still near the transition between the "Glasgow" member and the sulfate-bearing unit; as this is a major geologic transition, the science team is trying to get as much data as possible before moving away.

First up, the rover is planning to do a touch-and-go, performing contact and targeted remote science before driving away. First, Curiosity will get some arm exercise in, doing APXS and MALHI observations of Puymangou, a dark spot on a bedrock slab in front of the rover. Science will test if the color difference represents a difference in composition relative to the nearby bedrock. For the Rover Planners (of which I am one today), this is a challenging target because it is small and a little raised relative to the surrounding parts of the rock. We also need to avoid the nearby pockets of sand trapped by the surface roughness of the rock. After the arm activities, Curiosity will stow the arm to prepare for driving.

Before driving away, there is a set of targeted science observations with Mastcam. In addition to a small 3x3 mosaic of the contact science target, we will take a large stereo mosaic of "Mont Mercou" from the southwest to get more views of the sedimentary structures of the ridge. In addition to all the images we have taken from other locations around Mont Mercou, this last set will enable us to build a complete 3-D model of it. In this same pre-drive time, ChemCam will also do a passive sky observation as part of our environmental suite.

Then, we say goodbye to Mont Mercou and begin our drive, about 30 meters to the south-southwest. The terrain in this area is both quite rocky and has patches of sand, providing another challenge for the Rover Planners. Curiosity will wind her way around some of the sharper rocks and bigger patches of sand in order to land on a high point that should provide a good viewshed for planning the next drive, as well as landing on some bedrock to enable contact science in the weekend plan. The Rover Planners (and Curiositys wheels) are definitely looking forward to being further south, where the terrain is more benign and our drives will no longer need to look like a slalom track.

After the drive, we will take some imaging to support the next drive, as well as some additional ChemCam observations of the sky and its calibration targets in order to continue to monitor the health of the instrument. Just around sunset, we will do another set of cloud observations with Mastcam and Navcam in the hopes of getting yet another spectacular image of the Martian cloudy skies, and a MARDI image of the ground below the rover. Finally, early the next morning we will do some more environmental observations, including a dust devil movie and a supra-horizon movie.

On the second sol of the plan, we do more environmental atmospheric observations of the sun, the horizon, more dust devil movies, as well as some twilight Mastcam images.

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Sols 3083-3084: 'Mont Mercou,' in the Rear View NASA's Mars Exploration Program - NASA Mars Exploration

An unexpected snowfall closed schools in Huntsville, Alabama on the afternoon of Feb. 18. Despite the cold, NASA scientist Caleb Fassett MS05 PhD08 was grateful to have his two first-grade daughters home to witness a key moment in space exploration. When he was a graduate student nearly two decades before, he had hardly dared to think this day would come.

The three were glued to their TV, watching as an animated capsule glided towards Marss atmosphere. Jezero Crater, the place on Mars that Fassett had discovered 18 years ago, was framed on the screen by a green triangle.

It is really exciting to go to a place that I had been thinking about for a really long time, Fassett said. When a spot is over 150 million miles away, seeing a robot near its surface can feel intimate.

The same afternoon, Professor of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences Jack Mustard sat in his home office on a Zoom meeting with a team of scientists who seek to understand the subsurface of planets. As the capsule containing the rover neared Marss atmosphere, Mustard began streaming the video of the landing for all to watch. He tried his best to keep his emotions in check, just in case all didnt go as planned.

The stress was tangible on the YouTube livestream of NASAs Jet Propulsion Lab. When the capsule successfully entered Marss atmosphere, a team member was heard gasping yes over and over.

Bethany Ehlmann MS08 PhD10, whose research helped solidify the importance of Jezero Crater, was commentating on the landing in real time on an event with Bill Nye. As the rover parachuted into the crater for its final landing stop, a camera on board NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped a photo. Its now her all time favorite space picture, said Ehlmann, who is a member of the rovers science operations team at NASA.

At 4:57 p.m. Providence time that day, NASAs Mars Perseverance Rover touched down on the surface of the red planet.

It was quite the moment to hear touchdown confirmed for a site I had worked on so long and spent years poring over, Ehlmann said.

At home in Providence, Chris Kremer GS, a PhD candidate in planetary sciences, had just woken up from a nap to a text from his dad: Landed!

Were you on a plane? Kremer wrote back, confused, then grasped what had transpired.

I definitely felt like I had missed out on something big, but it saved me a lot of anxiety, Kremer admitted.

Even Browns veteran of space exploration, Professor of Geological Sciences James Head, mimed covering his face with his hands as he remembered watching the landing. Head has witnessed dozens of extraterrestrial landings over his more than 50-year career, and in his words, Mars is the planet where spacecraft go to die. After all, nearly half of the missions to Mars have failed, according to Head.

If it had been a failure, it just would have been a huge change in our program, Head said, thinking about the graduate students who had staked their careers on studying the region.

Just north of the Martian Equator lies an area comparable in size to Alaska, known as the Nili Fossae region that encompasses a Rhode-Island-sized crater formed by a collision.

Flying from South to North over Nili Fossae, a golden-orange colors the skyline, like a perpetual cloudless sunset. Below, a vast desert stretches in brown and tan. Dotting the surface are small mesa rock deposits in the crater.

The Perseverance team compares the geology of the rovers landing site to the Canyon de Chelly National Monument in the Navajo Nation.

University researchers have been studying the crater once filled with water, but barren today for nearly two decades.

From above, a channel cuts across the tan surface outside the crater. Scientists believe that the channel is a dried riverbed, signaling that water once flowed there. Starting from outside the crater and moving in, the ancient river navigates between two humps, a notch in the crater lip. Once inside the crater, it splits into many channels, forming a fan of grooves etched into the crater floor. This fan is the Perseverance rovers primary destination: Jezero Delta.

The above descriptions of the Martian landscape come from an animation video created by Kremer in collaboration with the American Museum of Natural History. The animation is a highly faithful representation of what the terrain looks like from above, developed using satellite images, according to Kremer.

In 2003, Fassett, then a University graduate student in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, was sitting in Heads lab, eyeing the terrain of Mars. Since he started Graduate School earlier that year, he had been scanning data returned from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter, an instrument drawing a precise topographic map of the planet.

Fassett still remembers the moment he spotted what looked like a sedimentary lake in the Nili Fossae region.

I was looking at the time for places where water had modified the surface of Mars, and I remember seeing this location it was pretty spectacular, Fassett said, recalling his first glimpse of the Jezero Crater. I just loved the place from the very beginning.

Fassett brought the image to Head, who had been seeking to understand Marss climate, especially the nature of water on the red planet.

Head was intent on finding open-basin lakes those with an entry and exit because they indicate that enough water had to occupy the lake to flow out the other side. He and Fassett calculated that the Jezero Crater, formerly one such lake, likely held as much water as Lake Tahoe. When Fassett showed him the picture, though, he was struck by the clear presence of a delta a place where a river meets a slower body of water, and the rocks the river had been carrying are deposited.

Deltas are a great place to hunt for signs of life for several reasons, according to Kremer. In the most basic sense, they once contained water, which is a key condition for life. Second, everything from the surrounding area gets washed into a delta, which would include any biological matter.

Below the Gulf of Mexico, which (has) the richest oil fields in North America, there is an enormous delta, almost exactly of the same kind as the one at Jezero, Kremer explained. All the oil and natural gas that comes from the delta is a remnant of past life.

There are dozens of places on Mars that have been identified as possible deltas, but Jezero is one of the few places where there is a smoking gun (that) based on certain geologic criteria, this is a delta, Kremer said.

Over time, the evidence for the presence of water in the delta that Fassett spotted only grew.

Head and Fassett published a research paper in 2005 on the lake, deltas and sediment that had washed into them to bring scientific attention to the area.

At the same time, Mustard, who was then soon to become a University professor with an office down the hall from Head, was serving as one of the lead investigators for a NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars and mapping its mineralogy.

Led by Head and Mustard, researchers at Brown went on to study the composition of the crater. In 2008, Ehlmann, who was then a graduate student, used the CRISM data to pinpoint that the delta contained clay minerals, which could have preserved any biological matter from the surrounding area. With the same data, she found the minerals olivine and magnesite in the crater. Olivine transforms into magnesite in the presence of water, so the existence of them both provided stronger evidence that water flowed through the region, which Ehlmann outlined in a 2009 study.

The process of converting to magnesite can generate gases like hydrogen and methane. A great feedstock for really simple microbes, according to Mustard.

Together that just said, wow, this is a hot topic, man, youve got the delta with olivine and magnesite all together and a standing body of water, Mustard said. In terms of an exploration target, thats huge.

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Dangling by nylon threads: touchdown of Mars Perseverance Rover - The Brown Daily Herald

In February, the latest U.S. rover named Perseverance landed on Mars and began what is expected to be a historic exploration of the Red Planet. Equipped with high-resolution cameras, microphones, drills, scoopers, and a helicopter, the mission aims to find evidence of microbial life from 3.5 billion years and decipher what happened to that planet. Already, Perseverance is navigating its landing spot in Jezero Crater, finding rocks that appear to have been molded by water and wind, taking pictures of volcanic rocks, and starting to move around the crater.

In this episode of TechTank, Darrell West speaks with NASA specialist and planetary geologist Vicky Hamilton of the Southwest Research Institute. The two of them discuss the benefits of space exploration, what we have learned from past missions, and how scientists are testing for ancient life on Mars.

You can listen to the episode and subscribe to theTechTankpodcastonApple,Spotify, orAcast.

TechTank is a biweekly podcast from The Brookings Institution exploring the most consequential technology issues of our time. From artificial intelligence and racial bias in algorithms, to Big Tech, the future of work, and the digital divide, TechTank takes abstract ideas and makes them accessible. Moderators Dr. Nicol Turner Lee and Darrell West speak with leading technology experts and policymakers to share new data, ideas, and policy solutions to address the challenges of our new digital world.

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TechTank Podcast Episode 16: What we can learn about Mars from the Perseverance exploration - Brookings Institution

- Each time the Perseverance Mars Rover collects or handles rock and regolith samples in Jezero Crater during its multiple-year mission on the surface of the red planet, key components from SKFwill facilitate that those activities successfully take place

GOTHENBURG, Sweden, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Enabling the Mars Rover's core operations in the harsh environment on Mars are Kaydon RealiSlim thin-section ball bearings, designed and manufactured by SKF at the company's global thin-section bearing engineering center in Muskegon, and its recently expanded manufacturing hub in Sumter, USA.

These highly engineered components contribute to the survival of the rover's main robotic arm, sample collecting turret, tool bit carousel and sample handling assembly during a months-long trip through space, and its function as intended on the Mars surface.

SKF also supplied critical bearings for the mission's launch vehicle which carried the rover and its lander into space.

SKF bearings will play an integral role in the vital process of sample collection on Mars. When the rover is ready to begin collecting samples on the surface, the robotic arm will maneuver into place and the tool bit carousel will whirr into action, deploying tools to drill or abrade material, which will then be collected by the sample collecting turret (aka "the hand") and transferred to the sample handling assembly for processing onboard the rover, and eventually a potential return to Earth for analysis via a future Mars mission.

"The bearings we designed and built to help the rover perform its core science activities were based on several models of Kaydon thin-section ball bearings customized by our engineers to minimize weight and save space, while retaining maximum functionality and reliability for a mission where repair or replacement is simply not an option," said Isidoro Mazzitelli, Director of Product Development and Engineering Americas. Space applications must be a small fraction of the weight of standard bearing assemblies.

Kaydon bearing solutions are often customized from baseline models for specific customers and commonly used in applications that require a careful balance between strength, weight, size, functionality and reliability - including robotic surgical equipment, automated precision manufacturing, detailed painting, aircraft systems, airport security scanners and medical CT imagers.

In addition to the latest mission, SKF has a decades-long history as a supplier to global space programs, dating all the way back to NASA's Apollo 11 mission. "Our company's bearings, seals and other products have helped enable a wide range of spacecraft and missions for more than 40 years," said John Schmidt, President, SKF USA,Inc. "Our parts have flown on the previous space missions, dozens of commercial and government satellites, space-borne telescopes, a wide range of rocket launch vehicles and in astronaut's spacesuits. When conditions become critical and applications demanding, engineering knowledge is the only way to success."

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Press Relations:Nia Kihlstrm, +46 31-337 2897; +46 706 67 28 97;[emailprotected]

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SKF bearings help Mars Rover collect rock and regolith samples on the planet's surface - PRNewswire