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Mars Base

2013 in science - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...2013_in_science

scibyte114 2013YearInReview

shared by Mars Base on 23 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Morocco in 2011, and report that it is a new type of Mars rock with an unusually high water content.[8][9][10] American researchers state that a gene associated with active personality traits is also linked to
  • Astronomers affiliated with the Kepler space observatory announce the discovery of KOI-172.02, an Earth-like exoplanet candidate which orbits a star similar to the Sun in the habitable zone
  • 13 January – Massachusetts doctors invent a pill-sized medical scanner that can be safely swallowed by patients, allowing the esophagus to be more easily scanned for disease
  • ...101 more annotations...
  • 17 January – NASA announces that the Kepler space observatory has developed a reaction wheel issue
  • 2 January A study by Caltech astronomers reports that the Milky Way Galaxy contains at least one planet per sta
  • 3 January
  • 8 January
  • 20 January – Scientists prove that quadruple-helix DNA is present in human cells
  • 25 January
  • An international team of scientists develops a functional light-based "tractor beam", which allows individual cells to be selected and moved at will. The invention could have broad applications in medicine and microbiology
  • 30 January – South Korea conducts its first successful orbital launch
  • 6 February
  • Astronomers report that 6% of all dwarf stars – the most common stars in the known universe – may host Earthlike planets
  • Scientists discover live bacteria in the subglacial Antarctic Lake Whillans
  • American scientists finish drilling down to the subglacial Lake Whillans, which is buried around 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) under the Antarctic ice
  • 10 February NASA's Curiosity Mars rover uses its onboard drill to obtain the first deep rock sample ever retrieved from the surface of another plane
  • 15 February A 10-ton meteoroid impacts in Chelyabinsk, Russia, producing a powerful shockwave and injuring over 1,000 people
  • 28 February
  • Astronomers make the first direct observation of a protoplanet forming in a disk of gas and dust around a distant sta
  • A third radiation belt is discovered around the Eart
  • 1 March – Boston Dynamics demonstrates an updated version of its BigDog military robot
  • 3 March – American scientists report that they have cured HIV in an infant by giving the child a course of antiretroviral drugs very early in its life. The previously HIV-positive child has reportedly exhibited no HIV symptoms since its treatment, despite having no further medication for a year
  • researchers replace 75 percent of an injured patient's skull with a precision 3D-printed polymer replacement implant. In future, damaged bones may routinely be replaced with custom-manufactured implants
  • 7 March
  • A study concludes that heart disease was common among ancient mummies
  • 11 March
  • 12 March NASA's Curiosity rover finds evidence that conditions on Mars were once suitable for microbial life after analyzing the first drilled sample of Martian rock, "John Klein" rock at Yellowknife Bay in Gale Crater. The rover detected water, carbon dioxide, oxygen, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, chloromethane and dichloromethane. Related tests found results consistent with the presence of smectite clay minerals
  • 14 March CERN scientists confirm, with a very high degree of certainty, that a new particle identified by the Large Hadron Collider in July 2012 is the long-sought Higgs boson
  • 18 March
  • NASA reports evidence from the Curiosity rover on Mars of mineral hydration, likely hydrated calcium sulfate, in several rock samples, including the broken fragments of "Tintina" rock and "Sutton Inlier" rock as well as in the veins and nodules in other rocks like "Knorr" rock and "Wernicke" rock.[177] Analysis using the rover's DAN instrument provided evidence of subsurface water, amounting to as much as 4% water content, down to a depth of 60 cm
  • 27 March – A potential new weight loss method is discovered, after a 20% weight reduction was achieved in mice simply by having their gut microbes altered.
  • NASA scientists report that hints of dark matter may have been detected by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station
  • 3 April
  • 15 April A functional lab-grown kidney is successfully transplanted into a live rat in Massachusetts General Hospital
  • 18 April – NASA announces the discovery of three new Earthlike exoplanets – Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f, and Kepler-69c – in the habitable zones of their respective host stars, Kepler-62 and Kepler-69. The new exoplanets, which are considered prime candidates for possessing liquid water and thus potentially life, were identified using the Kepler spacecraft
  • 21 April The Antares rocket, a commercial launch vehicle developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation, successfully conducts its maiden flight
  • After years of unpowered glide tests, Scaled Composites' SpaceShipTwo hybrid spaceplane successfully conducts its first rocket-powered fligh
  • 29 April
  • 1 May IBM scientists release A Boy and His Atom, the smallest stop-motion animation ever created, made by manipulating individual carbon monoxide molecules with a scanning tunnelling microscope
  • A new study finds that children whose parents suck on their pacifiers have fewer allergies later in life
  • NASA reports that a reaction wheel on the Kepler space observatory may be malfunctioning and may result in the premature termination of the observatory's search for Earth-like
  • 15 May
  • 16 May Water dating back 2.6 billion years, by far the oldest ever found, is discovered in a Canadian mine
  • 27 May Four-hundred-year-old bryophyte specimens left behind by retreating glaciers in Canada are brought back to life in the laboratory
  • 29 May
  • Russian scientists announce the discovery of mammoth blood and well-preserved muscle tissue from an adult female specimen in Siberia
  • A new treatment to "reset" the immune system of multiple sclerosis patients is reported to reduce their reactivity to myelin by 50 to 75 percent
  • 4 June
  • During the Shenzhou 10 mission, Chinese astronauts deliver the country's first public video broadcast from the orbiting Tiangong-1 space laboratory
  • 20 June
  • China's Shenzhou 10 manned spacecraft returns safely to Earth, having conducted China's longest manned space mission to date
  • 26 June
  • 20 June
  • 20 June
  • 6 July
  • Scientists report that a wide variety of microbial life exists in the subglacial Antarctic Lake Vostok, which has been buried in ice for around 15 million years. Samples of the lake's water obtained by drilling were found to contain traces of DNA from over 3,000 tiny organisms
  • 15 July
  • ASA engineers successfully test a rocket engine with a fully 3D-printed injector
  • 19 July
  • NASA scientists publish the results of a new analysis of the atmosphere of Mars, reporting a lack of methane around the landing site of the Curiosity rover
  • Earth is photographed from the outer solar system. NASA's Cassini spacecraft releases images of the Earth and Moon taken from the orbit of Saturn
  • 29 July – Astronomers discover the first exoplanet orbiting a brown dwarf, 6,000 light years from Earth
  • exoplanet
  • 7 January
  • Astronomers
  • report that "at least 17 billion" Earth-sized exoplanets are estimated to reside in the Milky Way Galaxy
  • 20 February
  • NASA reports the discovery of Kepler-37b, the smallest exoplanet yet known, around the size of Earth's Moon
  • 10 June
  • Scientists report that the earlier claims of an Earth-like exoplanet orbiting Alpha Centauri B, a star close to our Solar System, may not be supported by astronomical evidence
  • 25 June – In an unprecedented discovery, astronomers detect three potentially Earthlike exoplanets orbiting a single star in the Gliese 667
  • 11 July For the first time, astronomers determine the true colour of a distant exoplanet. HD 189733 b, a searing-hot gas giant, is said to be a vivid blue colour, most likely due to clouds of silica in its atmosphere
  • NASA announces that the failing Kepler space observatory may never fully recover. New missions are being considered
  • 15 August
  • Phase I clinical trials of SAV001 – the first and only preventative HIV vaccine – have been successfully completed with no adverse effects in all patients. Antibody production was greatly boosted after vaccination
  • 3 September
  • 12 September NASA announces that Voyager I has officially left the Solar System, having travelled since 1977
  • NASA scientists report the Mars Curiosity rover detected "abundant, easily accessible" water (1.5 to 3 weight percent) in soil samples
  • 26 September
  • In addition, the rover found two principal soil types: a fine-grained mafic type and a locally derived, coarse-grained felsic type
  • mafic
  • as associated with hydration of the amorphous phases of the soi
  • perchlorates, the presence of which may make detection of life-related organic molecules difficult, were found at the Curiosity rover landing site
  • earlier at the more polar site of the Phoenix lander) suggesting a "global distribution of these salts
  • Astronomers have created the first cloud map of an exoplanet, Kepler-7b
  • 30 September
  • 8 October The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to François Englert and Peter Higgs "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider"
  • 16 October Russian authorities raise a large fragment, 654 kg (1,440 lb) total weight, of the Chelyabinsk meteor, a Near-Earth asteroid that entered Earth's atmosphere over Russia on 15 February 2013, from the bottom of Chebarkul lake.
  • Researchers have shown that a fundamental reason for sleep is to clean the brain of toxins. This is achieved by brain cells shrinking to create gaps between neurons, allowing fluid to wash through
  • 17 October
  • 22 October – Astronomers have discovered the 1,000th known exoplanet
  • 4 November - Astronomers report, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way Galaxy
  • 11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting sun-like stars
  • 5 November – India launches its first Mars probe, Mangalyaan
  • The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has made the first discovery of very high energy neutrinos on Earth which had originated from beyond our Solar System
  • 21 November
  • 1 December – China launches the Chang'e 3 lunar rover mission, with a planned landing on December 16
  • 3 December – The Hubble Space Telescope has found evidence of water in the atmospheres of five distant exoplanets: HD 209458b, XO-1b, WASP-12b, WASP-17b and WASP-19b
  • 9 December NASA scientists report that the planet Mars had a large freshwater lake (which could have been a hospitable environment for microbial life) based on evidence from the Curiosity rover studying Aeolis Palus near Mount Sharp in Gale Crater
  • 12 December NASA announces, based on studies with the Hubble Space Telescope, that water vapor plumes were detected on Europa, moon of Jupiter
  • 14 December – The unmanned Chinese lunar rover Chang'e 3 lands on the Moon, making China the third country to achieve a soft landing there
  • 18 December
  • nomers have spotted what appears to be the first known "exomoon", located 1,800 light years away
  • 20 December – NASA reports that the Curiosity rover has successfully upgraded, for the third time since landing, its software programs and is now operating with version 11. The new software is expected to provide the rover with better robotic arm and autonomous driving abilities. Due to wheel wear, a need to drive more carefully, over the rough terrain the rover is currently traveling on its way to Mount Sharp, was also reported
Mars Base

Apollo Moon Rocks Challenge Lunar Water Theory: Scientific American - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

scibyte83 moon

shared by Mars Base on 20 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • The discovery of "significant amounts" of water in moon rock samples collected by NASA's Apollo astronauts is challenging a longstanding theory about how the moon formed
  • Since the Apollo era, scientists have thought the moon came to be after a Mars-size object smashed into Earth early in the planet's history, generating a ring of debris that slowly coalesced over millions of years
  • That process, scientists have said, should have flung away the water-forming element hydrogen into space
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • a new study suggests the accepted scenario is not possible given the amount of water found in moon rocks collected from the lunar surface in the early 1970s
  • By "water," the researchers don't mean liquid water, but hydroxyl, a chemical that includes the hydrogen and oxygen ingredients of water.
  • Those water-forming elements would have been on the moon all along
  • the impact scenario is the best formation scenario for the moon, but we need to reconcile the theory of hydrogen
  • Past studies have suggested water-forming elements came to the moon from outside sources long after the moon's crust cooled
  • The solar wind — a stream of particles emanating from the sun — as well as meteorites and comets were pegged as possible sources ofwater depositson the moon in recent studies
  • that explanation does not account for the amount of water found in the Apollo samples
  • Because they found hydroxyl deep inside each sampled rock, the scientists say they have eliminated the solar wind moon water explanation
  • those particles can penetrate the surface only slightly
  • An impact from an asteroid or comet could push the hydrogen in further, but it would not be as pristine as the samples the researchers observed, because it would have melted from the heat of the asteroid collision
  • Researchers probed samples from the late Apollo missions, including the famous "Genesis Rock" that was named for its advanced age of 4.5 billion years, about the same time the moon is thought to have formed
  • Using an infrared spectrometer, the researchers found water embedded in the Genesis Rock
  • implies that the various landing sites of Apollo 15, 16 and 17 each had water present
  • Hui's research flies in the face of past analyses of Apollo rocks that found they were very dry, except for a small bit of water attributed to the rock containers leaking when they were returned to Earth
  • Past instruments that analyzed these samples, however, were not very sensitive
  • older spectrometers had a sensitivity of around 50 parts per million (ppm), while his instruments were able to detect water at concentrations of about 6 ppm in anorthosites and 2.7 ppm in troctolites, which are both igneous rocks found in the moon's crust.
Mars Base

Mars Science Laboratory: Curiosity Maneuver Prepares for Drilling - 0 views

mars.jpl.nasa.gov/...index.cfm

scibyte70 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 01 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • placed its drill onto a series of four locations on a Martian rock and pressed down on it with the rover's arm, in preparation for using the drill in coming days.
  • carried out this "pre-load" testing on Mars
  • (Jan. 27
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • ctions for what would result from the commanded motions.
  • next step is an overnight pre-load test, to gain assurance that the large temperature change from day to night at the rover's location does not add excessively to stress on the arm while it is pressing on the drill
  • air temperature plunges from about 32 degrees Fahrenheit (zero degrees Celsius) in the afternoon to minus 85 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 65 degrees Celsius) overnight
  • Over this temperature swing, this large rover's arm, chassis and mobility system grow and shrink by about a tenth of an inch (about 2.4 millimeters), a little more than the thickness of a U.S. quarter-dollar coin
  • Remaining preparatory steps will take at least the rest of this week
  • Some of these steps are hardware checks. Others will evaluate characteristics of the rock material at the selected drilling site on a patch of flat, veined rock called "John Klein
  • We are proceeding with caution in the approach to Curiosity's first drilling. This is challenging. It will be the first time any robot has drilled into a rock to collect a sample on Mar
  • "drill-on-rock checkout" will use the hammering action of Curiosity's drill briefly, without rotation of the drill bit, for assurance that the back-and-forth percussion mechanism and associated control system are properly tuned for hitting a rock
  • the surface of the rock while penetrating less than eight-tenths of an inch (2 centimeters).
  • "mini-drill" is designed to produce a small ring of tailings -- powder resulting from drilling
  • will not go deep enough to push rock powder into the drill's sample-gathering chamber
  • The rover team's activities this week are affected by the difference between Mars time and Earth time
  • To compensate for this, the team develops commands based on rover activities from two sols earlier
  • the mini-drill activity cannot occur sooner than two sols after the drill-on-rock checkout.
  • Martian sol lasts about 40 minutes longer than a 24-hour Earth day.
Mars Base

Opportunity rover Spied atop Martian Mountain Ridge from Orbit - Views from Above and B... - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...bit-views-from-above-and-below

scibyte121 opportunity

shared by Mars Base on 20 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • NASA’s renowned Mars rover Opportunity has been spied
  • y from above and below
  • orbital view above – just released
  • ...25 more annotations...
  • The highly detailed image was freshly taken on Feb. 14 (Valentine’s Day 2014) by the telescopic High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)
  • orbital image shows not only rover Opportunity at her location today, but
  • some of the wheel tracks created
  • as she climbed from the plains below up to near the peak of Solander Poin
  • The scene is narrowly focused on a spot barely one-quarter mile (400 meters) wide.
  • Endeavour is an impact scar created billions of years ago.
  • that infamous ‘jelly doughnut’ rock was actually the impetus for this new imaging campaign by NASA’s MRO Martian ‘Spysat.’
  • shiny 1.5 inches wide (4 centimeters)
  • , the science team decided to enlist the unparalleled capabilities of the HiRISE camera and imaging team in pursuit of answers.
  • To help solve the mystery
  • ‘Pinnacle Island’ had suddenly appeared out of nowhere in a set of before/after pictures taken by Opportunity’s cameras on Jan, 8, 2014 (Sol 3540)
  • exact same spot had been vacant of debris in photos taken barely 4 days earlier.
  • the HiRISE research team was called in to plan a new high resolution observation of the ‘Murray Ridge’ area and gather clues about the rocky riddle
  • The purpose was to “check the remote possibility that a fresh impact by an object from space might have
  • thrown this rock to its new location
  • no fresh crater impacting site was found in the new image
  • the mystery was solved at last by the rover team after Opportunity drove a short distance away from the ‘jelly doughnut’ rock
  • snapped some ‘look back’ photographs to document the ‘mysterious scene’ for further scrutiny.
  • Opportunity unknowingly ‘created’ the mystery herself when she drove over a larger rock, crushing and breaking it apart with the force from the wheels and her hefty 400 pound (185 kg) mass.
  • “Once we moved Opportunity a short distance, after inspecting Pinnacle Island, we could see directly uphill an overturned rock that has the same unusual appearance,”
  • Opportunity Deputy Principal Investigator Ray Arvidson
  • Feb 19, marks Opportunity’s 3582nd Sol or Martian Day roving Mars. She is healthy with plenty of power.
  • snapped over 188,800
  • images
  • Her total odometry stands at over 24.07 miles (38.73 kilometers) since touchdown on Jan. 24, 2004
Mars Base

Strange Mystery Spheres on Mars Baffle Scientists | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/range-photo-martian-rocks.html

scibyte63 opportunity

shared by Mars Base on 15 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • A strange picture of odd, spherical rock formations on Mars from NASA's Opportunity rover has scientists scratching their heads over what exactly they're looking at.
  • Mars photo by Opportunity shows a close-up of a rock outcrop
  • covered in blister-like bumps that mission scientists can't yet explain
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • At first
  • the formations appear similar to so-called Martian "blueberries" — iron-rich spherical formations first seen by Opportunity in 2004 — but they actually differ in several key ways, scientist said
  • This is one of the most extraordinary pictures from the whole mission
  • Kirkwood is chock full of a dense accumulation of these small spherical objects. Of course, we immediately thought of the blueberries, but this is something different
  • never have seen such a dense accumulation of spherules in a rock outcrop on Mars."
  • The new photo by Opportunity is actually a mosaic of four images taken by a microscope-like imager on its robotic arm
  • Opportunity is currently exploring a location known as Cape York along the western rim of a giant Martian crater called Endeavour
  • Despite its advanced age, Opportunity is still pumping out new discoveries after more than eight years on Mars.
  • first spotted Martian blueberries soon after its landing in 2004
  • blueberries are actually concretions created by minerals in water that settled into sedimentary rock.
  • Opportunity has seen Martian blueberries at many of its science site
  • bumpy, spherical formations on the Kirkwood rock represent something new
  • . In Opportunity's new photo, many of the strange features are broken, revealing odd concentric circles inside
  • seem to be crunchy on the outside, and softer in the middle
  • different in concentration. They are different in structure. They are different in composition. They are different in distribution
  • science team have several theories, but none that truly stand out as the best explanation
  • Kirkwood outcrop is just one science pit stop at Cape York for Opportunity. Mission scientists have already picked out another interesting rock outcrop nearby, a pale patch that may contain tantalizing clay minerals, for possibly study after Opportunity completes its current analysis.
  • spring equinox is approaching on Mars, ensuring increasing levels of sunshine for Opportunity's solar arrays
  • "Energy production levels are comparable to what they were a full Martian year ago
Mars Base

Mystery of Moon's Lost Magnetism Solved? | Magnetic Moon Rocks Caused by Lunar Dynamo |... - 0 views

www.space.com/gnetic-field-lunar-dynamo.html

moon magnetism scibyte21

shared by Mars Base on 10 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • One of the abiding mysteries of our moon is why it apparently once had a magnetic field
  • When Apollo astronauts brought back samples of moon rocks from their lunar landing missions
  • some of them shocked scientists by being magnetic.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • This can happen to rocks with the right minerals inside them, if they cool in the presence of a magnetic field
  • A magnetic field is generated by what's called a dynamo, which is caused by the fluid motion of a conducting material, such as liquid iron
  • the moon isn't large enough for convection to take place
  • In one new proposal
  • The strength of this stirring is determined by the angle between the core and the mantle
  • researchers think this happens because the moon's core and its mantle rotate around slightly different axes
  • suggest that the moon's solid-rock middle layer, called its mantle, stirs up its liquid iron core
  • because the tidal gravitational tug from the Earth causes the moon's mantle to rotate differently than the core
  • This model would explain why the moon used to have a magnetic field, but no longer does
  • researchers estimate the lunar magnetic field might have lasted for about a billion years
  • isn't the only possible solution to the moon's mystery
  • another explanation for the ancient lunar magnetic field.
  • suggests that the moon's mantle might have stirred up the liquid in its core
  • Instead of tidal interactions between the Earth and the moon, the researchers posit that impacts by large space rocks slamming into the moon have changed its rotation rate
  • would induce brief periods of especially strong stirring of the core, creating spikes of a magnetic field on the moon
  • either option may be correct, it's also possible that both mechanisms played a role in causing an ancient magnetic field on the moon
Mars Base

The Rock that Appeared Out of Nowhere on Mars - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...ppeared-out-of-nowhere-on-mars

scibyte116 opportunity

shared by Mars Base on 18 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • An intriguing recent mystery is a strange rock that suddenly appeared in photos from the Opportunity rover in a spot where photos taken just 12 sols earlier showed no rock
  • described the rock as “white around the outside, in the middle there’s low spot that is dark red.
  • haven’t driven over that spot.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • “One theory is that we somehow flicked it with a wheel,”
  • . “We had driven a meter or two away from here and somehow maybe one of the wheels managed spit it out of the ground. That’s the more likely theory.”
  • Mars Exploration Rovers, mission principal investigator Steve Squyres
  • “The other theory is that there might be a smoking hole in the ground nearby and this may be crater ejecta. But that one is less likely,”
  • Another idea suggested by others is that it may have tumbled down from a nearby rock outcrop
  • making measurements on this rock.
  • looks like a jelly donut
  • We’ve taken pictures of both the donut part and the jelly part,”
  • . “The jelly part is like nothing we’ve seen before on Mars. It’s very high in sulfur and magnesium and it has twice as much manganese as anything we’ve seen before
  • I don’t know what any of this means. We’re completely confused, everybody on the team is arguing and fighting. We’re having a wonderful time!”
Mars Base

Mystery of the Martian 'Jelly Doughnut' Rock - Solved - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...ian-jelly-doughnut-rock-solved

scibyte121 opportunity

shared by Mars Base on 17 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • It turns out that the six wheeled Opportunity unknowingly ‘created’ the mystery herself when she drove over a larger rock, crushing it with the force from the wheels and her 400 pound (185 kg) mass.
  • Fragments were sent hurtling across the summit of the north facing Solander Point
  • One piece unwittingly rolled downhill.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Pinnacle Island measures only about 1.5 inches wide (4 centimeters) with a noticeable white rim and red center
  • The Martian riddle was finally resolved when Opportunity roved a tiny stretch and took some look back photographs to document the ‘mysterious scene’ for further scrutiny
  • “Once we moved Opportunity a short distance, after inspecting Pinnacle Island, we could see directly uphill an overturned rock that has the same unusual appearance,” said Opportunity Deputy Principal Investigator
  • New pictures showed another fragment of the rock – dubbed ‘Stuart Island’ – eerily similar in appearance to the ‘Pinnacle Island’ doughnut.
Mars Base

Target on Mars Looks Good for NASA Rover Drilling - Mars Science Laboratory - 0 views

mars.jpl.nasa.gov/...index.cfm

scibyte129 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 03 May 14 - No Cached
  • NASA's Curiosity Mars rover performed a "mini-drill" operation Tuesday, April 29, on the rock target under consideration for the mission's third sample-collection drilling
  • This preparatory activity produced a hole about eight-tenths of an inch (2 centimeters) deep, as planned
  • The rover used several tools to examine the candidate site
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • wire-bristle brush -- the Dust Removal Tool -- to clear away dust from a patch on the rock
  • In the brushed spot, we can see that the rock is fine-grained, its true color is much grayer than the surface dust
  • some portions of the rock are harder than others, creating the interesting bumpy textures
  • Before Curiosity drills deeply enough for collection of rock-powder sample, plans call for a preparatory "mini-drill" operation on the target, as a further check for readiness
  • Curiosity's hammering drill collects powdered sample material from the interior of a rock, and then the rover prepares and delivers portions of the sample to laboratory instruments onboard
  • The first two Martian rocks drilled and analyzed this way were mudstone slabs neighboring each other in Yellowknife Bay, about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) northeast of the rover's current location
Mars Base

NASA - Curiosity Rover Hits Paydirt - 0 views

www.nasa.gov/...curiosity20130315.html

scibyte86 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 17 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • This week the Curiosity science team released its initial findings from its first ever drilled sample on Mars
  • Curiosity obtained her first drill sample and passed that sample on to her onboard analytical lab instruments, called CheMin and SAM
  • These powerful instruments tell us about what minerals are present in these rocks and whether they contain the ingredients necessary to sustain life as we know it.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • When we combine what we have learned from our remote sensing and contact science instruments with the data that's coming in from CheMin and SAM, we get a picture of an ancient watery environment, which would have been habitable had life been present in it.
  • the information that we're getting from the CheMin instrument, tells us that the minerals that are present in this lakebed sedimentary rock at John Klein are very different from just about anything we've ever analyzed before on Mars
  • they tell us that the John Klein rock was deposited in a fresh water environment
  • This is an important contrast with other sedimentary environments that we've visited on Mars, like the Meridiani Planum landing site where the Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, has been operating since 2004.
  • At that site, the sedimentary rocks record evidence of an environment that was only wet on a very intermittent basis, and when it was, the waters that were there were highly acidic, very salty, and not favorable for the survival of organic compounds.
  • direct contrast to the fresh water environment we're seeing here at the John Klein Site
  • The SAM instrument is telling us that these rocks contained all of the ingredients necessary for a habitable environment
  • We found carbon, sulfur and oxygen, all present and a number of other elements in states that life could have taken advantage of.
  • these few tablespoons of powder from a Martian rock have provided the Curiosity science team with an exciting new dataset
Mars Base

Opportunity Discovers Clays Favorable to Martian Biology and Sets Sail for Motherlode o... - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...il-for-motherlode-of-new-clues

scibyte95 opportunity

shared by Mars Base on 26 May 13 - No Cached
  • Opportunity,
  • has just discovered the strongest evidence to date for an environment favorable to ancient Martian biology
  • Opportunity’s analysis of a new rock target named “Esperance” confirmed that it is composed of a “clay that had been intensely altered by relatively neutral pH water – representing the most favorable conditions for biology that Opportunity has yet seen in the rock histories it has encountered
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Water that moved through fractures during this rock’s history would have provided more favorable conditions for biology than any other wet environment recorded in rocks Opportunity has seen
  • Opportunity accomplished the ground breaking new discovery by exposing the interior of Esperance with her still functioning Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) and examining a pristine patch using the microscopic camera and X-Ray spectrometer on the end of her 3 foot long robotic arm.
  • “Esperance was so important, we committed several weeks to getting this one measurement of it
  • Esperance stems from a time when the Red Planet was far warmer and wetter billions of years ago.
  • made the discovery at the conclusion of a 20 month long science expedition circling around a low ridge called “Cape York”
  • What’s so special about Esperance is that there was enough water not only for reactions that produced clay minerals, but also enough to flush out ions set loose by those reactions
  • Opportunity can clearly see the alteration
  • Esperance is unlike any rock previously investigated by Opportunity; containing far more aluminum and silica which is indicative of clay minerals and lower levels of calcium and iron.
  • Most, but not all of the rocks inspected to date by Opportunity were formed in an environment of highly acidic water
Mars Base

Billion-year-old water could hold clues to life on Earth and Mars - 0 views

phys.org/...old-clues-life-earth-mars.html

scibyte94 AncientWater

shared by Mars Base on 16 May 13 - No Cached
  • A UK-Canadian team of scientists has discovered ancient pockets of water, which have been isolated deep underground for billions of years and contain abundant chemicals known to support life
  • This water could be some of the oldest on the planet and may even contain life
  • the similarity between the rocks that trapped it and those on Mars raises the hope that comparable life-sustaining water could lie buried beneath the red planet's surface
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Researchers
  • analysed water pouring out of boreholes from a mine 2.4 kilometres beneath Ontario, Canada
  • found that the water is rich in dissolved gases like hydrogen, methane and different forms – called isotopes – of noble gases such as helium, neon, argon and xenon
  • there is as much hydrogen in the water as around hydrothermal vents in the deep ocean, many of which teem with microscopic life
  • The hydrogen and methane come from the interaction between the rock and water, as well as natural radioactive elements in the rock reacting with the water
  • These gases could provide energy for microbes that may not have been exposed to the sun for billions of years.
  • The crystalline rocks surrounding the water are thought to be around 2.7 billion years old. But no-one thought the water could be the same age, until now
  • Using ground-breaking techniques
  • researchers show that the fluid is at least 1.5 billion years old, but could be significantly older.
  • interconnected fluid system in the deep Canadian crystalline basement that is billions of years old, and capable of supporting life
  • Before this finding, the only water of this age was found trapped in tiny bubbles in rock and is incapable of supporting life
  • the water found in the Canadian mine pours from the rock at a rate of nearly two litres per minute
  • don't yet know if the underground system in Canada sustains life
Mars Base

Mars Science Laboratory: NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover Nears Turning Point - 0 views

mars.jpl.nasa.gov/...index.cfm

scibyte97 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 08 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Curiosity
  • will soon shift to a distance-driving mode headed for an area about 5 miles (8 kilometers) away, at the base of Mount Sharp
  • No additional rock drilling or soil scooping is planned in the "Glenelg" area
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • To reach Glenelg, the rover drove east about a third of a mile (500 meters) from the landing site
  • To reach the next destination, Mount Sharp, Curiosity will drive toward the southwest for many months.
  • just because our end goal is Mount Sharp doesn't mean
  • not going to investigate interesting features along the way
  • the mission has also already accomplished its main science objective. Analysis of rock powder from the first drilled rock target, "John Klein," provided evidence that an ancient environment in Gale Crater had favorable conditions for microbial life
  • The rover team chose a similar rock, "Cumberland," as the second drilling target to provide a check for the findings at John Klein
  • Scientists are analyzing laboratory-instrument results from portions of the Cumberland sample
  • One new capability being used is to drive away while still holding rock powder in Curiosity's sample-handling device to supply additional material to instruments later if desired by the science team
  • For the drill
  • at Cumberland, steps that each took a day or more at John Klein could be combined into a single day's sequence of commands
  • used the experience and lessons from our first drilling campaign, as well as new cached sample capabilities, to do the second drill
  • far more efficiently
  • In addition,
  • increased use of the rover's autonomous self-protection. This allowed more activities to be strung together before the ground team had to check in on the rover
  • The science team has chosen three targets for brief observations before Curiosity leaves the Glenelg area: the boundary between bedrock areas of mudstone and sandstone, a layered outcrop called "Shaler" and a pitted outcrop called "Point Lake."
  • Shaler might be a river deposit. Point Lake might be volcanic or sedimentary. A closer look at them could give us better understanding of how the rocks we sampled with the drill fit into the history of how the environment changed
Mars Base

Meteorites found in Calif. along path of fireball - 0 views

phys.org/...4-fireball-remnants-calif.html

scibyte44 meteor meteorite

shared by Mars Base on 26 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Meteorites found in Calif. along path of fireball
  • pieces from a meteor that was probably about the size of a minivan
  • rocks came from a meteor, believed to between 4 to 5 billion years old
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • scientists have confirmed his suspicions: it's one of the more primitive types of space rocks out there, dating to the early formation of the solar system 4 to 5 billion years ago
  • found the first piece on Tuesday along a road between a baseball field and park on the edge of Lotus near Coloma, where James W. Marshall first discovered gold in California, at Sutter's Mill in 1848.
  • Robert Ward has been hunting and collecting meteorites for more than 20 years
  • Ward, who has found meteorites in every continent but Antarctica
  • CM" - carbonaceous chondrite
  • actually has two rocks but suspects they were part of the same small meteorite that broke on impact. Each weighs about 10 grams - about the same as two nickels
  • Experts say the flaming meteor was probably about the size of a minivan when it entered the Earth's atmosphere with a loud boom and about one-third of the explosive force of the atomic bomb
  • seen from Sacramento, Calif., to Las Vegas and parts of northern Nevada.
  • event of that size might happen once a year around the world
  • most of them occur over the ocean or an uninhabited area
  • most meteors you see in the night's sky are the size of tiny stones or even grains of sand, and their trail lasts all of a second or two
  • meteor probably weighed about 154,300 pounds
  • probably released energy equivalent to a 5-kiloton explosion - the Hiroshima bomb was 15 kilotons
  • The boom, another expert said, was caused by the speed with which the space rock entered the atmosphere
  • Meteorites enter Earth's upper atmosphere at somewhere between 22,000 mph and 44,000 mph - faster than the speed of sound, thus creating a sonic boom.
  • friction between the rock and the air is so intense that "it doesn't even burn it up, it vaporizes
Mars Base

Mars-Bound NASA Rover Carries Coin for Camera Checkup - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory - 0 views

www.jpl.nasa.gov/...news.cfm

scibyte33

shared by Mars Base on 09 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Mars Base on 09 Feb 12
     
    instruments. The spacecraft, launched Nov. 26, 2011, will deliver Curiosity to a landing site inside Mars' Gale Crater in August to begin a two-year investigation of whether that area has ever offered an environment favorable for microbial life. The "hand lens" in MAHLI's name refers to field geologists' practice of carrying a hand lens for close inspection of rocks they find. When shooting photos in the field, geologists use various calibration methods. "When a geologist takes pictures of rock outcrops she is studying, she wants an object of known scale in the photographs," said MAHLI Principal Investigator Ken Edgett, of Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. "If it is a whole cliff face, she'll ask a person to stand in the shot. If it is a view from a meter or so away, she might use a rock hammer. If it is a close-up, as the MAHLI can take, she might pull something small out of her pocket. Like a penny."
Mars Base

Could Pulses in Earth's Magnetic Field Forecast Earthquakes? | Science/AAAS | News - 0 views

news.sciencemag.org/...tic-field-forecast-earthquakes

scibyte134 earthquakes

shared by Mars Base on 07 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • In the days leading up to some recent moderate-sized earthquakes, instruments nearby have picked up brief low-frequency pulses in Earth’s magnetic field
  • A few scientists have proposed that such pulses, which seemed to become stronger and more frequent just before the earthquakes occurred, could serve as an early warning sign for impending seismic activity
  • Now, a team has come up with a model for how these magnetic pulses might be generated, though some critics say they may have a humanmade origin.
  • ...32 more annotations...
  • Brief fluctuations in Earth’s magnetic field have been detected before many earthquakes in the past 50 years
  • Friedemann Freund, a crystallographer at San Jose State University
  • in the weeks before a magnitude-5.4 quake struck about 15 kilometers northeast of San Jose in October 2007, an instrument near the epicenter sensed a number of unusual magnetic pulses
  • Those blips became more frequent as the day of the earthquake approached, Freund says
  • recently, prior to several medium- to moderate-sized quakes in Peru, two sensitive magnetometers recorded the same sort of pulses
  • how such pulses could be generated
  • suggest that these blips stem from microscopic changes in crystals in rocks under seismic stress deep within Earth
  • In many types of rocks, particularly volcanic rocks that have substantial amounts of water locked inside them, crystals are chock-full of oxygen-oxygen bonds called peroxy bonds
  • (These bonds formed long ago, after chemical changes split some of the water molecules, freeing the hydrogen atoms to bond together and then diffuse out of the rocks as gas.)
  • When those rocks are squeezed, say, by the sides of a fault zone scraping past one another, some of the peroxy bonds break
  • Those broken bonds release negatively charged electrons, which remain trapped in place, and create positively charged “holes” in the crystal
  • his team propose that the same process might be happening within Earth’s crust
  • As stress on large volumes of rock builds in advance of an impending quake, many, many of these electrical holes are created inside them
  • the mass migration of such holes that creates the large electrical currents responsible for generating the low-frequency magnetic pulses that make their way to detectors on Earth’s surface
  • they say
  • some critics of his model have proposed
  • lightning
  • as an alternative explanation
  • he notes, with data from the two sensors in Peru he and his colleagues were able to pinpoint the strongest of those pulses as originating within a few kilometers of the epicenters of subsequent quakes
  • For now, Freund admits, the team’s model is preliminary: The paper has been submitted to a journal and is now being reviewed by other scientists.
  • two instruments aren’t sufficient to pinpoint the location of an event; to truly “triangulate” an event you need at least three sensors
  • “I’m concerned that the pulses are not originating deep within the Earth.”
  • “This paper only makes sense if the observations [of magnetic pulses] are good,”
  • John Ebel, a seismologist at Boston College, who wasn’t involved in the research
  • the blips may have some inexplicable humanmade origin
  • Decades ago
  • his Boston-based magnetometers started picking up a series of odd pulses every morning.
  • Eventually
  • identified
  • It was the engineers cranking up Boston’s trolley cars at a rail yard a few kilometers away from the instruments
  • Even if the magnetic pulses originate within Earth along seismic zones under stress, Freund says, the blips don’t always foretell a quake
  • It’s more likely to be the pattern of pulses—and, in particular, changes in their size and frequency—that Freund and his colleagues say might offer scientists a crystal ball for impending temblors
Mars Base

Mars Science Laboratory: Curiosity Rover Preparing for Thanksgiving Activities - 0 views

mars.jpl.nasa.gov/...index.cfm

scibyte72 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 21 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • drove for the first time after spending several weeks in soil-scooping activities at one location
  • On Friday, Nov. 16, the rover drove 6.2 feet (1.9 meters) to get within arm's reach of a rock called "Rocknest 3."
  • touched that rock with the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) on its arm, and took two 10-minute APXS readings of data about the chemical elements in the rock
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Then Curiosity stowed its arm and drove 83 feet (25.3 meters) eastward toward a target called "Point Lake
  • this is
  • first 'touch-and-go' on the same day
  • good sign that the rover team is getting comfortable with more complex operational planning
  • During a Thanksgiving break, the team will use Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam) from Point Lake to examine possible routes and targets to the east
  • priority is to choose a rock for the first use of the rover's hammering drill, which will collect samples of powder from rock interiors
  • the sample-handling mechanism on the rover's arm is still holding some soil from the fifth and final scoop collected at Rocknest
  • so it can be available for analysis by instruments within the rover if scientists choose that option in coming days.
Mars Base

NASA - Curiosity Rover Gives Mars the Brush-Off - 0 views

www.nasa.gov/...curiosity20130110.html

scibyte77

shared by Mars Base on 15 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • the team downloaded as much data as possible from Curiosity to free up the onboard data storage space to give her a fresh start to the New Year.
  • started off with a small 3-meter drive to an interesting feature called Snake River.
  • Over time, dust accumulated on all the rocks and it hides features, such as fissures, inclusions or pits that are of interest.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The tool has a set of spinning metallic brushes and this allows for the features to be exposed for unobstructed APXS or ChemCam observations
  • he team selected a rock for the first time use of the dust removal tool.
  • the team is searching for a suitable rock to test out the rotary-percussive drill.
  • it will be the first time that we will be drilling into a rock, acquire sample from deep within the rock, and also sort and transport it to the science instruments on board Curiosit
Mars Base

Curiosity Demonstrates New Capability to Scan 360 Degrees for Life Giving Water - and i... - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...giving-water-and-is-widespread

scibyte87 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 19 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • The science team guiding NASA’s Curiosity Mars Science Lab (MSL) rover have demonstrated a new capability that significantly enhances the robots capability to scan her surroundings for signs of life giving water
  • from a distance
  • the rover appears to have found that evidence for water at the Gale Crater landing site is also more widespread than prior indications.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Mastcam cameras
  • can now also be used as a mineral-detecting and hydration-detecting tool to search 360 degrees around every spot she explores for the ingredients required for habitability and precursors to life
  • Some iron-bearing rocks and minerals can be detected and mapped using the Mastcam’s near-infrared filters
  • scientists used the filter wheels on the Mastcam cameras to run an experiment by taking measurements in different wavelength’s
  • a rock target called ‘Knorr’ in the Yellowknife Bay area were Curiosity is now exploring
  • Researchers found that near-infrared wavelengths on Mastcam can be used as a new analytical technique to detect the presence of some but not all types of hydrated minerals
  • The first use of the Mastcam 34 mm camera to find water was at the rock target called “Knorr.”
  • see elevated hydration signals in the narrow veins that cut many of the rocks in this area
  • These bright veins contain hydrated minerals that are different from the clay minerals in the surrounding rock matrix
  • Mastcam thus serves as an early detective for water without having to drive up to every spot of interest, saving precious time and effort
  • But Mastcam has some limits
  • It is not sensitive to the hydrated phyllosilicates found in the drilling sample at John Klein
  • Mastcam can use the hydration mapping technique to look for targets related to water that correspond to hydrated minerals
  • Yellowknife Bay basin possesses a significant amount of phyllosilicate clay minerals; indicating an environment where Martian microbes could once have thrived in the distant past.
Mars Base

Mars Science Laboratory: NASA Curiosity Rover Team Selects Second Drilling Target On Mars - 0 views

mars.jpl.nasa.gov/...index.cfm

scibyte94 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 10 May 13 - No Cached
  • The team operating NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has selected a second target rock for drilling and sampling. The rover will set course to the drilling location in coming days.
  • "Cumberland," lies about nine feet (2.75 meters) west of the rock where Curiosity's drill first touched Martian stone in February
  • Both rocks are flat, with pale veins and a bumpy surface. They are embedded in a layer of rock on the floor of a shallow depression called "Yellowknife Bay.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • This second drilling is intended to confirm results from the first drilling, which indicated the chemistry of the first powdered sample from John Klein was much less oxidizing than that of a soil sample the rover scooped up before it began drilling.
  • Cumberland and John Klein are very similar, Cumberland appears to have more of the erosion-resistant granules that cause the surface bumps
  • concretions, or clumps of minerals, which formed when water soaked the rock long ago
  • Mission engineers
  • recently finished upgrading Curiosity's operating software following a four-week break
  • rover continued monitoring the Martian atmosphere during the break, but the team did not send any new commands
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