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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

Could the Next Planetary Rover Come from Canada? - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...anetary-rover-come-from-canada

scibyte70 rover

shared by Mars Base on 29 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Canadian Space Agency is well known for its robotics but they’ve recently expanded from robotic arms to building prototypes for five new rovers, designed for future lunar and Mars missions
  • range from microrovers to full-sized science missions and range in size from 30 kg up to 900 kg.
  • the Lunar Exploration Light Rover, is designed to carry a scientific payload and can be fitted with a robotic arm. It has a range of 15 km, can be operated remotely, or can be used to carry astronauts across a planetary surface.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • two Micro-Rover prototypes, at 40 kg and 30 kg., are designed to be operated in conjunction with larger rovers, and can be tethered to them and lowered into otherwise inaccessible areas.
  • On the Moon, permanently shadowed craters provide many interesting areas to find water and other volatiles
  • craters have steep slopes making it difficult and risky for a large rover
  • sending a micro-rover tethered to its mother one gives us the ability to explore the bottom of these craters with a minimum risk.
  • they are very slow so it is more efficient to have them on a larger rover to cover long distance and deploy them when needed.
  • The micro-rovers can also be used to work alongside astronauts, to gain access to small spaces like caves
  • e rovers should be mission-ready by about 2020, and NASA is already interested.
  • designs are intended to fit in with those types of activities.
  • NASA has an experiment under consideration that entails digging up soil on the Moon and making hydrogen and oxygen out of it
  • Canadarm was a fixture on the Space Shuttles and made it possible to do things like deploying satellites like the Hubble Space Telescope
  • instrumental in building the International Space Station
  • CSA also built the huge Canadarm 2 and Dextre, the highly dexterous dual-armed robot, both of which reside on the International Space Station
  • CSA contributed a robotic arm and other equipment to Curiosity
  • e CSA doesn’t anticipate any other rover designs, these 5 prototypes could be focused “on more specific applications such as in-situ resource utilization or science,
Mars Base

Contest Challenges Students to Design Next Mars Rover | University Rover Challenge | Sp... - 0 views

www.space.com/niversity-rover-challenge.html

scibyte96 MarsSociety

shared by Mars Base on 28 May 13 - No Cached
  • The competition is hosted by the Mars Society, a non-profit research organization dedicated to promoting the exploration and eventual settlement of Mars
  • The competition site is located at the society's Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS), a rocky barren landscape that's about as close to Martian terrain as you can get on Earth
  • Each team was allowed to spend up to $15,000 on their rovers, which can weigh no more than 50 kilograms — about 110 lbs.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • vehicles
  • compete in four challenges, designed to replicate the activities of NASA's rovers on Mars.
  • teams will guide their rovers to collect the subsurface soil samples most likely to contain photosynthetic bacteria, lichen and other bits of living material
  • specific tasks change each year, but the most difficult ones continue to be those that need rovers to do humanlike work
  • team members must guide their rovers via a remote connection, such as a computer in the back of a truck, as long as it's shielded so the team can't see their rovers
  • The URC is based on the assumption that the rovers are telerobots, which means they would be operated by astronauts on or orbiting Mars
  • In addition to collecting soil, the rovers will deliver a series of packages, such as emergency supplies to "astronauts" (URC staff) in the field, fix a dust-covered solar panel (without water, of course) and finally, navigate an obstacle course that will include climbing steep grades, getting over boulders and passing through PVC pipe gates, aimed to test each rover's maneuverability.
  • This year's teams represent universities and colleges in Canada, India, Poland and the United States
  • including two-time returning champions Toronto's York University (2012 and 2009) and Oregon State (2010 and 2008).
Mars Base

Opportunity rover rolling again after fifth Mars winter - 0 views

phys.org/...rtunity-rover-mars-winter.html

scibyte46 mars opportunity rover

shared by Mars Base on 10 May 12 - No Cached
  • NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity drove about 12 feet (3.67 meters) on May 8, 2012, after spending 19 weeks working in one place while solar power was too low for driving during the Martian winter.
  • While at Greeley Haven for the past 19 weeks, Opportunity used the spectrometers and microscopic imager on its robotic arm to inspect more than a dozen targets within reach on the outcrop
  • Radio Doppler signals from the stationary rover during the winter months served an investigation of the interior of Mars by providing precise information about the planet's rotation
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Opportunity will look back with its panoramic camera to acquire multi-filter imaging of the surface targets it studied on Greeley Haven.
  • rover team will also check that the power supply still looks sufficient with the rover at a reduced tilt.
  • first drive since Dec. 26, 2011, took the rover about 12 feet (3.67 meters) northwest and downhill on Tuesday, May 8.
  • exploring the Meridiani region of Mars since landing in January 2004
  • arrived at the Cape York section of the rim of Endeavour Crater in August 2011
  • studying rock and soil targets on Cape York since then.
  • next goal is a few meters farther north on Cape York, at a bright-looking patch of what may be dust
  • haven't been able to see much dust in Meridiani
  • Endeavour Crater offers Opportunity a setting for plenty of productive
  • crater is 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter
  • Unless wind removes some dust from Opportunity's solar array, allowing more sunlight to reach the solar cells, the rover will need to work during the next few weeks at locations with no southward slope
  • kept a northward tilt of about 15 degrees in recent months at its winter haven
  • favorably angled toward the winter sun low in the northern sky
Mars Base

Video Transcript: Curiosity's Cameras - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory - 0 views

www.jpl.nasa.gov/...video-transcript.php

scibyte98 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 18 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • received a lot of questions about the cameras on the rovers and we're here to answer some of those questions
  • The Curiosity rover actually has 17 cameras on it, which is the most of any NASA planetary mission ever.
  • took pictures as the rover was landing on Mars
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • MARDI, or the Mars Descent Imager,
  • is the camera mounted on the end of the arm, and that takes close-up, high-resolution color photos
  • MAHLI
  • hazard avoidance cameras, or the HazCams. There are four of these in the front and four in the back, and they're used to take pictures of the terrain near the wheels and nearby the rover
  • Navigation Cameras, which take pictures that are used to drive the rover
  • Mast Cameras, which are color imagers, which are used to do geology investigations
  • the remote microscopic imager, which is part of the ChemCam laser instrument. And that's used to document the laser spots, that the rover makes on the surface
  • Many of the black and white images that come back from the rover are
  • black and white, or gray scale as we call it, is because that's all the rover really needs in order to detect rocks and other obstacles
  • Other cameras are color, such as the Mastcam imager, and the reason that they're color is because the scientists use the color information to learn about the soil and the rocks
  • There are 1-megapixel black and white imagers for the engineering cameras and 2-megapixel color imagers for the science cameras
  • In addition to the video that we took when the rover descending on to the surface, we've taken movies of the soil being shaken in the scoop.
  • files are pretty large and because we have a limited downlink each day, the scientists prefer to take still images of new targets
Mars Base

China's Yutu Moon Rover Unable to Properly Maneuver Solar Panels - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...properly-maneuver-solar-panels

scibyte122 scibyte123 ChineseSpaceProgram-Yutu

shared by Mars Base on 04 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • The serious technical malfunction
  • of China’s Yutu moon rover
  • has been identified as an inability to properly maneuver the life giving solar panels
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • “Yutu suffered a control circuit malfunction in its driving unit,” according to a newly published report on March 1 by the state owned Xinhua news agency.
  • prevented Yutu from entering the second dormancy as planned
  • A functioning control circuit is required to lower the rovers mast
  • They must be folded down into a warmed electronics box to shield them from the damaging effects of the Moon’s nightfall when temperatures plunge dramatically to below minus 180 Celsius, or minus 292 degrees Fahrenheit.
  • The panel driving unit also helps maneuver the panels into position to efficiently point to the sun to maximize the electrical output
  • Chinese space engineers engaged in troubleshooting to try and identify and rectify the technical problems in a race against time to find a solution before the start of Lunar Night 3.
  • The 140 kilogram rover was unable to move during Lunar Day 3 due to the mechanical glitches.
  • “Yutu only carried out fixed point observations during its third lunar day
  • it did complete some limited scientific observations. And fortunately the ground penetrating radar, panoramic and infrared imaging equipment all functioned normally.
  • Yutu and the companion Chang’e-3 lander have again gone into sleep mode during Lunar Night 3 on Feb. 22 and Feb 23 respectively, local Beijing time.
  • the issue with the control circuit malfunction in its driving unit remains unresolved and a still threatens the outlook for Yutu’s future exploration.
  • Yutu is now nearing its planned 3 month long life expectancy
Mars Base

collectSPACE - news - "NASA's Curiosity rover flying to Mars with Obama's, others' auto... - 0 views

www.collectspace.com/...news-112611a.html

Curiosity scibyte23

shared by Mars Base on 28 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • on the rover's deck
  • is a plaque inscribed with the signatures of President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, in addition to other administration and NASA leaders
  • continues a more than 40-year tradition of sending presidential plaques on planetary missions
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Elsewhere on the rover is the autograph of the 14-year-old girl from Kansas who gave Curiosity its name
  • millions of digital signatures from members of the public who signed up through NASA
  • NASA's Mars program leaders round out the autographs on the plate
  • It's on the rover in the front left corner
  • it will be visible and that at some point will be photographed on Mars by Curiosity's camera-topped mast
  • "When we made the request to the White House for permission to launch, we took this along with us and said, 'Oh by the way, if you sign this we will stick it on the rover.'"
  • Clara Ma, who won NASA's naming contest with the suggestion of "Curiosity," signed the rover in 2009
  • As part of her prize, she was invited to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, where in June 2009 she donned a "bunny suit" to step into a clean room and sign her name on the rover
  • Silicon chips attached to Curiosity's deck bear the digital signatures of people who submitted their names through NASA's website for going to Mars aboard the rover. Each chip is about the size of a dime
  • More than 1.24 million names were submitted online
  • etched into silicon using an electron-beam machine used for fabricating micro-devices at JPL
  • more than 20,000 visitors to locations of work on the rover at JPL and Kennedy Space Center wrote their names on pages, which were scanned and reproduced at microscopic scale on another chip
  • As Curiosity drives over the martian terrain, the groves in each wheel will form a string of 'dash' and 'dot' imprints — morse code that will spell out "J-P-L."
Mars Base

Mars Rover Opportunity Exploring Possibly Habitable Ancient Environment | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/ortunity-endeavour-crater.html

scibyte74 opportunity

shared by Mars Base on 05 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Opportunity rover,
  • is currenlty studying clay deposits on the rim of the Red Planet's Endeavour Crater.
  • clays imply that the area was exposed to relatively neutral — as opposed to harshly acidic or basic — water long ago,
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • clearly show us a chemistry that would've been suitable for life at the Opportunity site
  • Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft spotted them from orbit, leading the rover team to point the golf-cart-size robot toward its current location, which is known as Matijevic Hill.
  • From orbit, we have seen the unambiguous infrared spectral signature of clays along the rim of Endeavour Crater
  • Opportunity has already circumnavigated Matijevic Hill
  • ikely stay at Matijevic Hill for a while, trying to understand how the clays were laid down billions of years ago
  • Opportunity is still going strong. It has some age-related issues, such as an arthritic arm, but the rover remains in good health
  • Part of the work will involve investigating mysterious tiny spherules Opportunity has discovered embedded in the clay matrix
  • initially thought the BB-size gray spheres were similar to the iron-rich "blueberries"
  • initial analyses have shown that's not the case, leading Squyres to dub them "newberries."
  • The team isn't sure exactly what the newberries are, or how they formed
Mars Base

10 Amazing Things NASA's Huge Mars Rover Can Do | NASA, Mars Science Laboratory & Curio... - 0 views

www.space.com/s-rover-curiosity-science.html

scibyte22 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 20 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Mast Camera (MastCam)
  • capture high-resolution color pictures and video of the Martian landscape, which scientists will study and laypeople will gawk at
  • Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI)
  • ...43 more annotations...
  • will function much like a high-powered magnifying glass
  • instrument will take color pictures of features as tiny as 12.5 microns — smaller than the width of a human hair
  • MAHLI sits on the end of Curiosity's five-jointed, 7-foot (2.1-meter) robotic arm
  • Mars Descent Imager (MARDI)
  • small camera located on Curiosity's main body, will record video of the rover's descent to the Martian surface
  • will click on a mile or two above the ground, as soon as Curiosity jettisons its heat shield. The instrument will then take video at five frames per second until the rover touches down. The footage will help the MSL team plan Curiosity's Red Planet rovings, and it should also provide information about the geological context of the landing site, the 100-mile-wide
  • Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM)
  • makes up about half of the rover's science payload.
  • a suite of three separate instruments — a mass spectrometer, a gas chromatograph and a laser spectrometer
  • will search for carbon-containing compounds, the building blocks of life as we know it
  • look for other elements associated with life on Earth, such as hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen
  • The rover's robotic arm will drop samples into SAM via an inlet on the rover's exterior
  • Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin)
  • CheMin will identify different types of minerals on Mars and quantify their abundance
  • will help scientists better understand past environmental conditions on the Red Planet
  • CheMin has an inlet on Curiosity's exterior to accept samples delivered by the rover's robotic arm
  • will shine a fine X-ray beam through the sample, identifying minerals' crystalline structures based on how the X-rays diffract
  • Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam)
  • This instrument will fire a laser at Martian rocks from up to 30 feet (9 meters) away and analyze the composition of the vaporized bits
  • help the mission team determine from afar whether or not they want to send the rover over to investigate a particular landform
  • The laser sits on Curiosity's mast, along with a camera and a small telescope
  • Three spectrographs sit in the rover's body, connected to the mast components by fiber optics
  • spectrographs will analyze the light emitted by excited electrons in the vaporized rock samples
  • Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS)
  • sits at the end of Curiosity's arm, will measure the abundances of various chemical elements in Martian rocks and dirt
  • APXS will shoot out X-rays and helium nuclei. This barrage will knock electrons in the sample out of their orbits, causing a release of X-rays. Scientists will be able to identify elements based on the characteristic energies of these emitted X-rays
  • Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN)
  • located near the back of Curiosity's main body, will help the rover search for ice and water-logged minerals beneath the Martian surface
  • The instrument will fire beams of neutrons at the ground, then note the speed at which these particles travel when they bounce back. Hydrogen atoms tend to slow neutrons down, so an abundance of sluggish neutrons would signal underground water or ice
  • should be able to map out water concentrations as low as 0.1 percent at depths up to 6 feet (2 m).
  • Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD)
  • instrument will measure and identify high-energy radiation of all types on the Red Planet, from fast-moving protons to gamma rays
  • designed specifically to help prepare for future human exploration of Mars
  • will allow scientists to determine just how much radiation an astronaut would be exposed to on Mars
  • Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS)
  • partway up Curiosity's mast, is a Martian weather station
  • measure atmospheric pressure, humidity, wind speed and direction, air temperature, ground temperature and ultraviolet radiation.
  • integrated into daily and seasonal reports
  • MSL Entry, Descent and Landing Instrumentation (MEDLI)
  • MEDLI isn't one of Curiosity's 10 instruments
  • will measure the temperatures and pressures the heat shield experiences as the MSL spacecraft streaks through the Martian sky
  • will tell engineers how well the heat shield, and their models of the spacecraft's trajectory, performed
  • data to improve designs for future Mars-bound spacecraft
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

Chinese rover & lander beam back Portraits with China's Flag shining on Moon's Surface - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...-flag-shining-on-moons-surface

scibyte113 ChineseSpaceProgram

shared by Mars Base on 16 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Dec 15
  • Chang’e-3 lunar lander and rover beamed back portraits of one another snapped from the Moon’s surface
  • displayed
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • Chinese national flag
  • After rolling all six wheels into the dirt, Yutu
  • drove to a location about nine meters north of the lander, according to CCTV commentators
  • then turned around so that the red Chinese flag emblazoned on the front side would be facing the lander’s high resolution color cameras for the eagerly awaited portraits of one another
  • Yutu is nearly the size of a golf cart. It measures about 1.5 m x 1 m on its sides and stands about 1.5 m (nearly 5 feet) tall
  • Yutu will depart the landing site
  • and begin its own lunar trek that’s expected to last at least 3 months. Remove this ad
  • equipped with eight science instruments including multiple cameras, spectrometers, an optical telescope, ground penetrating radar and other sensors to investigate the lunar surface and composition
  • The radar instrument installed at the bottom of the rover can penetrate 100 meters deep below the surface to study the Moon’s structure and composition in unprecedented detail, according to
  • senior advisor of China’s lunar probe project,
  • A UV camera will study the earth and its interaction with solar wind and a telescope will study celestial objects
  • will also investigate the moon’s natural resources for use by potential future Chinese astronauts
  • Most of the science instruments are working including at least three cameras and the ground penetrating radar
  • the extremely cold lunar night and temperature fluctuations of more than 300 degrees Celsius – a great engineering challenge.
  • The rover will hibernate during the two week long lunar night
  • A radioisotopic heater will provide heat to safeguard the rovers computer and electronics
Mars Base

NASA aims to send another rover to Mars in 2020 - 0 views

phys.org/...2-12-nasa-aims-rover-mars.html

scibyte74 mars

shared by Mars Base on 05 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • announced plans to launch another mega-rover to the red planet in 2020 that will be modeled after
  • Curiosity
  • To keep costs down, engineers will borrow Curiosity's blueprints, recycle spare parts where possible and use proven technology including the novel landing gear
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • comes as NASA reboots its Mars exploration program during tough fiscal times
  • many other details still need to be worked out, including where the rover will land and the types of tools it will carry to the surface
  • the science goals remain fuzzy
  • at the very least should kickstart a campaign to return Martian soil and rocks to Earth
  • a team of experts will debate whether the new rover should have the ability to drill into rocks and store pieces for a future pickup
  • under orders by the White House to send astronauts to circle Mars in the 2030s followed by a landing
  • Curiosity
  • ran over schedule and over budget
  • the engineering hurdles have been fixed and he expected the new rover to cost less than Curiosity
  • One independent estimate put the mission at $1.5 billion, though NASA is working on its own figure
  • Next year, NASA plans to launch an orbiter to study the atmosphere
  • After NASA pulled out of a partnership with the Europeans in 2016 and 2018, it announced plans to fly a relatively low-cost robotic lander in 2016 to probe the interior
  • since said it will contribute to the European missions, but in a minor role
Mars Base

Curiosity Rover Report (Dec. 7, 2012): Rover Results at Rocknest - YouTube - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

scibyte75 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 16 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Mars Base on 16 Dec 12
     
    Curiosity Rover Report (Dec. 7, 2012): Rover Results at Rocknest
Mars Base

NASA's Opportunity Rover Begins Year 10 on Mars | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/over-opportunity-year-ten.html

scibyte79 opportunity

shared by Mars Base on 24 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • NASA's Opportunity rover landed on Mars the night of Jan. 24, 2004 PST (just after midnight EST on Jan. 25), three weeks after its twin, Spirit, touched down
  • irit stopped operating in 2010, but Opportunity is still going strong
  • The car-size Curiosity weighs about 1 ton — five times more than either Spirit or Opportunity.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Spirit and Opportunity were originally supposed to spend three months searching for evidence of past water activity on the Red Planet
  • The golf-cart-size robots found plenty of such signs at their separate landing sites, showing that Mars was not always the cold and arid planet we know today
  • in 2007 Spirit uncovered an ancient hydrothermal system in Gusev Crater, suggesting that two key ingredients for life as we know it — liquid water and an energy source — were both present in some parts of Mars long ago
  • Opportunity is currently inspecting clay deposits along the rim of Mars' huge Endeavour Crater. Clays form in relatively neutral (as opposed to acidic or basic) water, so the area may once have been capable of supporting primitive microbial life
  • Spirit finally stopped communicating with Earth in March 2010, after getting mired in soft sand and failing to maneuver into a position that would allow it to slant its solar panels toward the sun over the 2009-2010 Martian winter. NASA declared the rover dead in 2011
  • Opportunity keeps chugging along. It has put 22.03 miles (35.46 kilometers) on its odometer since landing on Mars
  • just 1 mile (1.6 km) off the all-time record for most ground covered on the surface of another world
  • Soviet Union's unmanned Lunokhod 2 rover holds that mark, traveling 23 miles (37 km) on the moon back in 1973
Mars Base

Mars Science Laboratory: Curiosity Mars Rover Checking Possible Smoother Route - 0 views

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

scibyte118 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 01 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • The team operating NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is considering a path across a small sand dune to reach a favorable route to science destinations
  • A favorable route would skirt some terrain with sharp rocks considered more likely to poke holes in the rover's aluminum wheels
  • Accumulation of punctures and rips in the wheels accelerated in the fourth quarter of 2013
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • the team now drives the rover with added precautions, thoroughly checks the condition of Curiosity's wheels frequently, and is evaluating routes and driving methods that could avoid some wheel damage
  • A dune about 3 feet (1 meter) high spans the gap between two scarps that might be a gateway to a southwestward route over relatively smooth ground
  • The team is using images from the rover to assess whether to cross the dune
  • Other routes have also been evaluated for getting Curiosity from the rover's current location to a candidate drilling site
  • That site lies about half a mile (800 meters) away by straight line, but considerably farther by any of the driving routes assessed
  • This area is appealing because we can see terrain units unlike any that Curiosity has visited so far.
  • To prepare for destinations farther ahead, engineers are using a test rover at JPL to check the rover's ability to tolerate slight slippage on slopes while using its drill
  • With the drill bit in a rock, tests simulating slips of up to about 2 inches (5 centimeters) have not caused damage
  • Other testing at JPL is evaluating possible driving techniques that might help reduce the rate of wheel punctures, such as driving backwards or using four-wheel drive instead of six-wheel drive.
  • Some of the wheel damage may result from the force of rear wheels pushing middle or front wheels against sharp rocks, rather than simply the weight of the rover driving over the rocks
  • rolling your wheeled luggage over a curb, you can feel the difference between trying to push it over the curb or pull it over the curb
Mars Base

UHF-Satcom.com - Chang'e 3 & Yutu reception - 0 views

www.uhf-satcom.com/...chang-e-3

scibyte120 ChineseSpaceProgram ChineseSpaceProgram-Yutu

shared by Mars Base on 15 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • 10th February 2014
  • some nice signals are detected from the Lunar Lander but nothing from the Lunar Rover - several news outlets report that the Rover has had a failure after its Lunar sleep, and that it was not expected to become alive again
  • t doesn't hurt to monitor the downlink now and then.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • it was thought possible to hear any command uplink signals
  • 12th February 2014
  • Again, searching the various downlink frequencies for signs of life from the 'dead' Lunar Lander
  • nothing was heard
  • indicating that a communications session with the Lunar Lander was not progressing
  • Tuning to
  • did however reveal another huge signal, this time an uplink to the Lunar Rover - China was attempting to talk it back into life
  • immediately the dual band converter was switched
  • was checked where to everyone's surprise, the Lunar Rover was in full chat mode, the Rover had survived and was not dead after all
  • 13th February 2014 - The second night of Yutu's rebirth - would there be signals again?
  • 13th February 2014
  • ere was a lot chatter on the @UHF_Satcom Twitter feed about the discovery of signals from the Yutu rover
Mars Base

Curiosity Crosses Dingo Gap Dune - Gateway to Valley and Mountain Destinations Beyond - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...d-mountain-destinations-beyond

scibyte119 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 08 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • the rover passed over the Red Planet dune without difficulty
  • They also show some interesting veins and mineral fractures are visible in the vicinity just ahead
  • The Martian dune lies between two low scarps sitting at the north and south ends.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • The rover successfully traversed the dune in Dingo Gap
  • Before giving the go ahead to move forward, engineers took a few days to carefully assess the dune’s integrity and physical characteristics
  • the rovers science instruments and cameras to insure there wasn’t the potential to get irretrievably stuck in a deep sand trap.
  • The missions science focus has shifted to “search for that subset of habitable environments which also preserves organic carbon,” says Curiosity Principal Investigator John Grotzinger
  • Up close view of hole in one of rover Curiosity’s six wheels caused by recent driving over rough Martian rocks.
  • Mosaic assembled from Mastcam raw images taken on Dec. 22, 2013 (Sol 490).
  • Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS/Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo
  • The team even commanded Curiosity to carry out a toe dip by gently rolling the 20 inch (50 cm) diameter wheels back and forth over the crest on Tuesday, Feb. 4 to insure it was safe to mount
Mars Base

Earth Bids China's Yutu Moon Rover Farewell Forever! - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...tu-moon-rover-farewell-forever

scibyte120 ChineseSpaceProgram

shared by Mars Base on 12 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • The apparently unfortunate and sad breaking news was just reported today in an ultra brief dispatch by the English language version of Chinadaily – with the headline “Loss of lunar rover.”
  • thought that Yutu froze to death due to a pre-hibernation mechanical malfunction and failed to wake up and communicate with China’s mission controllers
  • Beijing on Monday, Feb. 10, when daylight returned to the rovers Moon landing site at Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains) at the start of what would have been Lunar Day 3 for the mission.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The cause of the pre-hibernation malfunction may perhaps be traced back to a buildup of abrasive lunar dust, but no one knows at this time.
Mars Base

Mars Science Laboratory: Curiosity Resumes Science After Analysis of Voltage Issue - 0 views

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

scibyte110 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 26 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Activities over the weekend included use of Curiosity's robotic arm to deliver portions of powdered rock to a laboratory inside the rover
  • The powder has been stored in the arm since the rover collected it by drilling into the target rock "Cumberland" six months ago
  • Several portions of the powder have already been analyzed. The laboratory has flexibility for examining duplicate samples in different ways
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • The decision to resume science activities resulted from the success of work to diagnose the likely root cause of a Nov. 17 change in voltage
  • made a list of potential causes, and then determined which we could cross off the list, one by one
  • Science operations were suspended for six days while this analysis took priority
  • The likely cause is an internal short in Curiosity's power source, the Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator
  • this short does not affect operation of the power source or the rover
  • Similar generators on other spacecraft, including NASA's Cassini at Saturn, have experienced shorts with no loss of capability
  • Testing of another Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator over many years found no loss of capability in the presence of these types of internal shorts
  • early Nov. 23
  • that the rover had returned to its pre-Nov. 17 voltage level. This reversal is consistent with their diagnosis of an internal short in the generator on Nov. 17, and the voltage could change again
  • analysis work to determine the cause of the voltage change gained an advantage from an automated response by the rover's onboard software when it detected the voltage change
  • The rover stepped up the rate at which it recorded electrical variables, to eight times per second from the usual once per minute, and transmitted that engineering data in its next communication with Earth
  • In subsequent days, the rover performed diagnostic activities commanded by the team, such as powering on some backup hardware to rule out the possibility of short circuits in certain sensors
Mars Base

Spectacular Liftoff Thrusts China's First Rover 'Yutu' to the Moon - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...s-first-rover-yutu-to-the-moon

scibyte111 ChineseSpaceProgram

shared by Mars Base on 02 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • China successfully launched its first ever lunar rover bound for the Moon’s surface aboard a Long March rocket
  • at 1:30 a.m. Beijing local time, Dec. 2, 2013 (12:30 p.m. EST, Dec. 1) from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China.
  • The name for the ‘Yutu’ rover – which translates as ‘Jack Rabbit’ – was chosen after a special naming contest involving a worldwide poll and voting to select the best name
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • ‘Yutu’ stems from a Chinese fairy tale, in which the goddess Chang’e flew off to the moon taking her little pet Jade rabbit with her.
  • The Chang’e 3 lander will fire thrusters to enter lunar orbit on Dec. 6.
  • It is due to make a powered descent to the lunar surface on Dec. 14, firing thrusters at an altitude of 15 km (9 mi) for touchdown in a preselected area called the Bay of Rainbows or Sinus Iridum region.
  • If successful, the Chang’e 3 mission will mark the first soft landing on the Moon since the Soviet Union’s unmanned Luna 24 sample return vehicle landed nearly four decades ago back in 1976.
  • Jack Rabbit measures 150 centimeters high and weighs approximately 120 kilograms
  • The rover and lander are equipped with multiple cameras, spectrometers, an optical telescope, radar and other sensors to investigate the lunar surface and composition
  • The rover is expected to continue operating for at least three months
  • The next step will be an unmanned lunar sample return mission, perhaps around 2020
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