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Mars Base

Phobos-Grunt's Mysterious Thruster Activation: A Function of Safe Mode or Just Good Luck? - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...of-safe-mode-or-just-good-luck

scibyte22 Phobos-Grunt

shared by Mars Base on 17 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Phobos-Grunt probe is still stuck in orbit
  • periodically the spacecraft experiences a mysterious slight boost in its orbit
  • The activation of the spacecraft’s thrusters – the small engines that are designed to steer the craft and make small adjustments  – was an obvious answer.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • the probe “Corrects her orbit” every now and then.
  • Does this mean that the probe knows where she is? Probably not.
  • If Grunt’s safe mode includes a program that fires thrusters every so often to keep the craft from entering the atmosphere in the event of a malfunction just after reaching low Earth orbit
  • continues to occur, we can expect that the predicted date of atmospheric entry will be moved back again, just as it was moved from late December/early November to mid-January after the first orbital correction episode
  • it could buy more time for controllers to establish communication –although Roscosmos has stated that December is the limit for correcting the problem
Mars Base

Mars rover carries device for underground scouting - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...vice-underground-scouting.html

Curiosity scibyte22

shared by Mars Base on 17 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • An instrument on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity can check for any water that might be bound into shallow underground minerals along the rover's path.
  • The Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons instrument, or DAN, will scout for underground clues to a depth of about 20 inches (50 centimeters).
  • Russian Federal Space Agency contributed it to NASA as part of a broad collaboration
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  • In active mode, it is sensitive enough to detect water content as low as one-tenth of one percent in the ground beneath the rover.
  • With pulses lasting about one microsecond and repeated as frequently as 10 times per second
  • The generator will be able to emit a total of about 10 million pulses during the mission, with about 10 million neutrons at each pulse.
  • DAN can tell us how the shallow subsurface may differ from what the rover sees at the surface. None of our other instruments have the ability to do this
  • will provide the ability to detect hydrated minerals or water ice in the shallow subsurface
  • will also provide a ground-truth calibration for the measurements that the gamma-ray and neutron detectors on Odyssey have made and continue to make
  • enhancing the value of that global data set
Mars Base

Jupiter Moon's Buried Lakes Evoke Antarctica | Jupiter Moon Europa | Subsurface Lakes P... - 0 views

www.space.com/arth-antarctica-analogues.html

scibyte22 Europa

shared by Mars Base on 17 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Patches of broken ice unique to the moon have puzzled scientists for over a decade
  • Some have argued they are signs of a subterranean ocean breaking through, while others believe that the crust is too thick for the water to pierce
  • studies of ice formations in Antarctica and Iceland have provided clues to the creation of these puzzling features
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  • , a combination of these elements could very well be at work on Jupiter's moon
  • "It looks like crushed ice,
  • In Iceland, volcanoes lay beneath the ice. Their heat melts the base of glaciers and ice sheets, causing the surface to buckle in on itself and allowing stress fractures to form
  • there's no evidence for volcanoes on Europa, and the makeup of the ice is likely different from Earth'
  • irregular areas contain domes and iceberglike blocks that no theoretical models have been able to replicate
  • "On Earth, it is the volcano [melting the ice]," Schmidt said. "On Europa, it is the warm ice plume coming up from below."
  • estimated that it contained as much water as all of the North America's Great Lakes combined, about 1.5 miles (3 kilometers) beneath the surface.
  • One such lake
  • several liquid lakes are likely to exist near the surface today
  • The material cycled into the ocean via these lakes may make Europa's ocean even more habitable than previously imagined
  • The lakes may even be habitats themselves
Mars Base

Curiosity Rover Testing in Harsh Mars-like Environment - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...in-harsh-mars-like-environment

scibyte22 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 17 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • The launch window for MSL extends from Nov. 25 to Dec. 18, 2011 atop an Atlas V rocket from pad 41 at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Mars Base

Assembling Curiosity's Rocket to Mars - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...osity%E2%80%99s-rocket-to-mars

scibyte22 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 17 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • The rocket is built by United Launch Alliance under contract to NASA as part of NASA’s Launch Services Program to loft science satellites on expendable rockets.
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)
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  • 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

Complete Coverage: NASA's Huge New Rover Launching to Mars | Mars Science Laboratory & ... - 0 views

www.space.com/-launch-complete-coverage.html

scibyte22 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 19 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • delayed one day to allow time for the team to remove and replace a flight termination system battery
  • The one hour and 43 minute launch window opens at 10:02 a.m. EST
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