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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

should be able to continue converting the heat of plutonium-238's radioactive decay into electricity for a long time

think it has 55 years of positive power margin

NASA will also keep its other Mars assets going as long as possible

include the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and the Opportunity rover

applies to NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter as well

doesn't expect the spacecraft to still be viable in 2021

launched in 2001 and has been showing some signs of age

particularly important for the 2020 rover mission to have functioning orbiters at Mars to help relay communications back and forth to Earth

Using Kickstarter

raised nearly $75,000 as more than 300 people sponsored a sprite that will transmit an identifying signal, such as the initials of the donor

In 2013, about 250 sprites will be sent into space

One person, who donated $10,000, Manchester added, will get to "push the big red button" on the day of the launch.

NASA's Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNA) program, which provides a free launch (normally $300,000) for university space research

KickSat will hitch a ride in September 2013 (subject to change) from Cape Canaveral on CRS-3, the third SpaceX Falcon 9 flight destined for the International Space Station

A large part of the project is helping people track their own satellites with a simple software radio interface

From a research standpoint, Manchester is interested in the dynamics and behavior of the satellites, and plans to test how to track their positions and determine their orbits

KickSat is set to launch more than 200 of these tiny satellites, nicknamed "sprites," into low-Earth orbit

new gravity maps reveals an abundance of features such as tectonic structures, volcanic landforms, basin rings, crater central peaks and numerous simple, bowl-shaped craters

the moon’s gravity field is unlike that of any terrestrial planet in our solar system.

Ninety-eight percent of local gravity is associated with topography, while 2 percent are other gravitational features

You can see bull’s-eyes of the lunar mascons, but otherwise we see a smooth inner surface

The only way this could happen is if impacts to the early Moon shattered the inner surface

also revealed evidence for ancient volcanic activity under the surface of the Moon and strange linear gravitational anomalies

identified a large population of linear gravitational anomalies. We don’t see any expression of them on topography maps, so we infer that these are an ancient internal structures

Basin, which forms one of the ‘man on moon’s’ eyes, the gravity maps shows a linear feature crossing the basin while topography maps show no such correlating feature

the gravity anomaly formed before the impacts

Additional data reveal that the Moon’s inner crust in almost completely pulverized

Using GRAIL gravity data, we found the average thickness of the crust is 32-34 kilometers which is about 10 km less than previous studies

We found the bulk abundance of aluminum on Moon is nearly the same as that of the Earth

consistent with a recent hypothesis that the Moon is derived of materials from the Earth when it was formed during a giant impact event

GRAIL finishes the primary science mission in May and are currently working in an extended mission where the spacrafts’ altitude was lowered to just 23 km above the surface

During its prime mission, the two GRAIL spacecraft orbited just 55 km above the Moon’s surface

hearing results from the new data sets soon

the team will lower the GRAIL spacecraft down to just 11 km above the lunar surface.

extended mission will end soon, in mid-December, and soon after that, the two spacecraft will be crashed intentionally onto the lunar surface

they are still formulating ideas for the impact scenario, and looking at the possibility of aiming the crashes so they are within the field-of-view of instruments on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

Personality, researchers say, is also a factor in whether a person enjoys spicy meals and how often he or she eats them

desensitization to capsaicin, the plant chemical that gives peppers their burn, is well documented, there’s also evidence that the effect is surprisingly small

researchers have previously linked chili liking to thrill seeking, specifically an affinity for amusement park rides and gambling

investigators found a relationship between chili liking and sensation seeking when using a more formal measure of personality called Zuckerman’s Sensation Seeking Scale

In both cases, however, the associations were fairly weak, and neither study looked at intake -- how often a person eats spicy foods, versus how much a person likes spice.

used an updated measure of sensation seeking that avoided gender- and age-biased questions

Sensation seeking emerged as a much stronger predictor of spicy food liking than in the previous studies

it also predicted how often a person ate chili-laden meals

personality trait, however, was not associated with high liking of non-spicy foods, which reduced the possibility that thrill seekers are just crazy about food in general

frequent chili eaters didn’t feel the burn from the capsaicin sample any less than people who ate peppers less often

The study group may not have been large enough to show a desensitization effect

lack of evidence for desensitization in the study boosts the argument for personality as an important factor

combination of factors influences who goes for the mild wings on Super Bowl Sunday and who reaches for hot

childhood exposure and learning all play a critical role in liking for spicy foods

also individuals who acquired an entirely [new] set of food preferences as adults once they moved away from home

may have been a disconnect between reported frequency of intake and actual dose

Ninety-seven male and female participants ranging in age from 18 to 45 filled out a food-liking questionnaire

rated the intensity of sensations after sampling six stimuli, including capsaicin mixed in water

Newly found clays that are sprinkled with two different kinds of previously unseen features point to a different type of water “that you could drink,”

Orbital data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

originally led the MER team to Endeavour Crater, the huge crater where Opportunity is now traversing around the rim.

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

MAHLI, our hand lens imager to take close up views of the soil to look at different particle sizes, shapes and colors and how they change with depth

analyzed it if our X-ray diffraction instrument that can identify minerals in the soil based on their unique crystal structure

a good amount of the material in the soil was not crystalline but that’s not a problem for our other laboratory, SAM.

results show a composition that is typical of Mars soils studied at other sites with perhaps some very simple carbon containing molecules and perchlorate salts.

haven’t yet seen any complex organic molecules but sand isn’t the best place to look

There won’t be any single image or measurement that’ll answer everything.