NASA's InSight rover touched down on Mars late last month at a landing site that the space agency's researchers narrowed down to a 81-mile-long ellipses. Thanks to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera, NASA has been able to visually confirm its lander's exact position, as well as its parachute and heat shield. Three images of the objects have been shared with the public.
Humanity has been provided with a recording of winds on Mars for the first time ever thanks to NASA's newly deployed InSight rover. The vehicle arrived on Mars in November, successfully landing after months of travel to the Red Planet. NASA shared two copies of the wind recording, one as it was captured and another adjusted for playback on phones and laptops.
A couple days ago, Curiosity woke up to the song Please would you be my neighbor from Mr. Rogers, that being a greeting for the newly arrived InSight rover. Following that, NASA researchers explain, Curiosity got to work at Mars' Highfield drill site, where it will dump a sample. The rover, which has been rolling around Mars since 2012, previously detected four interesting rocks, including one that is atypically smooth and shiny.
After six long months of traveling through the void of space, NASA's InSight lander successfully finished its journey to Mars today. Though attempting to land on the surface of Mars is never an easy thing, it seems that InSight's arrival went about as well as could be expected. From here, scientists at NASA will begin preparing the lander for its primary mission: studying what's going on beneath the surface of Mars.
Over this long Thanksgiving weekend, there is sure to be lots of watching favorite football teams score touchdowns across the country, but NASA is looking forward to a touchdown of a different sort on Monday. NASA has announced that its Mars Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations or InSight lander is set for a soft touchdown on the surface of the Red Planet on November 26.
At an event promoting the new National Geographic Channel's series "Mars," scientist and science educator Bill Nye spoke about the Red Planet's future. While he's all about the idea that astronauts travel to Mars and explore Mars and possibly even mine Mars, he's pretty much against the idea that humans could live on Mars. "This whole idea of terraforming Mars," said Nye, "As respectful as I can be, are you guys high?"
NASA has revealed the landing site chosen for its future Mars 2020 rover mission. The space agency has been narrowing the selection for years, ultimately reducing its more than 60 potential locations down to a final destination: Jezero Crater on the western edge of Mars' Isidis Planitia. This area is described as "geologically rich" with potential answers to big questions about the planet's past.
NASA says the global dust storm on Mars that incapacitated its Opportunity rover has finally ended. The space agency made the determination based on tau, which is the amount of sunlight that manages to penetrate the hazy dust in the planet's atmosphere. According to the agency's latest update, the measurement is now back to normal.
The ESA is working on a mission that will put another rover on the surface of Mars with launch aiming at 2020. The ExoMars Landing Site Selection Working Grop has now issued its recommendation on a landing site for that mission; the landing site is a location called Oxia Planum. The final step in the selection process is an internal review by the ESA and Roscosmos.
NASA has yet another record under its belt: the fastest inflation of a parachute. The milestone was achieved with the Mars 2020 parachute, which was tested in early September using Earth's atmosphere and a Black Brant IX sounding rocket. The parachute was packed as a payload, ultimately separating from the rocket to fall back to Earth.
This week a paper published in Nature Geoscience showed the potential for a whole lot of oxygen on the planet Mars. Within the salty waters under the surface of the planet, Mars may well have enough oxygen to support life, planet-wide. These scientists suggested that "our findings suggest that there can be near-surface environments on Mars with sufficient O₂ available for aerobic microbes to breath." That's "even at the limits of the uncertainties" they calculated in time and space - the possibility is there.
Playing the claw game that sits in the entry area of your local Walmart store is a challenge to win. This is despite that fact that you are standing right in front of the glass case controlling the arm. If you had to play that claw game from another planet, the difficulty would be greatly compounded. This is essentially what NASA scientist will be doing when it comes to controlling the robotic arm used for the InSight mission.