SpaceX CEO Elon Musk gave an interview this week, where he talked about several different topics. One of the big topics he talked about was his company's ambition for putting humans back on Mars. Musk mentioned that the company's big shiny spacecraft known as Starship would have a high-altitude test later this week.
The NASA Perseverance Rover has a device aboard called MOXIE that will convert the air available on Mars into oxygen. The device is a test, and if the technology was used on a larger scale could produce oxygen for humans to breathe on the Red Planet and could be used for rocket fuel. NASA knows that one of the most challenging parts of putting people on Mars will be getting them off the planet and back to Earth.
Researchers have been looking at the field geology on the equator of Mars and found that it suggests an ancient flood of an unimaginable magnitude washed through Gale Crater on the Martian equator about 4 billion years ago. The finding suggests that there is a possibility life may have existed around Gale Crater billions of years ago.
NASA's Perseverance rover is the space agency's first Mars rover equipped with microphones, enabling it to record sounds from beyond our planet. NASA intends to use one of these microphones to record the rover's landing on the Red Planet, but recently fired it up during the trip in space to get a 60-second recording.
Researchers have used one of the instruments aboard the NASA MAVEN spacecraft to discover water vapor near the surface of Mars is pushed higher into the atmosphere than previously believed possible. Once the water vapor is high into what remains of the Martian atmosphere, it's easily destroyed by electrically charged gas particles and lost to space. Researchers believe the phenomenon they have discovered is one of several that led to Mars losing its oceans that are believed to have been up to hundreds of feet deep over billions of years.
NASA says that once its Perseverance rover arrives on Mars early next year, it'll start receiving 'weather' reports from a suite of sensors located on the vehicle. NASA calls this instrument the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA), one designed to measure and report basic info like wind speed, temperature, and more.
We're now less than 100 days from the landing of the next NASA-made Mars rover. The remote control vehicle with sample-collecting abilities is called Mars 2020 Perseverance. The mission originally launched from our planet Earth back on July 30, 2020, and it'll land on February 18, 2021. Let's take a peek at what this new rover can do - and what it set out to do in the first place.
NASA has announced that its Mars Sample Return (MSR) Independent Review Board (IRB) has found that it is ready to launch a campaign that will bring a Mars sample back to Earth for study. The review involved evaluating NASA's 'early concepts' for the sample return campaign, a mission that will include the European Space Agency.
Scientists have analyzed a meteorite was found in the Sahara desert back in 2012. The meteorite came from Mars and is called NWA 7533. Scientists have been studying the meteorite to get an idea of its composition and what Mars may have been like 4.4 billion years ago.
NASA's Perseverance rover launched for Mars in late July, carrying with it a small helicopter and a suite of instruments to increase exploration of the Red Planet. The mission has logged more than 146 million miles since then, putting it exactly halfway to its Martian destination, according to the space agency. Assuming everything goes according to plan, Perseverance will arrive at Mars in mid-February.
Mixing artificial soil samples never seemed so exciting. University of Georgia geologists are currently preparing for the farming of crops on the red planet by simulating solid conditions here on Earth. A study on the process was published today with data from surface samples from Mars itself. "We want to simulate certain characteristics of materials you could easily get on Mars' surface," said the study's lead author Laura Fackrell.
The Mars 2020 spacecraft is currently on its way to the Red Planet. Ahead of the spacecraft entering the Martian atmosphere, NASA sent a signal to check on some of the sensors aboard the spacecraft. NASA's signal went out on October 8, and the team waited for a reply from the Mars Entry, Descent, and Landing Instrumentation 2 (MEDLI2) suit board the spacecraft. MEDLI2 is a collection of sensors designed to measure the aerothermal environment and thermal protection system material performance when the spacecraft enters Mars' atmosphere.