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  • Mars Rover Curiosity Hits a 1 Kilometer Milestone

    Mars Rover Curiosity Hits a 1 Kilometer Milestone

    Last week, NASA revealed that Mars rover Curiosity has traveled more than 325 feet (99 meters) along its 5-mile (8 kilometer) trek to the base of a Martian mountain named Mount Sharp. This week the agency announced that the rover’s recent long drives have put its odometer past the 1 kilometer (0.62 mile) mark.

    Curiosity‘s latest jaunt brought it 125 feet (38 meters) further along its journey. The drive brought the rover’s total distance driven on the surface of Mars since it landed in August 2012 to 3,376 feet (1.029 kilometers).

    “When I saw that the drive had gone well and passed the kilometer mark, I was really pleased and proud,” said Frank Hartman, a rover driver at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “Hopefully, this is just the first of many kilometers to come.”

    This week also marked the official halfway point of Curiosity’s first Martian year. The rover’s trek to mount sharp is expected to take months. The rover, even in its distance-driving mode, will drive in short segments while researchers will continue to find interesting geological features for the rover to investigate during its journey. Mount Sharp was chosen as a long-term destination because researchers hope its multiple exposed layers will reveal more about Mars’ past environment.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

  • Mars Rover Curiosity Drives 135 More Feet

    Mars Rover Curiosity Drives 135 More Feet

    Last week, Mars rover Curiosity began a months-long journey to the base of a Martian mountain named Mount Sharp. This week, NASA revealed that the rover has driven 135 feet (41 meters) closer to its destination. Combined with the 59 foot (18 meter) and 131 foot (40 meter) drives the rover performed last week, Curiosity has now traveled 325 feet (99 meters) along its 5-mile (8 kilometer) journey toward Mount Sharp. The rover has also now driven close to 0.51 miles (0.95 kilometers) total since landing on Mars in August 2012.

    Curiosity will spend several months on its trek to Mount Sharp, stopping along the way to investigate any interesting geological features researchers find. The rover is coming from an area named Glenelg, where the rover has spend most of its first 10 months on Mars. The area is where Curiosity first scooped soil samples for analysis and drilled its first rock to create rock powder. During its short mission, the rover has already discovered evidence that Mars once had surface conditions favorable for primitive life – the primary science goal for the mission.

    Mount Sharp lies in the center of Gale Crater, the site of Curiosity’s landing. Researchers are hoping that the mountain will have multiple layers that can provide evidence for how the Martian landscape has changed throughout its history.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

  • NASA Previews 2020 Mars Rover Mission

    NASA Previews 2020 Mars Rover Mission

    NASA’s Mars 2020 Science Definition Team this week released its recommendations for a rover the agency plans to send to the red planet by 2020. The announcement of the 2020 rover mission came in December 2012. The team of 19 researchers proposed that the rover be prepared to pave the way for a human mission to Mars, a goal President Obama has set for NASA to meet by the 2030s.

    “Crafting the science and exploration goals is a crucial milestone in preparing for our next major Mars mission,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator at NASA. “The objectives determined by NASA with the input from this team will become the basis later this year for soliciting proposals to provide instruments to be part of the science payload on this exciting step in Mars exploration.”

    NASA will be holding open bids for the new rover’s payload and science equipment. The instruments included and the build of the rover will be similar to NASA’s most recent Mars rover, Curiosity. The new rover will build on Curiosity’s discovery that conditions on Mars were once favorable for microbial life. In particular, the new rover will be designed to look for confirmation or signs of past life on the red planet.

    “The Mars 2020 mission concept does not presume that life ever existed on Mars,” said Jack Mustard, chairman of the Science Definition Team and a geology professor at Brown University. “However, given the recent Curiosity findings, past Martian life seems possible, and we should begin the difficult endeavor of seeking the signs of life. No matter what we learn, we would make significant progress in understanding the circumstances of early life existing on Earth and the possibilities of extraterrestrial life.”

    The new rover will provide chemical and mineral analysis that can identify biosignatures, and will seek out geological features that may have been formed biologically. In addition, the rover will package Martian rock and soil samples for later return to Earth and perform demonstrations of technology that will be needed for a manned mission to Mars.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL)

  • Mars Rover Curiosity Begins Months-Long Journey

    Mars Rover Curiosity Begins Months-Long Journey

    One month ago, Mars rover Curiosity began preparing for a 5-mile drive by shifting into a distance-driving mode. Today, NASA announced that the first small steps in that long journey have begun.

    The rover finished investigating an outcrop named “Shaler” early last week before leaving the “Glenelg” area on July 4. Curiosity drove 59 feet (18 meters), and then drove an additional 131 feet (40 meters) on July 7. The rover’s complete journey will take several months, with researchers stopping to explore interesting terrain encountered along the way.

    Curiosity is headed toward an area at the base of a mountain named Mount Sharp, which is located in the middle of Gale Crater, where the rover landed back in August 2012. Researchers hope to examine the layers that make up Mount Sharp, discovering how the red planet has changed throughout its long history. The rover has already discovered evidence that Mars was once wet and that its surface conditions were once favorable to early life, corroborating a recent Oxford University study.

    Curiosity’s first 10 months on Mars and its tentative discoveries are all covered in NASA’s latest Rover Report, narrated by Ashwin Vasavada, a project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory:

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

  • Mars Rover Opportunity Crosses Botany Bay

    Mars Rover Opportunity Crosses Botany Bay

    NASA today provided an update not on Mars rover Curiosity, but its elder rover Opportunity. The rover is part of the Mars Exploration Rover Project, which sent two rovers, Opportunity and Spirit, to Mars in 2004. Opportunity is the only one of the rovers still functioning, after Spirit became stuck in 2009, and stopped responding to communications in 2010.

    Opportunity is now six weeks into and around halfway through a 1.2 mile (22 km) drive from one crater rim to another. The rover had been examining the area around “Cape York” for nearly two years, searching for evidence of a watery past on Mars. It is now in the process of crossing an area called “Botany Bay” to reach its destination, an area named “Solander Point.”

    “The surface that Opportunity is driving across in Botany Bay is polygonally fractured outcrop that is remarkably good for driving,” said Brad Joliff, an Opportunity science team member Washington University. “The plates of outcrop, like a tiled mosaic pavement, have a thin covering of soil, not enough to form the wind-blown ripples we’ve had to deal with during some other long treks. The outcrop plates are light-toned, and the cracks between them are filled with dark, basaltic soil and our old friends the ‘blueberries.’”

    Opportunity recently investigated the “Matijevic Hill” portion of Cape York, examining small, bb-sized spheres that are rich in iron. Researchers have nicknamed the objects “blueberries.”

    Both Cape York and Solander Point are sections on the western rim of the Endeavor Crater. Opportunity will be examining Solander Point throughout the upcoming Martian winter.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

  • Cassini to Take Another Photo of Earth From Saturn

    Cassini to Take Another Photo of Earth From Saturn

    One of the most famous images taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is of Saturn as it eclipses the Sun. With the gas giant bathed in shadow, a tiny speck called Earth can be seen in the photo.

    This week, NASA announced that Cassini will be recreating that famous photo. On July 19, the probe will take the picture as part of a mosaic being composed using Cassini pictures. Though the Earth will appear as only a pale blue dot roughly the size of one pixel, NASA is encouraging people in North America and parts of the Atlantic Ocean (which will be in sunlight at the time) to wave to the sky at around 2:30 pm to acknowledge the occasion.

    “While Earth will be only about a pixel in size from Cassini’s vantage point 898 million [1.44 billion kilometers] away, the team is looking forward to giving the world a chance to see what their home looks like from Saturn,” said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “We hope you’ll join us in waving at Saturn from Earth, so we can commemorate this special opportunity.

    In addition to providing a new photo of the Earth from Saturn, Cassini will be studying the planet’s ring during the 15 minutes it will spend in its shadow. The probe will be taking both visible- and infrared-light images of Saturn’s rings to gather data for researchers.

    “Looking back towards the sun through the rings highlights the tiniest of ring particles, whose width is comparable to the thickness of hair and which are difficult to see from ground-based telescopes,” said Matt Hedman, a Cassini science team member at Cornell University. “We’re particularly interested in seeing the structures within Saturn’s dusty E ring, which is sculpted by the activity of the geysers on the moon Enceladus, Saturn’s magnetic field and even solar radiation pressure.”

  • Billion-Pixel Panorama of Mars Released by NASA

    Billion-Pixel Panorama of Mars Released by NASA

    During its 10 months on the red planet, Mars rover Curiosity has taken hundreds of high-quality photographs of the Martian landscape. Now, NASA has released a photo of Mars sporting over 1 billion pixels.

    The panorama is pieced together from almost 900 different photographs taken by cameras on Curiosity. The complete image is 1.3 billion pixels in size and can be viewed in multiple ways on NASA’s Mars Exploration Program website.

    The photos show a patch of Mars named “Rocknest,” where Curiosity took its first scoop of Martian soil in October 2012. The mountain seen in the distance is Mount Sharp, the current long-term destination for the rover.

    “It gives a sense of place and really shows off the cameras’ capabilities,” said Bob Deen, a researcher with the Multi-Mission Image Processing Laboratory at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “You can see the context and also zoom in to see very fine details.”

    The photos that comprise the panorama were primarily taken using Curiosity’s Mast Camera, with further images coming from the Mastcam’s wide-angle camera. The photos were taken over the course of several Martian days, explaining the inconsistent illumination and shadows seen in different parts of the image.

    Curiosity is currently preparing to shift into a distance-driving mode, and will soon be heading five miles to an area at the base of Mount Sharp.

  • Mars Rover Curiosity Prepares For Long Drive

    Mars Rover Curiosity Prepares For Long Drive

    NASA today revealed that Mars rover Curiosity will soon wrap up its exploration of the Glenelg area and shift into a distance-driving mode. The rover is headed for an area at the base of Mount Sharp, about 5 miles from its current location.

    “We’re hitting full stride,” said Jim Erickson, Project Manager for the Mars Science Laboratory at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We needed a more deliberate pace for all the first-time activities by Curiosity since landing, but we won’t have many more of those.”

    Some of those first-time activities include scooping Martian soil, analyzing its chemical makeup, and drilling a rock to obtain rock powder. A second rock drilling (seen above) took place just last Month.

    Most of the drilling has occurred near Glenelg, where varied terrain interesting to researchers converges. No more scooping or drilling is now planned for the area.

    Curiosity has already driven over one third of a mile during its time on Mars. To reach Mount Sharp will take “many months” of driving, as researchers are bound to find interesting things to look at along the way.

    “We don’t know when we’ll get to Mount Sharp,” said Erickson. “This truly is a mission of exploration, so just because our end goal is Mount Sharp doesn’t mean we’re not going to investigate interesting features along the way.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

  • Monster Saturn Hurricane Imaged by Cassini

    Monster Saturn Hurricane Imaged by Cassini

    NASA has revealed new pictures and of a massive hurricane on Saturn taken by the Cassini spacecraft.

    The images depict a hurricane in Saturn’s north pole region. The eye of the storm is around 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) in diameter. The clouds on the hurricane’s outer edge are travelling at 150 meters per second (330 miles per hour).

    “We did a double take when we saw this vortex because it looks so much like a hurricane on Earth,” said Andrew Ingersoll, a Cassini imaging team member at the California Institute of Technology. “But there it is at Saturn, on a much larger scale, and it is somehow getting by on the small amounts of water vapor in Saturn’s hydrogen atmosphere.”

    NASA has stated that the storm on Saturn is “locked onto” the planet’s north pole. Cassini was unable to image Saturn’s northern hemisphere using visible light until 2009, when the planet’s equinox passed. Researchers hope that studying the hurricane on Saturn can provide data on how hurricanes on Earth develop and sustain themselves.

    “Such a stunning and mesmerizing view of the hurricane-like storm at the north pole is only possible because Cassini is on a sportier course, with orbits tilted to loop the spacecraft above and below Saturn’s equatorial plane,” said Scott Edgington, Cassini deputy project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “You cannot see the polar regions very well from an equatorial orbit. Observing the planet from different vantage points reveals more about the cloud layers that cover the entirety of the planet.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI)

  • Mars Rover Opportunity Found in Standby Mode After Solar Conjunction

    Mars Rover Opportunity Found in Standby Mode After Solar Conjunction

    The rovers on Mars this month were under a command moratorium as Mars passed behind the sun, an event known as solar conjunction. Now that the solar conjunction has ended, researchers have found something amiss with Mars rover Opportunity.

    Mission controllers this week found Opportunity in a standby mode. NASA has stated that it appears the rover “sensed something amiss” during a camera check on April 22 and entered standby. Team members have prepared commands for Opportunity to bring it back to full operative status.

    “Our current suspicion is that Opportunity rebooted its flight software, possibly while the cameras on the mast were imaging the sun,” said John Callas, Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We found the rover in a standby state called automode, in which it maintains power balance and communication schedules, but waits for instructions from the ground. We crafted our solar conjunction plan to be resilient to this kind of rover reset, if it were to occur.”

    Opportunity was one of two rovers that landed on Mars in 2004 as part of the Mars Exploration Rover Project. The other rover, Spirit, became stuck in soft soil in 2009, and ceased communications in 2010.

    The newest rover on Mars, Curiosity, is reported to be fully operational following the solar conjunction. Researchers are planning on sending it commands starting tomorrow.

    (Image courtesy ASA/JPL-Caltech)

  • Meteors Spotted Hitting Saturn’s Rings

    Meteors Spotted Hitting Saturn’s Rings

    Watching stellar impacts as they occur is a rare treat for astronomers. The famous Shoemaker-Levy 9 impact on Jupiter (which left water in the planet’s atmosphere), which happened only 20 years ago, was the first directly-seen extraterrestrial collision in the solar system.

    This week, NASA revealed that Saturn has now been added to the short list of places in the Solar System where astronomers have been able to observe collisions occurring as they happen (Earth, the moon, and Jupiter are the others).

    NASA’s Cassini probe has captured images of meteoroids hitting the debris that makes up Saturn’s rings. Researchers believe that studying the impact rate on Saturn can help them determine more precisely how the planets in the Solar System formed.

    “These new results imply the current-day impact rates for small particles at Saturn are about the same as those at Earth – two very different neighborhoods in our solar system – and this is exciting to see,” said Linda Spilker, a Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “It took Saturn’s rings acting like a giant meteoroid detector – 100 times the surface area of the Earth – and Cassini’s long-term tour of the Saturn system to address this question.”

    Cassini scientists studied data for years to find evidence of the tracks the small meteorites left behind. The research has been published in the latest issue of the journal Science.

    “We knew these little impacts were constantly occurring, but we didn’t know how big or how frequent they might be, and we didn’t necessarily expect them to take the form of spectacular shearing clouds,” said Matt Tiscareno, lead author of the paper and a Cassini participating scientist at Cornell University. “The sunlight shining edge-on to the rings at the Saturnian equinox acted like an anti-cloaking device, so these usually invisible features became plain to see.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/Cornell)

  • Voyager 1 Module Added to NASA’s Solar System Viewer

    Voyager 1 Module Added to NASA’s Solar System Viewer

    There’s been some confusion in recent months over whether Voyager 1 has actually exited the Solar System. NASA scientists have reported multiple times that they’ve seen indications that the probe may be outside the heliosphere, only to roll back the fanfare with a deeper analysis of the data.

    Now, NASA is letting everyone in on the agonizing wait with a new feature incorporated into its Eyes on the Solar System software. Eyes on the Solar System is an interactive, 3-D web app that uses up-to-date NASA mission data to depict the Solar System.

    The new module allows users to watch the Voyager 1 probe as it hurtles toward interstellar space. Astronomers believe that Voyager 1 entered a “magnetic highway” at the edge of the Solar System late last year. The ‘Highway” is a region where charged particles can pass both in and out of the heliosphere, the bubble of charged particles that surrounds the sun.

    The app will speed up Voyager 1’s journey to one day per second. Navigation data from the project is used to show the probe roll and maneuver through the Solar System.

    NASA researchers are tracking the particles coming from inside the heliosphere and outside of it. They believe that a sustained increase in detected outside charged particles indicates the “magnetic highway” Voyager 1 currently occupies. Scientists are waiting for a magnetic field shift before confirming the probe has left the Solar System.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

  • Mars Rover Curiosity Swaps Computers

    Mars Rover Curiosity Swaps Computers

    NASA announced today that Mars rover Curiosity has switched onboard computers as a result of a “memory issue” experienced on its active computer. The issue has brought research by the rover to a halt.

    The swap to the rover’s redundant computer took place yesterday and placed the rover into a “safe mode.” Over then next several days the rover team will be bringing the rover into operational status.

    “We switched computers to get to a standard state from which to begin restoring routine operations,” said Richard Cook, project manager for the Mars Science Laboratory Project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

    These computer issues are surfacing just as Curiosity is in the midst of a historical sample analysis. Earlier this week the rover had begun analyzing two small samples of rock powder taken from the inside of a Martian rock using the rover’s hammering drill.

    The computer issue was revealed on Wednesday, February 27 when the rover failed to send recorded data back to Earth, instead sending only status information. It was found that Curiosity had not entered its latest planned “sleep mode.” The “memory issue” on Curiosity’s first computer is thought to be related to a corrupted flash memory.

    The rover will now operate on its “B-side” computer, which was tested during its flight to Mars. The “A-side” computer was used from the rover’s landing on the red planet until this week.

    “While we are resuming operations on the B-side, we are also working to determine the best way to restore the A-side as a viable backup,” said Magdy Bareh, leader of the mission’s anomaly resolution team at JPL.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

  • Mars Rover Curiosity Analyzes Rock Powder

    Mars Rover Curiosity Analyzes Rock Powder

    NASA this week announced that Mars rover Curiosity has successfully placed two small samples of rock powder into its “compact laboratories” for analysis.

    “Data from the instruments have confirmed the deliveries,” said Jennifer Trosper, Curiosity Mission Manager oat NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

    The rock powder comes from the inside of a rock on Mars – the first sample of its kind to be collected. The powder was taken from a small hole that Curiosity drilled in a rock earlier this month. Last week NASA researchers were able to confirm that the rover had actually collected the powder.

    The powder had now been placed into Curiosity’s Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) and Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments. The CheMin instrument will examine the sample’s mineral composition, while the SAM instrument will determine its chemical composition. The analyses will take place over “the coming days and weeks.”

    Both instruments were tested in late 2012 as Curiosity took several scoops of Martian soil while exploring the sandy “Rocknest” area.

    The testing of the rover‘s hammering drill the successful rock powder sample gathering were described at the time to be “the biggest milestone accomplishment for the Curiosity team since the sky-crane landing last August.” Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) researchers at JPL have now declared Curiosity to be “fully operational.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

  • Mars Rover Curiosity Shows Off Its First Drill Sample

    Mars Rover Curiosity Shows Off Its First Drill Sample

    Last week, Mars rover Curiosity, after months of meticulous planning, finally used its hammering drill to collect a sample of Martian rock dust.

    Today, NASA scientists have released images confirming that the first-ever sample of drilled rock dust is safely in one of Curiosity’s sample scoops.

    “Seeing the powder from the drill in the scoop allows us to verify for the first time the drill collected a sample as it bore into the rock,” said Scott McCloskey, drill systems engineer for Curiosity at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “Many of us have been working toward this day for years. Getting final confirmation of successful drilling is incredibly gratifying. For the sampling team, this is the equivalent of the landing team going crazy after the successful touchdown.”

    In the coming days, the rock sample will be enclosed in Curiosity’s Collection and Handling for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis (CHIMRA) instrument and sieved to remove particles larger than 150 microns (0.006 inches). Small portions of the sample will then be placed inside the rover’s Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) and Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments to determine its mineral and chemical make-up.

    The historic drilling took place on February 8, when the rover used its drill to bore a 6.4 centimeter (2.5-inch) hole into a rock named “John Klein.” Researchers hope the rock dust will provide information about Mars’ wet past, and possibly about whether life could have once existed on the red planet.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

  • Mars Rover Curiosity Drills a Rock, Makes History

    Mars Rover Curiosity Drills a Rock, Makes History

    After months of careful planning and tests, Mars rover Curiosity has finally used its hammering drill to collect a bedrock sample on Mars. The event marks the first time any rover has drilled into a rock on the red planet.

    Curiosity left a hole 0.63 inches (1.6 cm) wide and 2.5 inches (6.4 cm) deep in a flat, veiny rock named “John Klein.” As the rover drilled into the rock, rock powder traveled up flutes on the drill bit, which has holding chambers for the powder. The sample obtained by the rover should help researchers determine whether the rock was ever underwater.

    “The most advanced planetary robot ever designed is now a fully operating analytical laboratory on Mars,” said John Grunsfeld, NASA associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate. “This is the biggest milestone accomplishment for the Curiosity team since the sky-crane landing last August, another proud day for America.”

    Over the next few days, the rock powder will be processed and tested to determine its mineral make-up and chemical composition.

    “We’ll take the powder we acquired and swish it around to scrub the internal surfaces of the drill bit assembly,” said Scott McCloskey, drill systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “Then we’ll use the arm to transfer the powder out of the drill into the scoop, which will be our first chance to see the acquired sample.”

    The successful drilling marks another milestone for the rover itself. All of Curiosity’s instruments have now been tested on Mars, and the rover has been deemed fully operational.

    “Building a tool to interact forcefully with unpredictable rocks on Mars required an ambitious development and testing program,” said Louise Jandura, chief engineer for Curiosity’s sample system at JPL. “To get to the point of making this hole in a rock on Mars, we made eight drills and bored more than 1,200 holes in 20 types of rock on Earth.”

  • Comet ISON Spotted by NASA’s Deep Impact

    Comet ISON Spotted by NASA’s Deep Impact

    NASA‘s Deep Impact spacecraft has snapped several images of the comet ISON (C/2012 S1). The images were obtained over 36 hours on January 17 and 18, from a distance of 793 million km (493 million miles). The comet is expected to come within 1.8 million km (1.1 million miles) of the sun and burn bright enough to be seen from Earth with the naked eye.

    “This is the fourth comet on which we have performed science observations and the farthest point from Earth from which we’ve tried to transmit data on a comet,” said Tim Larson, project manager for Deep Impact at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “The distance limits our bandwidth, so it’s a little like communicating through a modem after being used to DSL. But we’re going to coordinate our science collection and playback so we maximize our return on this potentially spectacular comet.”

    Comet ISON was only just discovered in September of 2012 by Russian astronomers. NASA has determined that the comet is making its first-ever journey into the the inner solar system. Researchers believe that means the object’s surface will have plenty of volatile material that will be burned off by the sun. Long-period comets such as ISON come from the Oort cloud, a cloud of icy objects that surround the solar system at an incredible distance – as far away as one-third the distance to the Sun’s nearest neighbor star.

    NASA has stated that there is no chance comet ISON will be a risk to the Earth. The object’s closest approach to the planet will be on December 26, 2013, and the comet’s head and tail should be visible during its closest approach to the sun.

    In addition to the visible light images seen below, data from Deep Impact is expected to provide researchers with infrared data and light curves for the comet. Though the object is currently over 763 million km (474 million miles) from the Sun, its tail is already estimated to be over 64,400 km (40,000 miles) long.

    Embedded video from

    NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology

  • Mars Rover Curiosity Pounds a Rock

    Mars Rover Curiosity Pounds a Rock

    NASA today announced that Mars rover Curiosity is closer than ever to the first full use of its hammering drill. Over the weekend the rover completed a successful test of the drill’s percussive action.

    The “drill-on-rock checkout” left a mark on the rock, named “John Klein,” chosen as the target for the first drill sampling of rock material in the history of Mars exploration. It was another step in the drill testing announced last week.

    There is still one more test to be performed before the actual drilling can commence. A “mini drill” test will use both the rotary and percussive capabilities of the drill to create a ring of rock powder around a hole. The test will, say researchers, allow them to test the material and see if it is a dry powder that can be tested by Curiosity’s sample handling equipment.

    The rover team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has been preparing to use Curiosity’s drill for almost two Earth months now. The event has been carefully prepared for in detail, with researchers taking time to choose a suitable rock target and test every aspect of the drill. Mars Science Laboratory Project Manager Richard Cook has called the event “this mission’s most challenging activity since the landing.”

  • NASA to Launch ISS Instrument to Monitor Ocean Winds

    NASA to Launch ISS Instrument to Monitor Ocean Winds

    NASA announced this week that it will launch an instrument called the ISS-RapidScat to the International Space Station (ISS) next year to measure ocean winds. The instrument, originally built to test NASA;s QuikScat satellite, will measure the Earth’s ocean surface wind speed and direction. The data will improve weather forecasts and hurricane monitoring.

    “The ability for NASA to quickly reuse this hardware and launch it to the space station is a great example of a low-cost approach that will have high benefits to science and life here on Earth,” said Mike Suffredini, NASA’s International Space Station program manager.

    Scatterometers measure the scattering effect produced when scanning the Earth’s surface using a microwave radar sensor. The previous wind data instrument, the QuikScat, stopped collecting ocean wind data in 2009 after operating for 10 years. No replacement will be available soon, which is why NASA adapted existing QuikScat hardware.

    “ISS-RapidScat represents a low-cost approach to acquiring valuable wind vector data for improving global monitoring of hurricanes and other high-intensity storms,” said Howard Eisen, ISS-RapidScat project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “By leveraging the capabilities of the International Space Station and recycling leftover hardware, we will acquire good science data at a fraction of the investment needed to launch a new satellite.”

    The ISS-RapidScat will be launched to the ISS on a SpaceX Dragon cargo mission. It will be installed on the end of the ISS’s Columbus laboratory and have measurement accuracy “similar” to QuikScat. The instrument is expected operate for two years.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/JSC)

  • Mars Rover Curiosity Braces For Drilling

    Mars Rover Curiosity Braces For Drilling

    For over one month now, Mars rover Curiosity has been preparing to use its hammering drill for the first time. It now appears that the rover’s first drill test is now imminent.

    Researchers announced that they have placed the drill onto a series of locations and pressed down on it with Curiosity’s arm. This “pre-load testing allowed engineers to check the force applied to the drill and cross-check it with their predictions. The next step is a pre-load test at night, to make sure that temperature changes do not add to the stress on the rover‘s arm. Temperatures at Curiosity’s location can range from 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit) to to 65 degrees Celsius (85 degrees Fehrenheit).

    “We don’t plan on leaving the drill in a rock overnight once we start drilling, but in case that happens, it is important to know what to expect in terms of stress on the hardware,” said Daniel Limonadi, the lead systems engineer for Curiosity’s surface sampling and science system at NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “This test is done at lower pre-load values than we plan to use during drilling, to let us learn about the temperature effects without putting the hardware at risk.”

    The rest of the week will be filled with hardware checks and an evaluation of the rock that has been selected as the first drilling site. Two weeks ago a flat, veined rock named “John Klein” was chosen for the honor.

    “We are proceeding with caution in the approach to Curiosity’s first drilling,” said Limonadi. “This is challenging. It will be the first time any robot has drilled into a rock to collect a sample on Mars.”

  • Mars Rover Curiosity Takes Nighttime Photos

    NASA announced today that Mars rover Curiosity has used the camera on its arm to take pictures at night. The photos were of a rock named “Sayunei,” which Curiosity had purposely scuffed with its left-front wheel to uncover dust-free materials.

    This was the first time the rover has taken photos at night using the white and ultraviolet lights on its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) instrument. The MAHLI is an adjustable-focus camera that has its own LED light sources.

    “The purpose of acquiring observations under ultraviolet illumination was to look for fluorescent minerals,” said Ken Edgett, MAHLI principal investigator at Malin Space Science Systems. “The science team is still assessing the observations. If something looked green, yellow, orange or red under the ultraviolet illumination, that’d be a more clear-cut indicator of fluorescence.”

    “Sayunei” is located in a low-lying area NASA has named “Yellowknife Bay.” The area is the one chosen by the rover team to be the site of Curiosity’s first test of its hammering drill. Last week, researchers announced that a rock in “Yellowknife Bay” named “John Klein” has been tentatively chosen to be the subject of the rover’s first drilling. Richard Cook, the Mars Science Laboratory project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory described the drilling test at the “most challenging activity since the landing.”

    The photo below is of “Sayunei” under ultraviolet light:

    A mars rock under ultraviolet light

    (Images courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)