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Tag: jet propulsion lab

  • Mars Rover Sends New Photos of the Martian Landscape

    The Mars rover Curiosity has already sent back some preliminary photos of its newly named Bradbury Landing site. It also recently completed its first test drive, leaving its tracks in the Martian surface for the first time.

    This week new images from the rover have been released. The photos show more of the surface of Mars that surrounds Curiosity. The photo above, taken with Curiosity’s 100mm MastCam, depicts Mars’ Mount Sharp. A Mars rover team member said that Mount Sharp is one of the places Curiosity will be going on its two-year mission. Check out the rest of the images below the article.

    NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) also announced this week that the first recorded human voice has been broadcast from Mars. Curiosity radioed back the pre-recorded words of NASA Administrator Charles Bolden as he discussed the success of the mission and what it means for human exploration.

    “The knowledge we hope to gain from our observation and analysis of Gale Crater will tell us much about the possibility of life on Mars as well as the past and future possibilities for our own planet,” said Bolden. “Curiosity will bring benefits to Earth and inspire a new generation of scientists and explorers, as it prepares the way for a human mission in the not too distant future.”

    Curiosity pic 1

    Curiosity pic 2

    Curiosity pic 3

    Curiosity pic 4

    (Images courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

  • Ray Bradbury Honored With Mars Rover Landing Site

    NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced yesterday that it has dubbed the landing site of the Mars rover Curiosity “Bradbury Landing” in honor of sci-fi author Ray Bradbury. It was the Curiosity science team that chose to honor Bradbury, who passed away back in June, and the announcement coincided with what would have been Bradbury’s 92nd birthday.

    “This was not a difficult choice for the science team,” said Michael Meyer, NASA program scientist for Curiosity. “Many of us and millions of other readers were inspired in our lives by stories Ray Bradbury wrote to dream of the possibility of life on Mars.”

    The honor seems fitting, considering Bradbury’s most popular work was The Martian Chronicles, which portrayed a human invasion of Mars. Bradbury attended several NASA space mission events throughout his life, and this week’s announcement was commemorated by the agency with a video of Bradbury reading his poem “If Only We Had Taller Been” at a symposium just before the Mariner 9 orbiter reached Mars in 1971.

    Apart from the landing site name, NASA also announced yesterday that Curiosity has successfully taken its first test drive. The rover tested its mobility by driving, turning, and reversing. The short trip took the rover about 20 feet from where it originally landed, and the tracks it left in the Martian surface can be seen in the photo above.

    “We have a fully functioning mobility system with lots of amazing exploration ahead,” said Matt Heverly, the mission’s lead rover driver.

    Curiosity still has several more days of testing ahead. Curiosity Project Manager Pete Theisinger said, “Curiosity is a much more complex vehicle than earlier Mars rovers. The testing and characterization activities during the initial weeks of the mission lay important groundwork for operating our precious national resource with appropriate care.”

    (Photo courtesy NASA/JPL)

  • Mars Rover Team Congratulated by President Obama

    It’s been one week since the Mars Science Laboratory’s rover Curiosity was lowered to the surface of Mars. Since then, the world has been treated to high-res images of the Gale crater landing site, a color panorama of the Martian surface, and even a 3-D image from the planet.

    Now that the celebrations have died down, the mission control team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California are settling in and sifting through the wealth of information provided by the rover. Before they can get down to doing the real work of scientific discovery, however, there are still some appearances to be made. Today, U.S. President Barack Obama called the Mars rover team to extend his congratulations.

    Obama told the team he was impressed with the landing sequence for the rover and that they had “captured the attention and imagination of millions of people, not just across our country, but people all around the world.”

    “What you accomplished embodies the American spirit and your passion and your commitment is making a difference,” said Obama. “And your hard work is now paying dividends, because our expectation is that Curiosity is gonna be telling us things that we did not know before and laying the groundwork for an even more audacious undertaking in the future, and that’s a human mission to the red planet.”

    The president also lightened the mood a bit by joking about Martians, saying, “If, in fact, you do make contact with Martians, please let me know right away…I’ve got a lot of other things on my plate, but I suspect that will go to the top of my list. Even if they are just microbes, it will be pretty exiting”

    The phone conversation with the president was live-streamed on Ustream, but if you missed it the recording of the event can be seen below.



    Video streaming by Ustream

  • NASA ‘Earth Now’ iOS App Shows Earth’s Resplendent Climate Data

    Morbidly curious to see a global map of carbon monoxide around the earth? Just in time to satisfy that curiosity, NASA has released a new iOS app, Earth Now, that provides visualizations of such types of global climate data. Essentially, the app provides information about some key vital signs that are constantly tracked by NASA satellites. Other climate data available via Earth Now include location-specific information about current surface air temperatures, gravity anomalies around the earth, water vapor, and ozone.

    The regularly updated data maps show up as 3D globe containing false color maps and come with a color-coded key to indicate the intensity of an environmental condition. Users can zoom in or out using the traditional iOS gesture of pinching or separating fingers together on the touchscreen.

    “Earth Now is a great resource for students, teachers and anyone interested in Earth’s changing climate,” said Michael Greene, manager for public engagement formulation and strategic alliances at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “Since its debut last month, it’s already been downloaded nearly 170,000 times. Plans are in place for development of an Android version and for the addition of new NASA Earth science data sets over time.”

    Earth Now is closely integrated with NASA’s Webby Award-winning Global Climate Change website, http://climate.nasa.gov, which is devoted to educating the public about Earth’s changing climate, providing easy-to-understand information about the causes and effects of climate change and how NASA studies it. The app was developed by the Earth Science Communications, Visualization Technology Applications and Development Teams at JPL, with support from NASA Headquarters.

    While this app is fun for all nature science junkies and ecologists alike, there is one caveat, though: the app does require iOS 5 to install on your iPhone.

  • NASA Jet Propulsion Lab Computers Were Seized By Hackers In November

    According to a federal report released on Wednesday, NASA was the target of 47 different sophisticated cyberattacks in 2011, some of which were considered “advanced persistent threats.” During one attack in November, hackers seized control of computers belonging to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and were able to gain access to a trove of sensitive information.

    In the November attack, JPL’s IT Security noted “suspicious network activity” originating from IP addresses in China. Paul K. Martin, NASA Inspector General, wrote in the report that “intruders had compromised the accounts of the most privileged JPL users, giving the intruders access to most of JPL’s networks.”

    Martin also detailed how, of those 47 different cyberattacks, 13 of them “successfully compromised Agency computers.” One specific attacked yielded a heist of over 150 NASA employees which “could have been used to gain unauthorized access to NASA systems.” As a result, Martin wrote that hackers could have modified, copied, or deleted sensitive files; added fabricated accounts; upload malware designed to steal user credentials; or modify NASA system logs that would conceal the hackers’ actions.

    To highlight the level of concern that this security breach signifies for those unfamiliar with JPL, this is the lab responsible for many of NASA’s robotic missions exploring Earth, the solar system and beyond. JPL is also home to the Mars Science Laboratory, which is part of NASA’s long-term robotic exploration of Earth’s sometimes-closest celestial neighbor. One product of JPL’s exploration of Mars is the ongoing, decade-long reconnaissance mission of the Mars Odyssey orbiter, which discovered that a Martian crater once contained a lake and that there are more “water-carved canyons” on Mars than previously believed.

    At any rate, you can see how much could potentially be at risk were hackers to compromise NASA’s exploration of Mars, to say nothing of our own planet or the rest of space. Given that the Obama Administration hacked out 21% of NASA’s allotted funding for 2013 fiscal year, one must imagine that the resources NASA has in order to defend itself against cyberattacks will be more limited this year.