Tag: Mars

Water frost has been spotted at the equator of Mars for the first time. In this region of the Red Planet, equivalent to its tropics, it was previously believed that it would be impossible for frost to exist.  The discovery could be crucial to modeling where water exists on Mars and how it is exchanged between the Red Planet’s atmosphere and its surface. This could be vital for future crewed exploration of Mars.  The water frost was seen by two European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft, first by the ExoMars Trace…

Mars may face more than twice as many close encounters with potentially dangerous asteroids as Earth does, according to a new study. This could imperil exploratory missions to the Red Planet, but also provide insight into how the inner solar system formed.  Asteroids constitute the biggest threat from space to our planet — the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor, for example, generated shock waves that injured over 1,000 people and caused more than $33 million in damage to infrastructure.  Astronomers and citizen asteroid hunters have detected around 33,000 similar space rocks that whiz closely past Earth…

Boeing has put forward its own idea to help NASA get its Mars Sample Return project back on track and on budget. NASA issued a solicitation for new ideas to get scientifically invaluable Martian material to Earth after being told the current plan is too expensive (about $11 billion), while also being too complex and facing scheduling issues.  Former NASA Chief Scientist Jim Green presented Boeing’s vision for a rejiggered Mars sample return mission concept at the annual Humans to Mars Summit last week.  Related: NASA’s Mars Sample Return in jeopardy…

For the past month, NASA’s Curiosity rover has been shadowing Gediz Vallis, a channel that scientists think may be the fossil of an ancient Martian river.  Last week, Curiosity reached the north side of Pinnacle Ridge, part of a rock wall that looms over Gediz Vallis. In fact, after Curiosity navigated bumpy ground to do that, it found that the ridge’s south side is navigable. That left Curiosity’s overseers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California with a choice: Should they keep on their planned course, continuing to…

Two NASA spacecraft will pay special attention to increasing levels of radiation that bombard Mars during this year’s approaching solar maximum, to better prepare astronauts for future missions to the Red Planet.  Every 11 years or so, the sun experiences a peak in activity known as solar maximum, due to its strong and constantly shifting magnetic fields. During this period of the solar cycle, the frequency and intensity of sunspots on the solar surface increases, generating solar flares and coronal mass ejections that send powerful streams of solar radiation out…

NASA has selected four volunteers to go on a mission to Mars — without actually leaving Earth. The simulated mission to the Red Planet will take place at a habitat created at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston; it will simulate what it would be like for astronauts to live and work on Mars for 45 days. The team includes Jason Lee, Stephanie Navarro, Shareef Al Romaithi and Piyumi Wijesekara. The four will call the agency’s Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) home from May 10 through June 24. Two alternate…

Since 2012, NASA’s Curiosity rover has repeatedly detected methane on Mars, specifically near its landing site inside the 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater.  But that Mars methane is behaving erratically. It only appears at night, it fluctuates seasonally and it spikes unexpectedly to levels 40 times higher than usual. To make things more puzzling, the gas isn’t present in appreciable amounts high in the Martian atmosphere, and it hasn’t been detected near the surface in other Red Planet locales. So what’s going on at Gale Crater? A group of NASA…