Octopus Overlords

The space agency on Tuesday announced plans to launch another mega-rover to the red planet in 2020 that will be modeled after the wildly popular Curiosity.

To keep costs down, engineers will borrow Curiosity's blueprints, recycle spare parts where possible and use proven technology including the novel landing gear that delivered the car-size rover inside an ancient crater in August.

In the coming months, a team of experts will debate whether the new rover should have the ability to drill into rocks and store pieces for a future pickup — either by another spacecraft or humans.

Turtle wrote:The reason why they don't build copies is that part of the giant cost is actually the launch of the rover, and missions tend to be pretty specialized, and costly. Not only is there the cost for the rover, the launch, there's also all the costs for long term monitoring. So even if they build an extra, they wouldn't have the funding to send it anywhere.

Curiosity is actually bouncing data through a previous satellite we put into orbit around mars.

NASA’s Curiosity rover has explored a new area on Mars called Yellowknife Bay, which shows plenty of evidence of flowing water. The rover is preparing to drill into a rock nicknamed “John Klein” in the location in the next couple weeks, investigating its composition and searching for organics. This will be the first time that engineers have drilled into the surface of another planet.

Scientists already know that Curiosity’s explorations have taken it to a place that was basically an ancient riverbed. Now they are uncovering the complex geologic history of the area and have stumbled across many interesting features.
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For the last few weeks, the rover has been moving from the plateau it landed on down a slope into a depression. As it descended, it passed through layers of rock that are increasingly older, taking it backwards into the planet’s history. Geologists are finding a lot of different rock types, indicating that many different geologic processes took place here over time.

Some of the minerals are sedimentary, suggesting that flowing water moved small grains around and deposited them, and other evidence suggests water moved through the rocks after they had formed. Tiny spherical concretions scattered through the rock were likely formed when water percolated through rock pores and minerals precipitated out. Other samples are cracked and filled with veins of material such as calcium sulfate, that were also formed when water percolated through the cracks and deposited the mineral.
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The drilling will probably take place within two weeks, though NASA engineers are still unsure of the exact date. The procedure will be “the most significant engineering thing we’ve done since landing,” said Cook, and will require several trial runs, equipment warm-ups, and drilling a couple test holes to make sure everything works. The team wants to take things as slowly as possible to correct for any problems that may arise, such as potential electrical shorts and excessive shaking of the rover.

The results of this “mini-drill” operation can be seen in the image above: a tiny hole 1.6 cm across and 2 cm deep, a cavity just barely big enough for you to stick your pinky finger into. The event was in preparation of Curiosity’s upcoming big-kid version of this drilling, when it will bore into a rock nicknamed John Klein and analyze the interior of Mars.

The shavings from this mini-drill test will be evaluated to see if they are suitable to be processed by the rover’s scoop and interior lab instruments. They will also be used to rub the drill bit of any remaining contaminants from Earth to ensure a clean sample. If everything checks out, the rover could perform its first major drilling, which will reach a depth of 5 cm, in several days.

NASA wrote:The ground team for NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has switched the rover to a redundant onboard computer in response to a memory issue on the computer that had been active.
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The spacecraft remained in communications at all scheduled communication windows on Wednesday, but it did not send recorded data, only current status information. The status information revealed that the computer had not switched to the usual daily "sleep" mode when planned. Diagnostic work in a testing simulation at JPL indicates the situation involved corrupted memory at an A-side memory location used for addressing memory files.

A comet spotted earlier this year may pass close enough for Mars to feel the rock’s hot breath down its neck, according to new reports that surfaced Monday and Tuesday. The comet, named C/2013 A1, may pass within a few tens of thousands of miles of Mars’ center, with a remote chance that the miles-wide comet will collide with the planet.

C/2013 A1 “Siding Spring,” a comet between 5 and 30 miles wide, was spotted January 3 by astronomer Robert H. McNaught. Researchers were able to look back in the image history of the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona and spot signs of the comet as early as December 8, 2012. NASA states that other archives have traced sightings back to October 4, 2012.

According to scientists at NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office, Siding Spring originates from the Oort Cloud of our Solar System and has been journeying to this point for more than a million years. In less than two years, around October 19, 2014, the comet will pass very close to Mars.

Based on the parabolic orbit observed so far, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab estimates Siding Spring will pass within 186,000 miles of Mars. The NEO’s estimate, based on observations from data up to March 1, places the distances at 31,000 miles from the surface. NBC notes that observations made by Russian astronomer Leonid Elenin of the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics indicate that the comet will pass 25,700 miles from the center of Mars.

“The possibility of an impact cannot be excluded,” stated NASA in a press release. According to NBC, the comet would be moving 35 miles per second at the time of impact and would create a crater up to 10 times the diameter of the comet’s body and around 1.25 miles deep. If the comet manages to miss Mars, it will be a prime target for observation in October of next year, as it’s set to pass Mars around October 19, followed by the Sun on October 25.

LordMortis wrote:Get your name buried in the contents of DVD being sent to Mars on MAVEN

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/201 ... n=20130502" target="_blank

Rhawn Joseph, a neuropsychologist and author, filed a lawsuit in a California court earlier this week demanding NASA "thoroughly scientifically examine and investigate" the mystery object that seemingly appeared out of nowhere on the surface of Mars this month.

Dubbed the "jelly donut," by Opportunity lead scientist Steve Squyres, the rock is white on the outside with a red center. And while NASA scientists admitted it was "unlike anything we have seen before," they definitely determined it to be a rock.
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The self-labelled astrobiologist and author of several books on extraterrestial life instead resorted to legal action against the agency, explaining in the court petition his theory that the rock is indeed "a putative biological organism."

In fact, it could be a "mushroom-like fungus, a composite organism consisting of colonies of lichen and cyanobacteria, and which on Earth is known as Apothecium," Joseph speculated in the petition.

Joseph contends the object wasn't moved into view by anything; it was already there and grew to its present size in 12 days.

He added that it was "inexplicable, recklessly negligent, and bizarre" that NASA did not take close-up photos from a variety of angles, and requested that "100 high-resolution photos and 24 microscopic in-focus images of the object's exterior" be provided to him.

Joseph's writings have previously appeared on an online journal called Cosmology, which hasn't shied away from publishing controversial topics in the past. He has also authored a range of books on various topics including neuropsychology, UFOs, the Sept. 11 terror attacks and female sexuality.

The committee of the General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowment in the United Arab Emirates that issued the fatwa against such a journey doesn't have anything against space exploration,Elon Musk's Mars visions, or anything like that. Rather, the religious leaders argue that making the trip would be tantamount to committing suicide, which all religions tend to frown upon.
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Professor Farooq Hamada, who presided over the committee, explained, "Protecting life against all possible dangers and keeping it safe is an issue agreed upon by all religions and is clearly stipulated in verse 4/29 of the Holy Quran: Do not kill yourselves or one another. Indeed, Allah is to you ever Merciful."

Hundreds of Saudis and other Arabs have applied to Mars One, and the committee suspects some may be interested in the trip "for escaping punishment or standing before Almighty Allah for judgment," according to the Khaleej Times.

The committee stood firm in its belief that this approach would be a waste of time and one very long trip: "This is an absolutely baseless and unacceptable belief because not even an atom falls outside the purview of Allah, the Creator of everything."

Kraken wrote:50 years ago today, NASA launched Mariner 4, the first probe to Mars.

Telescopic observations were vague and contradictory. We were pretty sure there weren't really any canals, but we thought there might be seasonal vegetation and possibly some evidence of higher life in the present or past (ruined cities, maybe). Nobody was sure what the first pictures would show.

The primitive images that came in the next summer discouraged those hopes. All we saw was craters. Mars didn't look much more hospitable than the moon. 8-year-old me was disappointed and refused to believe that Mars was just another dead rock until Mariner 9 reinforced those conclusions in greater detail a few years later.

My hunch is that we'll eventually find single-celled organism clinging to isolated environments on Mars...but it might take a lot of looking to find them.

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has measured a tenfold spike in methane, an organic chemical, in the atmosphere around it and detected other organic molecules in a rock-powder sample collected by the robotic laboratory's drill.

LordMortis wrote:

My hunch is that we'll eventually find single-celled organism clinging to isolated environments on Mars...but it might take a lot of looking to find them.

Getting closer.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4413

Turtle wrote:What you guys might not realize though, is that while most Earth based bacterial life would die on the surface of Mars, including some of what we consider extremophiles on Earth. There's significant evidence that many of our microbial life would be just fine living just under the surface of mars. So we've probably already contaminated the planet, but it's not like Martian life was going anywhere anyway. Even if a moon sized water asteroid hit mars, it would just evaporate off into space due to lack of a magnetosphere.

I'm pretty sure we'll find signs of ancient life on Mars, long dead since the planet's protective geological activity became dormant.

Imaged by the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on board NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) that orbits the planet 150 miles overhead, strange spider-like formations cover this south polar region of Mars. And these are truly alien features that are found nowhere on Earth.

Four crewmembers simulating a mission on Mars dealt with a real-life emergency late last month — a greenhouse fire so strong that flames reached at least 10 feet (3 meters) high.

This image by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows what appears to be the ExoMars lander's parachute (bright spot at bottom) and the impact site of the lander itself (dark patch at top).


Europe's ExoMars lander apparently crashed on the Red Planet, and an orbiting NASA spacecraft has spotted its grave, European Space Agency (ESA) officials said.

The lander, named Schiaparelli, stopped communicating with mission control about 1 minute before its planned touchdown on Mars Wednesday morning (Oct. 19). Newly released photos of the landing site by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) seem to confirm what ExoMars team members had suspected — that Schiaparelli died a violent death.

[img]This comparison of before-and-after images by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows two features likely created during the Oct. 19, 2016 landing attempt of the ExoMars Schiaparelli lander. The small bright feature at bottom is probably Schiaparelli’s parachute, while the dark, fuzzy blob is likely the lander’s crash site.
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The HI-SEAS Habitat is semi-portable, low-impact, and designed to have all the desirable analog features specified in Keeton et al (2011). It has a habitable volume of ~13,000 cubic feet, a usable floor space of ~1200 square feet, and small sleeping quarters for a crew of six, as well as a kitchen, laboratory, bathroom, simulated airlock and ‘dirty’ work area.

The HI-SEAS site has Mars-like geology which allows crews to perform high-fidelity geological field work and add to the realism of the mission simulation. The Martian regolith examined by the CheMin instrument (Blake et al. 2012) is very similar to the weathered basaltic materials found in this part of Hawaii.

HI-SEAS offers not only physical isolation and geological similarity. We have developed a robust system of high-latency communication between Crew and Mission Support that imposes a Mars-like 20-minute delay on message reception each way.