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Mars

SPACE: A Cloudy Day on Mars

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clouds on Mars

It might look like a postcard from Arizona, but this snapshot shows something much more exotic: the planet Mars, as seen by NASA’s Curiosity rover. The image is a combination of 21 individual photographs the rover took recently to study a strange type of wispy cloud over its Gale Crater home. Scientists realized two Earth years ago that the cloud type was forming earlier in the Martian year than they expected. So this Martian year, Curiosity was watching for the early clouds, and it was not disappointed. The clouds did indeed show up beginning in late January, when the robotic … Read more

SPACE: Is Mars Still Volcanically Active?

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Mars Volcanic Activity - NASA

Evidence of what may be the youngest eruption seen yet on Mars suggests the Red Planet may still be volcanically active, raising the possibility it was recently habitable, a new study finds. Most volcanism on Mars occurred between 3 billion and 4 billion years ago, leaving behind giant monuments such as Olympus Mons, the tallest mountain in the solar system. At 16 miles (25 km) high, Olympus Mons is about three times as tall as Mount Everest, Earth’s highest mountain. Previous research suggested the Red Planet may still have flared with smaller volcanic eruptions as recently as 2.5 million years … Read more

SPACE: China’s Rover Successfully Lands on Mars

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Chinese Mars Rover

China just successfully landed its first rover on Mars, becoming only the second nation to do so. The Tianwen-1 mission, China’s first interplanetary endeavor, reached the surface of the Red Planet Friday (May 14) at approximately 7:11 p.m. EDT (2311 GMT), though Chinese space officials have not yet confirmed the exact time and location of touchdown. Tianwen-1 (which translates to “Heavenly Questions”) arrived in Mars’ orbit in February after launching to the Red Planet on a Long March 5 rocket in July 2020. After circling the Red Planet for more than three months, the Tianwen-1 lander, with the rover attached, … Read more

MARS: NASA Extracts Breathable Oxygen From Thin Martian Air

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Mars

NASA has logged another extraterrestrial first on its latest mission to Mars: converting carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere into pure, breathable oxygen, the U.S. space agency said on Wednesday. The unprecedented extraction of oxygen, literally out of thin air on Mars, was achieved Tuesday by an experimental device aboard Perseverance, a six-wheeled science rover that landed on the Red Planet Feb. 18 after a seven-month journey from Earth. In its first activation, the toaster-sized instrument dubbed MOXIE, short for Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, produced about 5 grams of oxygen, equivalent to roughly 10 minutes’ worth of breathing … Read more

MARS: Ingenuity Takes Its Maiden Flight

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Ingenuity

The aerial exploration of Mars has begun. NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter lifted off on the Red Planet early this morning (April 19), performing the first-ever powered flight on a world beyond Earth. The 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) chopper was scheduled to rise from the floor of Mars’ Jezero Crater at 12:31 a.m. EDT (0431 GMT) today, get a maximum of 10 feet (3 meters) above the red dirt and land after roughly 40 seconds aloft. At about 6:15 a.m. EDT (1015 GMT), data came down from Ingenuity — via its much larger partner, NASA’s Perseverance rover — that the little rotorcraft had … Read more

SPACE: Mars Odyssey Snaps Beautiful Color-Enhanced Photo of North Pole

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Mars North Pole - NASA

NASA astronomers just shared a colorful new view of Mars that proves the Red Planet also looks great in blue. Using a special infrared camera aboard the Mars Odyssey orbiter, which has been soaring over the Red Planet since 2001, researchers snapped a thermal image of the Martian north pole, digitally colored to highlight the wide-ranging temperatures there. Areas tinted in blue represent colder regions, while warmer areas are tinted in yellow and orange, according to a NASA statement. In this image — which covers an area of the pole about 19 miles (30 kilometers) wide — vast sand dunes … Read more

SPACE: There’s a Green Rock on Mars

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Green Rock on Mars - NASA

Perseverance’s laser hasn’t yet penetrated the mystery of a strange Martian rock near the rover’s new digs. NASA’s rover is waiting for its companion, the Ingenuity helicopter, to make the first-ever powered flight on another planet. Meanwhile, its instruments targeted a greenish-looking rock on the Red Planet’s surface that has the science team “trading lots of hypotheses,” according to the rover’s Twitter feed — but please don’t pick aliens as one of them. “Is it something weathered out of the local bedrock?,” a tweet the account posted on Wednesday (March 31) wondered. “Is it a piece of Mars plopped into … Read more

Just In From Mars – The First Color Photo

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Mars color photo - NASA

OK, so it’s just dirt. But still…: NASA’s little Mars helicopter has opened its eyes on the Red Planet. The 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) chopper, known as Ingenuity, snapped its first color photograph on Saturday (April 3), shortly after being lowered to the Martian dirt by the Perseverance rover. The tableau shows “the floor of Mars’ Jezero Crater and a portion of two wheels of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover,” agency officials wrote in a description on Monday (April 5), when the photo was released. Full Story From Live Science

Martian Polar “Spiders” Finally Explained

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Martian Polar "Spiders - NASA

Ziggy played guitar, and scientists in the U.K. played with a big chunk of dry ice to try to figure out what’s behind the strange alien patterns known as the “spiders on Mars.” Those patterns, visible in satellite images of the Red Planet’s south pole, aren’t real spiders, of course; but the branching, black shapes carved into the Martian surface look creepy enough that researchers dubbed them “araneiforms” (meaning “spider-like”) after discovering the shapes more than two decades ago. Measuring up to 3,300 feet (1 kilometer) across, the gargantuan shapes don’t resemble anything on Earth. But in a new study … Read more

Mars: Curiosity Rover Snaps a Selfie

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Curiosity Rovver selfie - NASA

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity recently posed for a selfie in front of a beautiful Martian rock outcrop called “Mont Mercou,” after probing the area for clues about the Red Planet’s past. Curiosity landed inside Mars’ 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater in August 2012 with a primary goal to find out if the planet is, or was, suitable for life. Earlier in March, the rover arrived at a scenic rock formation as it traversed the slopes of Mount Sharp — a 3-mile-tall (5 km) mountain located at the center of Gale Crater, which Curiosity has been climbing since September 2014. This … Read more