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Mars

Another Mars Mission This Month – This One from NASA

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Mars Perseverance - NASA

NASA’s new Mars rover will launch toward the Red Planet this Thursday, July 30. The Mars Perseverance rover will explore the planet for ancient habitable environments and signs of fossilized microbial life at Mars’ Jezero crater, which was once a lake. The launch window opens at 7:50 a.m. EDT, according to NASA. Pre-launch coverage will begin at 7:00 a.m. EDT. The launch window will stay open until about 9:50 a.m. EDT, with opportunities to launch every five minutes in that two-hour timeframe. The pre-launch and launch will be livestreamed on Live Science. Mars Perseverance is part of NASA’s Moon to … Read more

Scientists Make “Super Space Sunblock”

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Mars - NASA

For astronauts preparing to spend a long summer vacation on Mars, hats and umbrellas might not be enough to protect them from the sun’s harsh rays. And just like beachgoers slathering on sunscreen, explorers on the moon or Mars may one day shield themselves using creams containing a new bioengineered material called selenomelanin, created by enriching the natural pigment melanin with the metal selenium. Outside the Earth’s protective magnetic field, humans are exposed to many types of dangerous radiation, according to NASA. This includes damaging ultraviolet radiation, X-rays and gamma rays from the sun, as well as superfast subatomic particles … Read more

China, UAE Send Probes to Mars

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Mars - pixabay

And here in the US, we’re doing what? Oh yeah, waiting for the orange one’s latest tweet. China launches ambitious Tianwen-1 Mars rover missionChina’s first fully homegrown Mars mission is on its way to the Red Planet. The Tianwen-1 mission launched atop a Long March 5 rocket from Hainan Island’s Wenchang Satellite Launch Center this morning (July 23) at 12:41 a.m. EDT (0441 GMT).https://www.livescience.com/china-tianwen-1-mars-mission-launch.html The United Arab Emirates launched a mission to MarsThe United Arab Emirates’ probe Hope is on its way to Mars, marking the first planetary science mission led by an Arab country. A July 19 launch from … Read more

SPACE: Will We Need to Tweak Our DNA to Colonize Mars?

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Mars - NASA

If humanity is ever going to settle down on Mars, we may need to become a little less human. Crewed missions to Mars, which NASA wants to start flying in the 2030s, will be tough on astronauts, exposing them to high radiation loads, bone-wasting microgravity and other hazards for several years at a time. But these pioneers should still be able to make it back to Earth in relatively good nick, agency officials have said. It might be a different story for those who choose not to come home, however. If we want to stay safe and healthy while living … Read more

Welcome to Your New Home on Mars

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lava tube - pixabay

There’s no safe place to camp out on Mars. But a team of researchers has identified what could be future Martian explorers’ best possible hideout: a string of lava tubes in the low-lying Hellas Planitia — an impact basin blasted into the Red Planet’s surface by ancient meteor impacts. Every part of Mars could kill you. Its surface is arid, starved of oxygen and blasted daily with unrelenting, unfiltered solar radiation. Any future Martian explorers will put their lives in peril when they embark. NASA has decades of experience hauling oxygen, food and water beyond Earth. But that last killer, … Read more

SCIENCE: The Coronavirus & Mars

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Mars - Pixabay

A new virus called SARS-CoV-2 is a coronavirus that has caused an outbreak of a disease called COVID-19. Public health groups, such as the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are still learning about the virus, monitoring the disease it causes, and researching potential ways to stop it. You can read all about the coronavirus and COVID-19 at our sibling site, LiveScience. But me being me, my mind went straight to Mars. I have long been aware of science fiction’s vision of Earth receiving space souvenirs that carry organisms that might be dangerous to … Read more

Are the 2020s “The Decade of Mars”?

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Mars - Pixabay

The 2010s saw big advances in Mars exploration, but the new decade may bring even more exciting news — the possible discovery of Red Planet life. Scientists learned a great deal about the history and evolution of Mars in the last 10 years. NASA’s Curiosity rover mission led the charge, determining that at least some parts of the planet were capable of supporting Earth-like life for long stretches in the ancient past. “It’s been a very successful and very enlightening mission, in terms of figuring out that Mars was a habitable planet,” Curiosity project scientist Ashwin Vasavada, of NASA’s Jet … Read more

SPACE: NASA Releases “Treasure Map” of Mars

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NASA’s wish to follow the water on Mars just got a helping hand. Scientists have released a new global map showing water ice that is as little as 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) below the Red Planet’s surface. With data in hand, the research team located at least one promising landing spot for future astronaut missions: a big zone in the northern hemisphere’s Arcadia Planitia. This area has a lot of water ice close to the surface and is in the ideal location for a human Mars mission, because it is in a temperate, midlatitude region with plenty of sunlight, the … Read more

Curiosity Rover Posts Emo Photo of Mars

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curiosity rover Mars photo - NASA

Mars is the only known planet in the universe inhabited solely by robots. There’s InSight, the sturdy robo-stethoscope listening for the Red Planet’s heartbeat; there’s Odyssey and the gang, a cadre of droids surveilling the planet from orbit. And then, climbing a lonely crater hundreds of miles away from its companions, there’s Curiosity, the last surviving rover on Mars. About the size of an SUV and capable of traveling 100 feet (30 meters) per hour, Curiosity has been exploring the 3.5-billion-year-old pit called Gale Crater since landing there in 2012. Now, Curiosity is climbing the mountain, known as Mount Sharp … Read more

SPACE: Life on Mars

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Mars - NASA

Mars may seem barren and inhospitable today, but long ago the Red Planet once looked very different. Once upon a time, Mars was warmer than it is now, and covered in rivers, lakes and seas. There’s no way of saying for sure whether Martians ever existed, experts say. Still, there’s mounting evidence that Mars was not only habitable in theory, but actually home to some kind of extraterrestrial life. It’s even possible that remnants of that life still lurk undiscovered beneath Mars’ surface. Here are six reasons why astrobiologists believe in the possibility of life on Mars.  River Valleys and … Read more