Want to go to Mars? Dutch organisation Mars One says it will open applications imminently. It would be a one-way trip, and the company hopes to build a community of settlers on the planet.
via Applicants wanted for a one-way ticket to Mars
- Tag Archives Mars
-
-
NASA Unveils New Mars Mission to Probe Red Planet’s Core
NASA’s next low-budget planetary mission will land a probe on Mars in 2016 to study why the Red Planet went down such a different evolutionary path than Earth did, the agency announced today (Aug. 20).
The new mission, called InSight, will attempt to determine whether Mars’ core is liquid or solid, and why the Red Planet’s crust does not appear to be composed of drifting tectonic plates like Earth’s is. Such information could help scientists better understand how rocky planets form and evolve, researchers said.
InSight will get to the ‘core’ of the nature of the interior and structure of Mars, well below the observations we’ve been able to make from orbit or the surface,” John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a statement.
InSight — short for Interior exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport — is the latest of NASA’s Discovery-class missions, and its cost will be capped at $425 million in 2010 dollars (excluding the launch vehicle).
The mission will be led by Bruce Banerdt of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Insight is slated to launch in March 2016 and put a lander on Mars in September of that year to begin its two-year science mission.
The lander will carry four instruments, which will determine Mars’ rotation axis and measure the seismic waves and heat flowing through and from the planet’s interior. The craft will also sport a robotic arm and two cameras, researchers said.
Insight beat out two other finalists to become NASA’s 12th Discovery-class mission. The other two contenders were Comet Hopper, which would have landed on a comet multiple times to study how the body changed on its trip around the sun, and the Titan Mare Explorer, or TiME.
TiME would have dropped onto the methane-ethane seas of Saturn’s huge moon Titan, providing the first direct exploration of an ocean beyond Earth.
All three finalists offered great scientific potential, officials said. But InSight builds on technology used in NASA’s Phoenix lander mission, which confirmed the presence of subsurface water ice near the Martian north pole in 2008.
That heritage — along with key contributions on science instruments from the French and German space agencies — helped swing the decision InSight’s way, convincing NASA that the mission could stay within its relatively low budget.
Full article: http://www.space.com … ion-2016-launch.html
-
Mars Rover Curiosity Beams Home 1st Color Panorama of Red Planet
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has captured a magnificent postcard from the Red Planet — a 360-degree color view that offers a glimpse of the rover’s colorful and apparently diverse surroundings.
Curiosity, which is also known as the Mars Science Laboratory, successfully touched down on Mars on Sunday (Aug. 5 PDT), and has already snapped a flurry of photos, including sweeping black-and-white and color images of the Martian landscape and a self-portrait. In a news briefing today (Aug. 9), NASA released images and video of Curiosity’s first color panorama view, a mosaic taken on the rover’s third full day on Mars, which mission managers refer to as Sol 3.
The panoramic view shows Curiosity’s own shadow reflected onto the Martian surface, with a dark band of dunes in the distance, and the rim of Gale Crater beyond that. Nearby on the left and right, gray patches where the spacecraft’s rocket-powered sky crane blasted the ground can be clearly seen. The sky crane helped slow Curiosity’s speed as it flew through the Martian atmosphere to the planet’s surface.
The impact of the rocket plumes kicked up material from the surface, leaving these gaping scars that scientists are now eager to investigate.
“There’s been a lot of discussion and an awful lot of eagerness to know what the composition of the rocks are, and to use our laser,” said Dawn Sumner, a Mars Science Laboratory scientist and a geology professor at the University of California, Davis.
The color panorama was stitched together using 130 images that are 144 by 144 pixels each. A selected number of full frame versions from the panorama are expected to be relayed back to Earth at a later date, said Michael Malin, of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego and principal investigator of Curiosity’s imaging system, called Mastcam.
The panoramic view also showcases Mars’ true colors, albeit slightly brighter.
“They’re what the camera sent back, I just brightened them up,” Malin said. “That’s what the bare filter gets you when you look at Mars.”
Mission controllers are now preparing for a roughly 4-day procedure to update Curiosity with new software from the ground. This transition is expected to begin on Saturday (Aug. 11), and will switch the rover’s focus from landing to its new life of operating on the Martian surface, NASA officials said.
Full article: http://www.space.com … norama-pictures.html