At 10:31 p.m. PDT tonight, August 5 (1:31 a.m. EDT Aug. 6), after nearly 9 months of travel, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (and a rover named Curiosity) will arrive at the Red Planet to explore the interior of Gale Crater and hunt for the ingredients of life. Of course, between arriving and hunting, there has…
Tag: Mars
Is This What Life on Mars Might Have Looked Like?
A great find from the NASA archives! This composite of three artists’ renderings from 1975 may have only been wish fulfillment for an unnamed JPL artist; however, the landscape and the rendered shapes took into account what was known about Mars at that time, a year before the first Viking landing. “Life on Mars” was…
Remembering Sojourner, the First Mars Rover
The Mars Pathfinder mission, launched on Dec. 4, 1996, was designed to demonstrate a low-cost method for delivering a set of science instruments to Mars and sent the first wheeled vehicle to be used on another planet. The mission served as the foundation for all future Mars rovers. Although I eagerly followed the exciting news…
Curiosity’s “Crazy” Landing
“When people look at it, it looks crazy. It’s a very natural thing. Sometimes when we look at it it looks crazy. It is the result of reason, engineering, thought… but it still looks crazy.” – Adam Steltzner, EDL Engineer On August 5, after nearly 9 months of travel, Mars Science Laboratory (aka Curiosity) will…
Three Devils, One Image
The HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Oribiter captured this image of Mars’ surface, showing the presence of three different dust devils in the same region. Dust devils are common during the springtime on Mars’ northern hemisphere, when increased sunlight heats the surface and causes air to rise rapidly in spinning columns. The image was…
Did We Find Life On Mars… 35 Years Ago?
NASA’s twin Viking 1 and 2 landers launched in August and September of 1975 and successfully landed on Mars in July and September of 1976. Their principal mission was to search for life, which they did by digging into the ruddy Martian soil looking for signs of respiration — a signal of biological activity. The results,…
The Devil’s Shadow
The 800-meter-tall plume of a dust devil casts a long shadow on the surface of Mars in this image from the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Caused by warm air near the ground rapidly rising in spinning columns, dust devils are a common sight on Mars during the northern spring season. Read more…
Martian Hazard #271: Falling Frost Avalanches!
As spring comes to Mars’ north polar latitudes, the added sunlight warms layers of subsurface CO2 ice, which can rapidly sublimate and force its way outwards and upwards. When this occurs along the edges of steep scarps, as seen in the image above, the rapid expansion of the CO2 – literally ‘dry ice’ – can…
More Evidence for a Wetter, “Volcanier” Mars
Spirit may have settled in for an eternal sleep on Mars but the data she’s sent back is still helping researchers piece together clues for a wetter history of the red planet! The image above, a false-color view from the “Home Plate” region where Spirit now sits, points to a feature geologists call a “bomb sag”….
Curiosity Launches!
Can’t see the video below? Click here. This morning at 10:02 a.m. EST, the Atlas V rocket with Mars Science Laboratory (a.k.a. Curiosity) encapsulated in its payload successfully launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Base. It was a beautiful launch and the HD video is above… enjoy! MSL successfully separated from the rocket phase 44…
Death of a Rover
A wonderful award-winning 45-minute program about the life – and death – of the amazing Mars Exploration Rover, Spirit. From National Geographic TV…check it out.
A Rover Sees Its Shadow
As luck would have it, it does foretell an oncoming winter. Opportunity is preparing to find a spot to safely weather the frigid winter months on Mars, a long six months of reduced sunlight (which means less power from her solar panels) and temperatures dropping well into the -100ºs C (almost -200ºs F).
Lights in the Dark 