Monthly Archives: May 2024

This illustration shows a concept for multiple robots that would team up to ferry to Earth samples collected from the Mars surface by NASAs Mars Perseverance rover. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASAs Mars Sample Return mission is grappling with escalating costs and a postponed timeline, prompting a search for more efficient methods from the private sector to ensure its execution.

A critical NASA mission in the search for life beyond Earth, Mars Sample Return, is in trouble. Its budget has ballooned from US$5 billion to over $11 billion, and the sample return date may slip from the end of this decade to 2040.

The mission would be the first to try to return rock samples from Mars to Earth so scientists can analyze them for signs of past life.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a press conference on April 15, 2024, that the mission as currently conceived is too expensive and too slow. NASA gave private companies a month to submit proposals for bringing the samples back in a quicker and more affordable way.

As an astronomer who studies cosmology and has written a book about early missions to Mars, Ive been watching the sample return saga play out. Mars is the nearest and best place to search for life beyond Earth, and if this ambitious NASA mission unraveled, scientists would lose their chance to learn much more about the red planet.

The first NASA missions to reach the surface of Mars in 1976 revealed the planet as a frigid desert, uninhabitable without a thick atmosphere to shield life from the Suns ultraviolet radiation. But studies conducted over the past decade suggest that the planet may have been much warmer and wetter several billion years ago.

The Curiosity and Perseverance rovers have each shown that the planets early environment was suitable for microbial life.

They found the chemical building blocks of life and signs of surface water in the distant past. Curiosity, which landed on Mars in 2012, is still active; its twin, Perseverance, which landed on Mars in 2021, will play a crucial role in the sample return mission.

The first time NASA looked for life in a Mars rock was in 1996. Scientists claimed they had discovered microscopic fossils of bacteria in the Martian meteorite ALH84001. This meteorite is a piece of Mars that landed in Antarctica 13,000 years ago and was recovered in 1984. Scientists disagreed over whether the meteorite really had ever harbored biology, and today most scientists agree that theres not enough evidence to say that the rock contains fossils.

Several hundred Martian meteorites have been found on Earth in the past 40 years. Theyre free samples that fell to Earth, so while it might seem intuitive to study them, scientists cant tell where on Mars these meteorites originated. Also, they were blasted off the planets surface by impacts, and those violent events could have easily destroyed or altered subtle evidence of life in the rock.

Theres no substitute for bringing back samples from a region known to have been hospitable to life in the past. As a result, the agency is facing a price tag of $700 million per ounce, making these samples the most expensive material ever gathered.

Bringing Mars rocks back to Earth is the most challenging mission NASA has ever attempted, and the first stage has already started.

Perseverance has collected over two dozen rock and soil samples, depositing them on the floor of the Jezero Crater, a region that was probably once flooded with water and could have harbored life. The rover inserts the samples in containers the size of test tubes. Once the rover fills all the sample tubes, it will gather them and bring them to the spot where NASAs Sample Retrieval Lander will land. The Sample Retrieval Lander includes a rocket to get the samples into orbit around Mars.

The European Space Agency has designed an Earth Return Orbiter, which will rendezvous with the rocket in orbit and capture the basketball-sized sample container. The samples will then be automatically sealed into a biocontainment system and transferred to an Earth entry capsule, which is part of the Earth Return Orbiter. After the long trip home, the entry capsule will parachute to the Earths surface.

The complex choreography of this mission, which involves a rover, a lander, a rocket, an orbiter and the coordination of two space agencies, is unprecedented. Its the culprit behind the ballooning budget and the lengthy timeline.

Mars Sample Return has blown a hole in NASAs budget, which threatens other missions that need funding.

The NASA center behind the mission, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, just laid off over 500 employees. Its likely that Mars Sample Returns budget partly caused the layoffs, but they also came down to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory having an overfull plate of planetary missions and suffering budget cuts.

Within the past year, an independent review board report and a report from the NASA Office of Inspector General raised deep concerns about the viability of the sample return mission. These reports described the missions design as overly complex and noted issues such as inflation, supply chain problems and unrealistic costs and schedule estimates.

NASA is also feeling the heat from Congress. For fiscal year 2024, the Senate Appropriations Committee cut NASAs planetary science budget by over half a billion dollars. If NASA cant keep a lid on the costs, the mission might even get canceled.

Faced with these challenges, NASA has put out a call for innovative designs from private industry, with a goal of shrinking the missions cost and complexity. Proposals are due by May 17, which is an extremely tight timeline for such a challenging design effort. And itll be hard for private companies to improve on the plan that experts at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory had over a decade to put together.

An important potential player in this situation is the commercial space company SpaceX. NASA is already partnering with SpaceX on Americas return to the Moon. For the Artemis III mission, SpaceX will attempt to land humans on the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years.

However, the massive Starship rocket that SpaceX will use for Artemis has had only three test flights and needs a lot more development before NASA will trust it with a human cargo.

In principle, a Starship rocket could bring back a large payload of Mars rocks in a single two-year mission and at far lower cost. But Starship comes with great risks and uncertainties. Its not clear whether that rocket could return the samples that Perseverance has already gathered.

Starship uses a launchpad, and it would need to be refueled for a return journey. But theres no launchpad or fueling station at the Jezero Crater. Starship is designed to carry people, but if astronauts go to Mars to collect the samples, SpaceX will need a Starship rocket thats even bigger than the one it has tested so far.

Sending astronauts also carries extra risk and cost, and a strategy of using people might end up more complicated than NASAs current plan.

With all these pressures and constraints, NASA has chosen to see whether the private sector can come up with a winning solution. Well know the answer next month.

Written by Chris Impey, University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy, University of Arizona.

Adapted from an article originally published in The Conversation.

See the article here:

Will SpaceX's Innovation Save NASA's Mars Mission? - SciTechDaily

Abigail Allwood (second from left), principal investigator of the Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL) aboard NASAs Perseverance Mars rover, is seen here examining rocks at a site in Greenland. Allwood is a scientist based at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. (2021) NASA

A key objective for Perseverances mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planets geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASAs Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.

Date Created:2021-06-14 NASA ID: PIA24668 Larger image

Astrobiology

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Abigail Allwood Doing Mars Rover Astrobiology Fieldwork in Greenland - Astrobiology - Astrobiology News

ENs coverage of MARS Badminton Horse Trials is brought to you by Kentucky Performance Products, your go-to source for science-backed nutritional support across all types of horses, disciplines, and needs. Click here to learn more about what KPP can do for your horse thank you for supporting our wonderful sponsors!

The MARS Badminton Horse Trials:Website| Box Office | Entries | Timetable | Course Preview | Live Stream | ENs Coverage

THE COMPETITION:Welcome to the third CCI5* of the 2024 season, following on from a great week at the Defender Kentucky Three-Day Event two weeks ago and Australias Adelaide the week prior to that. This years a special year for Badminton: its the 75th anniversary of the event, a fact thatll be commemorated with a special pop-up museum featuring souvenirs of some of the greatest moments of the past eight decades. You can find it by the main scoreboard. This year, we also welcome a new title sponsor in MARS Equestrian so expect lots of chocolate for everyone, and also a bright and bold new fence in thearena in the MARS colour way. Oh, and for the more technically-minded among you, our competitors will be riding CCI5* Test B. Therell be 32 fences on the cross-country course, spanning 43-45 jumping efforts.

WHATS AT STAKE:The Badminton title,obviously, but also consider this:a major chance for some riders to prove to their team selectors that they really areall that. Oh, and the prize pots gone up this year too, to a juicy 425,000 making it the biggest prize fund in eventing. Theres no longer a Rolex Grand Slam on the line, though: we start again, following the eleventh-hour withdrawal of two-part leaderOliver Townend and Ballaghmor Class.

THE OFFICIALS:Sandy Phillips (GBR) will be President of the ground jury, and is joined this week by Jane Hamlin (USA) and Christian Steiner (AUT). Joanna Gillespie (GBR) will take on the role of jumping judge. The course is designed, once again, by Britains Eric Winter, advised by Mike Etherington-Smith, and Phillip Kelvin Bywater returns in his role as showjumping course designer. The events Technical Delegate is Andrew Temkin (USA), assisted by Stuart Buntine (GBR). Nicky Salmon is chief steward, and course building has once again been undertaken by the Willis Brothers.

THE ENTRIES:We head into Badminton week with a packed field of 71 entries spanning seven nations Great Britain, New Zealand, Ireland, France, the USA, Canada, Australia, and Switzerland are all represented here. Because its an Olympic year, theres a couple of notable absences: 2023 champion Lordships Graffalo wont line up for Ros Canter, though she does have an entry with last years Pau champion, Izilot DHI, and 2022 winner London 52 is staying home for Laura Collett, who instead rides debutant Hester. But dont rue their absence too much, because it opens the door for a seriously wide-open competition. As mentioned above,Oliver Townendand his five-star champion, warhorse, and perennial Badminton bridesmaid Ballaghmor Class will be fighting to try to win the Rolex Grand Slam, and they present a formidable threat to their opposition: Ballaghmor Class has won Burghley (twice) and Kentucky and has never been out of the top five in his nine five-star starts.

But theyre far from the only contenders for the win.Emily King makes her return to Gloucestershire on super form with her two-time Grantham Cup winnerValmy Biats, with whom shes owed some horsemanship good karma after pulling up in tough conditions while looking very competitive last year. The worlds most successful five-star rider,WilliamFox-Pitt, is also on very good form with the smart mare Grafennacht, who had a podium finish at Maryland last year, and, of course, theres Ros on a five-star winner to think about.Tim Price and Vitali might have been cursed by three fences down in each of their five-star starts so far, but theyve been hard at work jumping in Spain over the winter, and if we see them begin the week on a sub-20 as they did at Burghley last year, theyll put themselves in a serious position to try to shake off those demons. Weve also got a returning five-star winner in Chilli Knight, who took Bictons pop-up CCI5* in 2021 withGemma Stevens and has looked super since returning to the sport. Could this be the year for 2011 Burghley championCaroline Powellto return to the top of the podium, this time with her excellentGreenacres Special Cavalier? Or couldDavid Doel second at Burghley last year and extraordinarily consistent at this level become one of Badmintons most popular winners with Galileo Nieuwmoed? Or have we failed to name the winner at all in this entire section? Its a beautiful sort of Badminton, because truly, it could come from anywhere. Expect some great stories to unfold this week.

For the thirdyear running, the BBC wont be broadcasting Badminton well, not in its entirety, anyway. Youll be able to watch all the action, including trot-ups, by subscribing to Badminton TVfor a one-off price of 19.99. This gives you access to the livestream, wherever you are in the world, as well as nearly 100 hours of archive footage from prior events, peaks behind the scenes, course previews, and profiles. If youre in Britain, youll need to turn to BBC2 to watch the final competitors show jump live on Monday afternoon from 2.00 p.m.

We also recommend tuning in toBadminton Radio, which is broadcast live from the event all day, every day from 8.30 a.m. Helmed by a team of experts and riders alike, it features live commentary, interviews, insights into the competition, and much more. You can pick up a headset to tune in on site at the event, or tune into 87.7 FM locally or listen online here.Or, if you want to dive into previews, reviews, and reaction shows, head to the Eventing Podcast to get your fix.

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#badmintonhorsetrials, #badmintonbound, #rolexgrandslam

Accounts: Badminton Horse Trials,CrossCountry App, Horse&Hound, FEI Eventing, andEquestrian Team GBR. Dont forget to follow EN, too well be bringing you all the insanity in the middle you could possibly need! (And if youd like to see the real behind-the-scenes life of an EN journo on tour, you certainly can. #shamelessplug) Want to know the juiciest stats throughout the competition? Make sure you follow EquiRatings.

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FORM GUIDE Check out and bookmark ENs exclusive Form Guide detailing the stories and stats of each horse and rider in this years field.

Meet the Horses and Riders of the 2024 Badminton Field

BADMINTON WEEK STORIES AND REPORTS

SUNDAY

I Never Thought It Was a Possibility: Caroline Powell Wins MARS Badminton 2024

It All Comes Down to This Let the Clenching Commence! Live Blog from the Finale of MARS Badminton Horse Trials

One Horse Spun and Three Withdrawals at MARS Badminton Final Horse Inspection

SATURDAY

An Emboldening Day for the Sport: Tim Price Takes the Lead on Vintage Badminton Cross-Country Day

Its Satur-yay! Butts On Seats and Buckle Up Live Blog from Cross Country Day at MARS Badminton Horse Trials

FRIDAY

A 5* With a 4*-S in the Middle Riders React to Cross Country at MARS Badminton Horse Trials

Friday Afternoon: Ros Retains Lead Amid Bum-Cam Reign of Terror

Reigning Champ Ros Canter Takes Friday Morning Badminton Lead

The 2024 MARS Badminton Field: At A Glance

Diamonds on the Soles of their Shoes Live Blog from Dressage Day Two at MARS Badminton Horse Trials

THURSDAY

Video Break: Badminton Goals and Memories with Laura Collett

Thursday Afternoon at Badminton: Tiana Coudray is Best of the Bunch; Bubby Retains Lead Overnight

Being Here is a Dream Come True: Comeback Queen Bubby Upton Takes Thursday Morning Lead at Badminton

Shine Bright Between the White Boards Live Blog from Dressage Day One at MARS Badminton Horse Trials

WEDNESDAY

Movers, Shakers, and Heart Horses: Team EN Makes Their Picks for Badminton

One Hold and an Eleventh-Hour Withdrawal, But All Accepted at MARS Badminton First Horse Inspection

Continental Influence, A Relocated Finish, and a Soggy Spring: Walk the 2024 Badminton Course with Eric Winter

PRE-EVENT COVERAGE: Back to Badminton: Bubby Upton Defies the Odds, Again

Rolex Grand Slam Contender Oliver Townend Withdraws from Badminton

Drawn Order for MARS Badminton Horse Trials: Tom Jackson to Lead Off

Top Contender Among Latest Badminton Withdrawals

MARS Badminton Entries Revealed: 87 Pairs Accepted for 2024 Event

A Happy Anniversary Indeed: Badminton Prize Money Increased to 425,000 for 2024

Badminton Box Office Opens for 2024 Priority Tickets

ENs coverage of MARS Badminton Horse Trials is brought to you by Kentucky Performance Products, your go-to source for science-backed nutritional support across all types of horses, disciplines, and needs. Click here to learn more about what KPP can do for your horse thank you for supporting our wonderful sponsors!

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ENs Ultimate Guide to the 2024 MARS Badminton Horse Trials - Eventing Nation

A collection of rocks scattered on an ancient shoreline on Mars might indicate that the Red Planet was once far more Earth-like than scientists previously thought.

The rocks, discovered by NASA's Curiosity rover, are unusually rich in manganese oxide a chemical that adds to growing evidence that the once-habitable Mars may have sported Earth-like oxygen levels and life-friendly conditions early in its history, scientists say.

NASA calls manganese on Earth "an unsung hero in the evolution of life." Scientists know from our planet's geological history that manganese was abundant in rocks and in the oceans before the earliest life-forms emerged roughly 4 billion years ago and that it paved the way for oxygen that most life now relies on.

The only known ways to produce manganese oxide, however, involve either abundant oxygen or microbial life. But there isn't strong evidence for the former on Mars, and none for the latter, leaving scientists puzzled by how the chemical formed in the newfound rocks.

Related: Hundreds of black 'spiders' spotted in mysterious 'Inca City' on Mars in new satellite photos

Forming rocks rich in manganese oxide "is easy to do on Earth because of microbes and because of oxygen which [also forms] because of microbes so it all points back toward life," lead study author Patrick Gasda, a research scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, told Live Science. "We of course have no evidence of life on Mars, so if we're trying to form oxygen in a fully abiotic system, our current understanding of Mars doesn't explain that."

The Curiosity rover came across the heavily eroded rocks while trekking through the middle of Gale crater, a 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) ancient lake bed that the rover has been exploring since 2012. The rover's ChemCam instrument "sniffed" the manganese oxide within the rocks by vaporizing tiny bits with a laser and then analyzing the resulting cloud of plasma. The compound constitutes nearly half of the rocks' chemical makeup, according to the new study, which was published last week in the journal JGR Planets.

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At the site where Curiosity found the new rocks, the rover recorded 10 to 15 meters (33 to 49 feet) of elevation change. Although that's tiny when compared with the hundreds of meters Curiosity has climbed over the years, it is "pointing us toward something special going on in that place," Gasda told Live Science. The rock texture where the new sandstones were found appears to have transitioned from "curved" to "flat-lined" a change Gasda and his colleagues are interpreting as a river channel opening out into a lake.

"That means we're at the shore of the lake or near the shore of the lake," Gasda said. He noted that this interpretation is uncertain due to limited data, because Curiosity drove past the region just once. "That made the interpretation really challenging, but this is our best hypothesis," he added.

If the hypothesis is correct, the rocks may have been dumped in the region when the river water slowed down as it entered the lake, similar to manganese-oxide-rich rocks that have been found on the shores of shallow lakes on Earth.

The newfound rocks are "another line of evidence for liquid water on Mars in the past, which is beneficial for life," Manasvi Lingam, an astrobiologist at the Florida Institute of Technology who was not affiliated with the new research, told Live Science. "This work provides evidence in favor of habitability."

However, not everyone agrees that the newfound rocks indicate an oxygen-rich Mars. According to Jeffrey Catalano, a professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, who was not involved in the study, the presence of oxidized rocks could help scientists understand whether Mars, like Earth, went through "a punctuated transition" from a lower-oxygen period and a higher-oxygen period. "The impact of manganese oxides on our understanding of such a transition, however, have been overstated, here and in prior work," he told Live Science.

Catalano was part of a 2022 study that found manganese oxide could easily form under Mars-like conditions without atmospheric oxygen. That research, which was based on lab experiments, showed that elements such as chlorine and bromine, which were abundant on early Mars, converted manganese dissolved in water into manganese oxide minerals. This finding offered an alternative to oxygen that could explain rocks like the newfound ones on Mars.

"There are several life forms even on Earth that do not require oxygen to survive," Kaushik Mitra, a geochemist at the University of Texas at San Antonio who led that study, said in a statement in 2022. "I don't think of it as a 'setback' to habitability only that there were probably no oxygen-based lifeforms."

Read more:

Mars may have been more Earth-like than we thought, discovery of oxygen-rich rocks reveals - Livescience.com

D.O. for the concept image for 'Mars.' Photo courtesy ofCompany SooSoo

D.O.s (Doh Kyung-soo) singing is at all times a special one for mea euphonious voice of sweeping sonorous melodies. Those melodies shine bright as he turns up the passion on Mars, the lead single off his third mini album Blossom, within a short film-esque music videolike an ode to love and longing over a vivid pop tune.

You and I live on different planets/I have never left Mars in my life/Venus is where I can see you. Mars opening verse nods to the boundaries and distinctions between a man and a woman. She is from Venus, the planet of love, while he is from Mars, the planet of passion. They complement each other, spicing a life whereby love prevails over differences. D.O. muses, Should I fly to that far-off place to reach out to you? and is striving to make the communication happen.

Mars appears lush and balmy; it breathes more life through D.O.s charming presence; his smooth vocals meander across a tranquil acoustic realm, accented by soft guitar sounds speaking to its essence. It suggests that the allure of a love song awash in desire, like Mars, is a major musical catalyst in and of itself. At the heart of the allure lies the universal human experience of love and an urge to connect with someone else. Thats exactly what Mars doesits beauty lies in its ability to take one there, where it creates a vivid portrayal of the desire that consumes the artist.

The pre-chorus details his restless nights and his racing heart, growing fonder by the minute for this person. While the chorus reiterates that hes still stuck on Mars, D.O. delivers the lines with a sense of unflinching passion, expressing how loves influence transcends space and time, rendering the moment valuable and fueling his desire to finally meet the one hes been waiting for.

The songs subsequent parts center on his potential feelingsof awkwardness when he suddenly sees her, the worries he has, the heart-pounding moments, and all the stuff that stirs his imagination about this amazing encounter, making him wish to get closer to her faster than feeling worried. As time goes on, the fear will be gone, for hell be by her side, with no spaces in between. The video draws to a close, featuring D.O.s efforts to establish contact with the beloved, eventually done through a correspondence of messages between the two. At this point, he sings, You know I fly from Mars, although hes still outlying, so far away.

Mars is a mellifluous number that everyone may relate toan engaging narrative through music. It relates to us in a very familiar sense in that it mirrors back to us the feelings and experiences of love and longing that we may have experienced in our lives. D.O. understands that and makes a pleasant pop song out of it.

Read more from the original source:

EXOs D.O. Turns Up the Passion on Mars: Song Review - Rolling Stone India