Category Archives: Mars

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SAN FRANCISCO When the first astronauts venture to Mars in the future, the crew will need access to healthy, fresh food but there are no cosmic grocery stores along the way. And the round trip to the red planet is expected to take about three years.

Food is one of the many challenges NASA faces before sending humans into deep space, but it's a big one. Nutritious food that also stimulates the appetite is necessary to keep astronauts healthy, and freeze-dried options won't be enough.

This demand for nutrition is part of why NASA and the Canadian Space Agency began the Deep Space Food Challenge, an open call to experts around the world to develop technologies for keeping astronauts fed and healthy on long-term space missions.

The competition led the Astra Gastronomy team at Nonfiction, a design and innovation firm based in San Francisco, to develop the Space Culinary Lab. The compact kitchen-style system includes stations for growing algae and leafy greens, blending creamy coffee and even grilling meat.

"The idea here is to create a space kitchen," said Phnam Bagley, cofounder of Nonfiction. "You get to prepare the food that you want however you want it. Bringing that level of agency to astronauts is where designers like us start."

The Space Culinary Lab made it through the first phase of the Deep Space Food Challenge in October 2021. Despite not being selected during phase two, the design showcases some of the technology that could be used not only in space but also in resource-challenged environments such as refugee camps and food deserts on Earth.

The heart of the design is to bring "a bit of humanity to space," with mix and match options so astronauts aren't exhausted with the same flavors and textures as their taste buds become dull in space, Bagley said.

The lab provides ways the astronauts can also keep up a strong appetite to prevent weight loss and have access to fresh options to maintain optimal nutrition, which is crucial for their health as the crew ventures far from Earth.

The culinary lab is configured so the rounded design could slot into an existing spacecraft and would require few resources and little effort from the astronauts. The different modules included in the design are called munch, sizzle, yum and snap.

Snap provides a refreshing wall of green within the otherwise sterile environment of a spacecraft, where the astronauts can tend to microgreens grown without soil such as baby bok choy and butter greens. Pink lights provide the proper wavelength that accelerates the growth of the greens, and timed spritzes furnish the exposed roots with water and nutrients.

While the greens deliver extra flavor and healthy nutrients to a meal, there's a psychological side to tending to the plants as well.

Astronauts living for six months or longer aboard the International Space Station have shared how growing, harvesting and eating fresh produce has improved their mood and brought out their nurturing sides as they incorporated caring for plants into their routines.

The culinary lab's munch module offers another nutrition boost by growing microalgae in a bioreactor. The algae can be collected, dehydrated and mixed with fruit powders, spices, vinegar, oats and peanut butter for a tasty and nutritious snack.

Microalgae could help protect the astronauts as they leave the shielding effects of low Earth orbit and venture into the harsh radiation environment of deep space, Bagley said.

Rehydrated meats are something astronauts rely on as a source of protein. To make them more palatable, Nonfiction included sizzle as part of the culinary lab. The tiny microwave drawer, which resembles a convection oven, has glass plates and laser technology. Bagley demonstrated brushing a piece of rehydrated chicken with a blend of maple syrup and soy sauce, a combination that is "shelf stable and delicious," she said.

As the meat warms, the "marinade" helps it caramelize, and a laser draws grill marks on the meat. (You can also draw your name or even a rendering of the "Mona Lisa" if it amuses you, Bagley said.) Sizzle can be used to warm and "grill" vegetables, tofu and tortillas as well.

Since astronauts struggle to sleep properly in space, they might also be relying on extra caffeine on the long journey to Mars. That's where the yum module comes in handy. The creaming machine uses a steel probe to emulsify water and oil-based ingredients to create lattes, chocolate ganache and mayonnaise in a self-contained way.

The futuristic space food prepared using the culinary lab was available for a taste test at Nonfiction during CNN's visit in March, including space coffee and algae mixed with different flavors.

The algae, rolled into balls or cubes after being blended with ingredients in a silicon pouch, can stay fresh for two to three days.

Two types of nutritional algae balls were on hand one savory and one fruity. The end result resembled a snack for a long hiking trip, but it was surprisingly delicious and didn't have an algae aftertaste.

Bagley and others at Nonfiction, including Mark Alexander, Mardis Bagley, Nadia Kutyreva and Fifile Nguyen, have tasted multiple flavor combinations to get the balance right.

"I think we've realized that if we put too many ingredients together, it confuses the flavor profile, and then the algae flavor comes back," Bagley said. "We use two or three ingredients at once."

One mix blended peanut butter, oats, onion powder and vinegar with the algae for a strong, savory flavor with a pleasant, sour finish. But the favorite was the fruity algae, which mixed in powders from freeze-dried strawberries, cherries and other fruits. The fruit powders masked the algae flavor and made it taste more like a slightly sweet treat without added sugars.

Then, coffee powder, hot water, ghee, coconut oil and lecithin were blended with the emulsifying probe to create a foamy brew.

"The mechanism agitates the liquids together," Bagley said, "and creates this super creamy hot beverage, which is very satisfying in the morning."

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How astronauts heading to Mars could enjoy fresh produce and grill meat - KSL.com

Taking a picture of Mars is not easy.

Once light bounces off the planet, it can take between 3 to 22 minutes to travel to Earth so there aren't truly "live" images of Mars.

But on Friday afternoon, the European Space Agency offered the closest thing: the first "livestream" of Mars on YouTube, which posted pictures of the planet every 50 seconds as they beamed down directly from the camera mounted on the agency's Mars Express orbiter. The livestream was about an hour long.

In this handout image supplied by the European Space Agency on July 16, 2008, the Echus Chasma, one of the largest water source regions on Mars, is pictured from ESA's Mars Express. ESA/Getty Images hide caption

In this handout image supplied by the European Space Agency on July 16, 2008, the Echus Chasma, one of the largest water source regions on Mars, is pictured from ESA's Mars Express.

"Normally, we see images from Mars and know that they were taken days before. I'm excited to see Mars as it is now as close to a martian 'now' as we can possibly get!" James Godfrey, the spacecraft operations manager at the ESA's mission control center, said in a statement.

In 50-second intervals, the camera panned across Mars, showing a side of the planet entering night, as well as some clouds billowing out on the corner.

The livestream celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Mars Express mission, which launched in 2003 to better understand the planet, as well as search for traces of water.

There are only a few examples of "live" footage in space, including the famous Apollo missions showing astronauts walk on the moon's surface, as well as the DART and LCROSS missions where NASA intentionally crashed spacecrafts into asteroids and the moon, respectively, the ESA said in a news release.

"These missions were all pretty close to home and others farther away sent perhaps an image or two in near real-time," the ESA said. "When it comes to a lengthy livestream from deep space, this is a first."

Most observations and data gathered by spacecrafts are beamed down to Earth a few hours or even days later which isn't generally an issue for scientists.

In fact, though the speed of light can make livestreams difficult, in other cases, it has been a boon for scientific discovery.

Take the Euclid mission. The telescope will capture light that has been traveling for 10 billion years, allowing scientists to see 10 billion years into the past, the ESA said.

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Here is the first livestream from Mars a rare, almost real-time look ... - NPR

Science & Exploration

02/06/2023 10079 views 153 likes

A new mosaic of Mars marks 20 years since the launch of ESA's Mars Express, and reveals the planets colour and composition in spectacular detail.

The mosaic was created using data from Mars Expresss High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC).

HRSC normally photographs Marss surface from an altitude of about 300 km the closest the spacecraft gets to Mars in its elliptical orbit with the resulting images covering areas about 50 km across. However, the mosaic presented here uses a slightly different approach. To view the planet more widely, HRSC gathered 90 images at higher altitudes (of 4000 to 10 000 km), thus capturing areas of around 2500 km wide. These images were then put together to form a full global view.

Such large-scale images are typically obtained to observe weather patterns on Mars but even in the absence of atmospheric phenomena they offer wonderful views of the planets surface.

This new view highlights variation across Marss surface by enhancing local colour and contrast.

Thanks to its nine imaging channels, HRSC can visualise Mars not only in three dimensions but also in colour. However, the ever-changing opacity of the martian atmosphere makes it difficult to determine accurate surface colours from orbit. Dust scatters and reflects light, causing colours to shift between images and creating a patchwork-like effect when assembling a mosaic.

Until now, suppressing this effect during image processing has reduced variations in colour between different parts of Mars. But to create this mosaic, the HRSC team instead colour-referenced each constituent image to a colour model derived fromhigh-altitude observations, allowing them to preserve colour variations and reveal a far richer colour view of Mars than has been seen before.

While beautiful in its own right, the mosaic also provides fascinating information about Marss composition, revealing an unprecedented variety and detail of colours across its surface.

Mars is famous for its reddish colour, which is caused by high levels of oxidised iron. However, large parts of the planet appear to be rather dark and blue-toned here. These are grey-black basaltic sands of volcanic origin that form far-reaching, dark layers of sand across Mars. They pile up as they move in the wind, creating imposing sand dunes and dune fields within impact craters.

Material weathered by water, on the other hand, tends to look lighter. The two most common water-weathered minerals on Mars, clay and sulphate minerals, appear particularly bright on such colour composites; their presence was established by the OMEGA spectrometer on Mars Express. The presence of these minerals signals that liquid water existed on Mars for a long time, weathering and altering rock over time to form significant clay deposits such as Mawrth Vallis (a former outflow channel not shown in this view but previously observed by HRSC).

Sulphate minerals are visible here within the Valles Marineris canyon system, as seen most clearly in the annotated image. Here, however, they are covered by a thin veneer of dark sand, but their impressive colour variations can be seen on closer look. Unlike clay deposits, sulphate minerals indicate more acidic environmental conditions that would be less friendly to life.

Mars Express launched and has been orbiting the Red Planet since 2003 20 years ago! The orbiter is imaging Mars surface, mapping its minerals, identifying the composition and circulation of its tenuous atmosphere, probing beneath its crust, and exploring how various phenomena interact in the martian environment.

The spacecrafts HRSC, the camera responsible for these images, has revealed much about Mars diverse surface features in the past 20 years. Its images show everything fromwind-sculpted ridges and groovesto sinkholes on the flanks of colossal volcanoes toimpact craters, tectonic faults, river channels and ancient lava pools.

The mission has been immensely productive in its two decades of life, creating a far fuller and more accurate understanding of our planetary neighbour than ever before. It was initially planned to last for one martian year, or around 687 Earth days, but has continued to meet and exceed its objectives. As the mission has been extended until at least the end of 2026, we can anticipate many more beautiful and insightful snapshots of Mars in the years to come.

The missions High Resolution Stereo Camera(HRSC) was developed and is operated by the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fr Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR).

The development of the colour model method and processing of the mosaic was performed by Greg Michael of the HRSC team at Freie Universitt Berlin. The acquisition and planning of the high-altitude images were the responsibility of the camera operations team at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) at Berlin-Adlershof. On publication of the upcoming scientific paper on the mosaic, the georeferenced dataset will be made available through the ESA guest storage facility.

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20 years of Mars Express: Mars as never seen before - European Space Agency

Mars is sweeping right into the middle of a starry cosmic beehive that outshines its dim constellation of Cancer, the Crab tonight.

The Beehive Cluster (referred to officially as Messier 44 or M44), is a swarm of at least 1,000 loosely bound stars about 600 light-years from Earth. This cluster will receive a visit from the Red Planet on Friday (June 2), offering a great opportunity for skywatchers and astrophotographers alike.

Mars is now crossing the Beehive Cluster and will be closest to its center at nightfall tonight (June 2). From New York City, the duo will be visible at 9:15 p.m. ET (0115 GMT) when it reaches an altitude of 30 degrees above the horizon to the west, according to In The Sky. (For reference, the width of your fist held out at arm's length corresponds to about ten degrees in the sky.) Both Mars and the Beehive Cluster will set at 12:07 a.m. ET on June 3 (0407 GMT), which is about three hours and 46 minutes after sunset. By the time Saturday evening (June 3) rolls in, Mars will have moved past the cluster's boundaries.

If conditions aren't right in your area to see this spectacle tonight, no need to worry: The Virtual Telescope Project will a host a free telescope livestream of Mars and the Beehive Cluster beginning at 4 p.m. ET (2000 GMT). Watch it here courtesy of the Project.

Related: Night sky, June 2023: What you can see tonight [maps]

The Beehive Cluster, whose stars are only 600 million years old, is the nearest such open cluster to Earth and spans 1.6 degrees in the night sky, about the width of three full moons.

With an unaided eye, the cluster is seen as a faint cloud or a celestial mist, which is how French astronomer Charles Messier described it in his famous 18th century catalog of 110 unusual deep-sky objects one of which is M44.

In 2012, NASA's now-retired Kepler Space Telescope had for the first time found two Jupiter-like planets closely orbiting sun-like stars in the Beehive Cluster. Among other potential planets that Kepler had cataloged while observing the cluster, astronomers confirmed the identity of six additional planets in 2016.

Tonight, the Beehive Cluster shines at a magnitude of 3.1 and will be a speckled background for Mars's visit, which at magnitude 1.6 will be sailing through the cluster as a brighter orange-red dot in the night sky.

Binocular-equipped stargazers can resolve up to 20 stars of the young Beehive Cluster, while a telescope will be able to get hundreds more into focus, according to Binoculars Sky.

If you are hoping to catch a look at Mars or the Beehive Cluster up close, our guides to thebest telescopesandbest binocularsare a great place to start.

And you're looking to snap photos of this event or the night sky in general, check out our guide onhow to photograph the planets, as well as ourbest cameras for astrophotographyandbest lenses for astrophotography.

Editor's Note: If you snap an image of Mars in the Beehive Cluster and would like to share it with Space.com's readers, send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

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See Mars buzz the dense stars of the Beehive Cluster tonight - Space.com

NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity had its handlers sweating bullets about two months ago.

The little chopper failed to check in with the mission team for about six days in early April, Ingenuity chief engineer Travis Brown wrote in an update on May 26.

This was not a cause for concern at first. Since January of this year, when winter set in at Ingenuity's digs the floor of Mars' Jezero Crater the solar-powered chopper "had unfortunately been drifting in and out of nighttime survival mode (having enough power to avoid overnight brownouts)," Brown wrote in the update.

This led to uncertainty in Ingenuity's daily wakeup time, which made it harder to hail the chopper and to plan out its activities. In addition, during this stretch, a rocky outcrop created a "communications shadow" between Ingenuity and its robotic partner, the Perseverance rover, which relays commands to and from the 4-pound (1.8-kilogram) rotorcraft.

Related: Facts about the Mars helicopter Ingenuity, 1st aircraft to fly on Red Planet

But when the life-hunting, sample-collecting Perseverance came back into communications range "and the helicopter was still nowhere to be found, the situation began to generate some unease," wrote Brown, who's based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

"Poor telecom performance was seen as a plausible explanation, but there were reasons to doubt it," he added. "In more than 700 sols operating the helicopter on Mars, not once had we ever experienced a total radio blackout. Even in the worst communications environments, we had always seen some indication of activity."

One sol, or Martian day, is slightly longer than an Earth day, lasting about 24 hours and 40 minutes.

The Ingenuity blackout began on sol 755, or April 5. It finally ended on sol 761, when the mission team spotted a signal during the helicopter's expected wakeup window. A second signal at the same time on sol 762 "confirmed that the helicopter was indeed alive, which came as a welcome relief for the team," Brown wrote.

Ingenuity conducted its 50th flight on Mars the very next day sol 763, or April 13. It reached a maximum altitude of 59 feet (18 meters) on that sortie, higher than it had ever gone before.

"It would be an understatement to say that the helicopter team was relieved to see the successful flight telemetry in the sol 763 downlink the following morning," Brown wrote.

Ingenuity flew again on April 22 but has stayed ground-bound since then.

Summer will soon return to Jezero Crater, but the communications issues may persist beyond the change of seasons, according to Brown. That's because there's a large amount of Martian dust on Ingenuity's solar panels, which will likely keep the chopper in its current "transitional power state" for a while yet.

"This means that, much to the chagrin of her team, we are not yet done playing this high-stakes game of hide and seek with the playful little helicopter," Brown wrote.

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Mars helicopter Ingenuity went silent for 6 'agonizing' days in April - Space.com

This image was taken by ChemCam RMI onboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 3843. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL. Download image

Earth planning date: Tuesday, May 30, 2023

What do you do when you are driving through challenging terrain? Well, hit a new record! Tosol we have passed the 30 kilometer mark! Thats a Mars rover milestone only the NASA Opportunity rover has reached so far. That was around June 2011 and just over 2610 sols into the mission with Opportunity on its way between Victoria and Endeavour Crater. At Endeavour crater Opportunity had driven a marathon on Mars remember Marathon Valley? You can see the stunning panorama here. Way to go Curiosity!

Driving is especially difficult for Curiosity and the rover drivers right now. One of us remarked they wouldnt want to walk through there, let alone drive, but our rover drivers did an excellent job not only getting us to the next stop, but also parking the rover with all wheels safely on the ground so that we could use the arm. If you want to get an impression on how big of a challenge that was, here is an image from the navigation cameras to illustrate it. And we are making best use of the opportunity investigating target Cujubim after using the DRT. There is a three spot APXS raster on the target and of course MAHLI documentation. In addition, MAHLI looks at the target Cumbal to further document the interesting sedimentary structures all around us.

For the image above, though, I picked a Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) image to illustrate some of those interesting things: it shows the sedimentary structures, all the laminae, but also the nodules within, which will tell us a full story of how those rocks formed, one lamina at a time, and then there must have been another watery event forming the nodules.

In todays plan we have two more RMIs looking into the distance to discern more of those sedimentary structures. ChemCam also keeps its laser busy on two bedrock targets, both also with nodules, which have the target names Cariacau and Crique Yolande, and there will be an AEGIS after the drive. Mastcam has two multispectral observations, one on the DRT spot, and one on target Crique Rubin. Mastcam further images targets Cariacau and Paleomeu River, and another target in front of the rover both to further document all the interesting features around us. In addition, the environmental theme group conducts the regular atmospheric monitoring, and of course, DAN looks for water in the underground and MARDI takes an image after the drive. And now, raise a glass (or cup) with your favourite beverage to wish the rover well navigating all the boulders ahead!

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Sols 3845-3847: 30 Kilometers and Counting! NASA Mars ... - NASA Mars Exploration

Scientists think that these bands of rocks may have been formed by a very fast, deep river the first of its kind evidence has been found for on Mars. NASAs Perseverance Mars rover captured this scene at a location nicknamed Skrinkle Haven using its Mastcam-Z camera between February 28 and March 9, 2023. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

Evidence left in rocks is leading scientists to rethink what watery environments looked like on ancient Mars.

New images from NASAs Perseverance rover reveal evidence of a powerful river on Mars, possibly deeper and faster-moving than previously known. The images depict sedimentary rock layers with coarse sediment grains and cobbles, indicating a high-energy river system. Understanding these Martian watery environments is crucial for the search for ancient microbial life and expands our knowledge of Mars past.

New images taken by NASAs Perseverance rover may show signs of what was once a rollicking river on Mars, one that was deeper and faster-moving than scientists have ever seen evidence for in the past. The river was part of a network of waterways that flowed into Jezero Crater, the area the rover has been exploring since landing more than two years ago.

Understanding these watery environments could help scientists in their efforts to seek out signs of ancient microbial life that may have been preserved in Martian rock.

Perseverance is exploring the top of a fan-shaped pile of sedimentary rock that stands 820 feet (250 meters) tall and features curving layers suggestive of flowing water. One question scientists want to answer is whether that water flowed in relatively shallow streams closer to what NASAs Curiosity rover has found evidence of in Gale Crater or a more powerful river system.

This illustration depicts NASAs Perseverance rover operating on the surface of Mars. NASAs Perseverance rover has discovered potential evidence of a previously unknown, powerful river system on Mars. Images captured reveal coarse sediment grains and cobbles, suggesting a high-energy river once flowed into the Jezero Crater, which may hold clues to Mars ancient microbial life. Credit: NASA

Stitched together from hundreds of images captured by Perseverances Mastcam-Z instrument, two new mosaics suggest the latter, revealing important clues: coarse sediment grains and cobbles.

Those indicate a high-energy river thats truckin and carrying a lot of debris. The more powerful the flow of water, the more easily its able to move larger pieces of material, said Libby Ives, a postdoctoral researcher at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which operates the Perseverance rover. With a background in studying Earth-based rivers, Ives has spent the last six months analyzing images of the Red Planets surface. Its been a delight to look at rocks on another planet and see processes that are so familiar, Ives said.

Years ago, scientists noticed a series of curving bands of layered rock within Jezero Crater that they dubbed the curvilinear unit. They could see these layers from space but are finally able to see them up close, thanks to Perseverance.

One location within the curvilinear unit, nicknamed Skrinkle Haven, is captured in one of the new Mastcam-Z mosaics. Scientists are sure the curved layers here were formed by powerfully flowing water, but Mastcam-Zs detailed shots have left them debating what kind: a river such as the Mississippi, which winds snakelike across the landscape, or a braided river like Nebraskas Platte, which forms small islands of sediment called sandbars.

NASAs Perseverance Mars rover captured this mosaic of a hill nicknamed Pinestand. Scientists think the tall sedimentary layers stacked on top of one another here could have been formed by a deep, fast-moving river. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

When viewed from the ground, the curved layers appear arranged in rows that ripple out across the landscape. They could be the remnants of a rivers banks that shifted over time or the remnants of sandbars that formed in the river. The layers were likely much taller in the past. Scientists suspect that after these piles of sediment turned to rock, they were sandblasted by wind over the eons and carved down to their present size.

The wind has acted like a scalpel that has cut the tops off these deposits, said Michael Lamb of Caltech, a river specialist and Perseverance science team collaborator. We do see deposits like this on Earth, but theyre never as well exposed as they are here on Mars. Earth is covered in vegetation that hides these layers.

A second mosaic captured by Perseverance shows a separate location that is part of the curvilinear unit and about a quarter mile (450 meters) from Skrinkle Haven. Pinestand is an isolated hill bearing sedimentary layers that curve skyward, some as high as 66 feet (20 meters). Scientists think these tall layers may also have been formed by a powerful river, although theyre exploring other explanations, as well.

These layers are anomalously tall for rivers on Earth, Ives said. But at the same time, the most common way to create these kinds of landforms would be a river.

The team is continuing to study Mastcam-Zs images for additional clues. Theyre also peering below the surface, using the ground-penetrating radar instrument on Perseverance called RIMFAX (short for Radar Imager for Mars Subsurface Experiment). What they learn from both instruments will contribute to an ever-expanding body of knowledge about Mars ancient, watery past.

Whats exciting here is weve entered a new phase of Jezeros history. And its the first time were seeing environments like this on Mars, said Perseverances deputy project scientist, Katie Stack Morgan of JPL. Were thinking about rivers on a different scale than we have before.

Perseverances mission on Mars primarily focuses on astrobiology, particularly hunting for evidence of ancient microbial life. The rovers tasks also include analyzing the planets geology and historical climate, preparing for future human exploration, and pioneering the collection and storage of Martian rock and regolith (a mix of broken rock and dust).

Future NASA missions, in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), plan to send spacecraft to Mars to retrieve these secured samples. Once back on Earth, these samples will undergo thorough analysis.

The 2020 Mars Perseverance mission is a component of NASAs wider Moon to Mars exploration strategy. This includes the Artemis missions to the Moon, designed to lay the groundwork for future human expeditions to Mars.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), run by Caltech in Pasadena, California on behalf of NASA, is responsible for both the construction and operational management of the Perseverance rover.

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A Mighty Martian River? Latest Astonishing Discovery by NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover - SciTechDaily

A cute new photo courtesy of the Mars rover Curiosity shows a miniature book-shaped rock nestled in the soil of the Gale Crater.

The shape is the result of an interplay of wind, waterand the human brain. While many of the rock shapes on Mars hint at a dynamic past, says mineralogist Susanne Schwenzer of the Open University in England, the rocks often objectively look like plain, rounded pebbles. A few, though, remind the human eye of familiar objects. For instance, the Curiosity rover recently captured images of rocks that look like jagged shark teeth and delicate corals.

The human propensity to see familiar objects in ambiguous patterns is called pareidolia. Famously, in 1976 a photo taken from the Viking I spacecraft exemplified this phenomenon on a large scale. The image seemed to show an eerie face peering up from Marss surface. The Face on Mars became a pop culture sensation and fuel for conspiracy theories about alien monuments. Later, higher-resolution photographs with fewer shadows showed a pretty plain mesa.

Curiosity captured the picture of the book rock on April 15. Its a tiny feature, just 2.5 centimeters (about one inch) long. The origin of this miniature sculpture likely stretches back some four billion years, when the sediments that make up the base of Gale Crater were being deposited, Schwenzer says. At the time, the region hosted liquid water that traveled through pores in the rocks, depositing minerals in some spots and dissolving them away from others. This leads to uneven properties within rocks, Schwenzer says, so that when the rocks erode to the point they are on the planets surface and the wind whips against them, they dont wear away evenly. The softer parts weather away quicker, she says.

In the case of the book rock, an ancient fracture might have created the sheetlike page portion of the formation, Schwenzer says. When rocks crack, either because of strain from sediments layered on top of them or because of meteorite strikes, fluids can move into those cracks and deposit new minerals. If those minerals are harder than the surrounding rock, theyll remain after the rest of rock weathers away.

You have an at least three-step process, Schwenzer says. Youve got the rock, youve got the formation of that harder part, and then you have the weathering.

Gale Crater went through wet and dry periods for the first billion or so years of its existence. The last time liquid water flowed in this region was likely about 2.6 billion years ago, Schwenzer says, with wind taking over all of the sculpting since.

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What Created This Mini Book-Shaped Rock on Mars? - Scientific American

More than a hundred years after geologists first observed how seismic waves traveled through Earth, theyve achieved another seismic first. This time, they measured core-transiting seismic waves moving through Mars. The InSight landers seismic instrument tracked shockwaves generated by an earthquake and an impact event. Their behavior revealed for the first time that Mars very likely has a liquid core. Its made of a single blob of molten iron alloy.

By comparison, Earths core is more of a combo plate. It has both a liquid outer core and a solid inner core. They contain mostly iron and nickel. The turbulent outer core is heated by radioactive decay and other processes. It also generates our planets magnetic field.

It turns out that Marss innards are a bit different from Earths. The Martian liquid iron core is also rich in sulfur, with smaller fractions of oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen. That mix of elements makes it much less dense than Earths core, and its more compressible.

According to Nicholas Schmerr of the University of Maryland and a member of a team that used InSight data to study Mars, the differences between Earth and Mars cores hint at different formation stories for each planet. You can think of it this way; the properties of a planets core can serve as a summary of how the planet formed and how it evolved dynamically over time. The end result of the formation and evolution processes can be either the generation or absence of life-sustaining conditions, he said. The uniqueness of Earths core allows it to generate a magnetic field that protects us from solar winds, allowing us to keep water. Mars core does not generate this protective shield, and so the planets surface conditions are hostile to life.

Interestingly, despite having a liquid iron core, Mars doesnt seem to have much of a global magnetic field. It probably did generate one in the past, however. Planetary scientists suspect that it existed because Marss rocks contain traces of magnetism from ancient times. That magnetic memory gets embedded in rock crystals as they cool in the presence of a magnetic field. That memory can last for millions or billions of years. On Earth, scientists use it to track the motions of our planets tectonic plates, for example. They also use it to monitor changes in Earths magnetic field over timea science called paleomagnetism.

Paleomagnetism studies of Mars rocks tell scientists about Marss magnetic field in the past. Although there isnt one there now, it probably once had one similar to Earths. University of Maryland associate professor of geology Vedran Lekic suggests that Mars changed from a planet with a potentially habitable environment, shielded by a magnetic field, to the more unfriendly place it is today.

What caused it to change? Conditions in the core might have played a role, along with other factors such as violent impacts, according to Lekic. Its like a puzzle in some ways, Lekic said. For example, there are small traces of hydrogen in Mars core. That means that there had to be certain conditions that allowed the hydrogen to be there, and we have to understand those conditions in order to understand how Mars evolved into the planet it is today.

No one has been able to directly image the Martian core. However, planetary scientists have made extensive models of what they think conditions are like there. The InSight seismic measurements confirm the accuracy of those models. This was a huge effort, involving state-of-the-art seismological techniques which have been honed on Earth, in conjunction with new results from mineral physicists and the insights from team members who simulate how planetary interiors change over time, noted Jessica Irving, a senior lecturer at Bristol University and part of the team analyzing the InSight results. But the work paid off, and we now know much more about whats happening inside the Martian core.

The team used data from InSight from a marsquake that occurred on August 25, 2021, and an impact that happened on September 18, 2021. They compared the time it took waves from each event to travel through Mars to waves that stayed in the mantle. Those measurements got combined with other seismic and geophysical measurements of the Red Planet. All that data gave the team enough information to estimate the density and compressibility of the material the waves traveled through. Thats how the researchers figured out that Mars most likely has this completely liquid core.

Lekic and Schmerr note that Mars gradually evolved to its current conditions, changing from a planet with a potentially habitable environment into an incredibly hostile one. Conditions in the interior play a key role in this evolution, as might violent impacts, according to the researchers. Studying the data from InSight and other missions will help them determine more about the conditions that existed in Marss ancient history to give it that core.

Even though the InSight mission ended in December 2022 after four years of seismic monitoring, were still analyzing the data that was collected, Lekic said. InSight will continue to influence how we understand the formation and evolution of Mars and other planets for years to come.

Scientists detect seismic waves traveling through Martian core for the first timeFirst Observations of Core-transiting Seismic Phases on MarsThe Far Side of Mars: Two Distant Marsquakes Detected by Insight

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Seismic Waves Help Map the Core of Mars for the First Time - Universe Today

At this very moment, eleven robotic missions are exploring Mars, a combination of orbiters, landers, rovers, and one aerial vehicle (the Ingenuity helicopter). Like their predecessors, these missions are studying Mars atmosphere, surface, and subsurface to learn more about its past and evolution, including how it went from a once warmer and wetter environment to the freezing, dusty, and extremely dry planet we see today. In addition, these missions are looking for evidence of past life on Mars and perhaps learning if and where it might still exist today.

One particularly interesting issue is how the atmosphere of Mars primarily composed of carbon dioxide (CO2) is relatively enriched with Carbon-13 (13C), aka. heavy carbon. For years, scientists have speculated that the ratio of this isotope to light carbon (12C) might be responsible for organics found on the surface (a sign of biological processes!). But after analyzing data from the ESAs ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) mission, an international team led by The Open University determined that these organics may be abiotic in origin (i.e., not biological).

The study was led by Juan Alday, a postdoctoral researcher with The Open University (OU), and members of its Atmospheric Research and Surface Exploration group. They were joined by the Space Research Institute (IKI), the Laboratoire Atmosphres, Milieux, Observations Spatiales (LATMOS), and the Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Planetary Physics (AOPP) group at the University of Oxford. Their findings were represented in a paper titled Photochemical depletion of heavy CO isotopes in the Martian atmosphere, which recently appeared in Nature Astronomy.

Carbon dioxide accounts for about 96% of the atmosphere on Mars, with trace amounts of carbon monoxide (0.0557%). The relative abundance of the heavy carbon isotope in these gases (which accounts for just 1.1% of carbon isotopes in Earths atmosphere) has been attributed to the preferential escape of light carbon (12C) to space over several billion years. This is based in part on recent measurements by NASAs Curiosity rover that revealed a depletion of 13C in surface organic material (methane gas).

By analyzing this enrichment, scientists hope to learn more about the atmospheric processes contributing to the evolution of isotopic ratios between the upper and lower atmosphere. Since atmospheric CO and organic molecules share the same 13C-depleted isotopic signature, scientists hope to find clues as to whether organic processes (a possible indication of life) may have played a role. For the sake of their study, the team led by Dr. Alday examined CO vertical profiles obtained by the TGO Atmospheric Chemistry Suite (ACS).

This suite consists of three infrared Echelle-spectrometers that gather information in the near-, mid-, and far-infrared (NIR, MIR, TIRVIM) channels. Since 2016, these instruments have gathered spectra from Mars atmosphere, using absorption lines that indicate the presence of different chemical elements to determine its composition. The team then combined this data with a photochemical model that predicts the depletion of carbon and oxygen in CO molecules in the atmosphere due to interaction with solar radiation.

Their results indicate (contrary to what was previously thought) that carbon monoxide (CO) in the Martian atmosphere is depleted of heavy carbon instead of light carbon. As Dr. Alday explained in an OU News press release.

The key [to] understanding why there is less 13C in CO lies in the chemical relationship between CO2 and CO. When CO2 molecules are destroyed by sunlight to form CO, 12CO2 molecules are more efficiently destroyed than 13CO2, leading a depletion of 13C in CO over long periods of time.

These findings help address the long-standing debate about whether biological or non-biological processes led to the presence of organic material on the surface of Mars. Despite the trace amounts of CO in the atmosphere of Mars, they have important implications for our understanding of how the Martian atmosphere and climate have evolved with time. On the one hand, they could provide insight into past conditions that allowed for flowing and standing bodies of water on the surface.

On the other, it helps refine the search for past life on Mars, even if the findings could be seen as a letdown. The ultimate goal, said Dr. Alday, is to determine if the conditions for life ever existed and if they lasted long enough for life to emerge:

We do not know what the atmosphere of early Mars was like nor what conditions allowed liquid water to flow on the surface. The isotopes of carbon on Mars atmosphere can help us estimate how much CO2 there was in the past. The new measurements by the ExoMars TGO suggest that less CO2 has escaped the planet than previously thought and provide new constraints on the composition of this early atmosphere of Mars.

This research was made possible thanks to support from the UK Space Agency, which funded the development of the ACS spectrometers and the Atmospheric Research and Surface Exploration groups research. The TGO is part of the larger ExoMars program, a collaborative effort between the ESA and Roscosmos. This program will send the Rosalind Franklin rover to Mars in the coming years to further assist in the ongoing search for past (and maybe even present) life on Mars.

Further Reading: Open University News, Nature Astronomy

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