Category Archives: Mars

While NASAs Mars Perseverance rover tends to get all the attention these days, an incoming Amblin Entertainment and Amazon Studios documentary gives us a chance to celebrate two other Mars rovers that paved the way for the current Perseverance mission.

Good Night Oppy, which lands on Prime Video on November 24 following a limited theatrical release on November 4, uses archival footage, computer animation, and talking heads to tell the story of Opportunity and its twin rover Spirit, two NASA vehicles that landed on the red planet in 2004.

A big part of what makes the story remarkable is the longevity of the two rover missions. NASA had planned 90-day programs for Opportunity and Spirit, but they ended up exploring the Martian surface for 15 years and 6 years, respectively.

A trailer for the documentary dropped this week. You can watch it below.

Directed by Ryan White (The Case Against 8, Ask Dr. Ruth), Good Night Oppy has so far received largely warm reviews.

The Hollywood Reporters Daniel Fienberg, for example, called it a lively celebration of unabashed nerdiness and enthusiastic problem-solving, the sort of movie that feels designed to attract Wall-E-loving children, who can then be shaped into the engineers and astrophysicists of the future.

He described the documentary as a glossy advertisement for NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the NASA center that oversees the space agencys Mars missions, adding: Whites greatest asset is footage from different rover mission control and meeting rooms over two decades. Almost on a crisis-by-crisis basis, Good Night Oppy takes us through various catastrophes experienced by Spirit and Opportunity impending sandstorms, dust-clogged sensors, inoperable machinery and breaks down the stages of the process that allowed them to overcome each bout with adversity.

Varietys Peter Debruge also noted the movies potential to inspire the younger generation, calling Good Night Oppy an ideal choice for classrooms: a practical demonstration of applied science, showing how designers work with engineers, and where human contributions to these fields can take us. Put another way, its an out-of-this-world example sure to get kids fired up about STEM.

He added: The meek may well inherit the earth, but its the nerds of tomorrow that will get us to Mars.

During their Mars explorations, Opportunity and Sprit showed that the distant planet had once hosted wet and warm conditions that were potentially hospitable to life, discoveries that inspired todays Perseverance team to search for evidence of ancient life there.

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Opportunity Mars rover movie incoming watch the trailer - Digital Trends

Elon Musk has been an active advocate of creating cities for humans on Mars. He is not the only one. The concept of colonizing Mars first appeared as a fictional narrative in the 1897 novel Two Planets by Kurd Lasswitz. The story is about Arctic explorers who find a Martian base. The Martians take some explorers to Mars. The novel was published 72 years before the first man landed on the Moon in 1969.

Colonizing Mars has remained a concept for humans for eons. However, with advancements in science and technology, we are devising ways to journey to the Red Planet. It is not the journey that excites us but the possibility of living there. Musk has time and again explained the idea of living on Mars. In 2019 Musk said that Its been almost half a century since humans were last on the moon. Thats too long, we need to get back there and have a permanent base on the moon again, like a big permanently occupied base on the moon. And then build a city on Mars to become a spacefaring civilization, a multi-planet species.

No matter how thrilling the idea sounds, the logistical challenges will be monumental indeed. Imagine taking construction raw materials to Mars including objects ranging from nails and irons, beams, concrete and glass, to equipment and heavy machinery including bulldozers, front loaders, dump trucks, and cranes among others.

Humans would have to build cities and towns on Mars from scratch. They would need to conduct soil sampling before erecting the foundations for their cities. Weather conditions including wind pressure and other climate changes will need to be addressed.

Life on Mars will not be easy. Humans will need to create cities enclosed in glass or a concrete dome to maintain proper oxygen levels and perhaps to simulate day and night through artificial means. There needs to be a continuous supply of water to complete daily tasks. Electricity needs to be available round the clock to complete chores such as cooking and washing.

The lifestyle on Mars will need to be different from the tried and tested environment on Earth. One wonders what economic model will the humans pursue on Mars. Will there be banking and investment? Will humans earn by doing jobs? If humans plan on earning on Mars, then the Earths economic system would need to be implemented. Or, the banking and economic system would be extended to Mars. The humans on Mars will also need avenues to spend their salaries. This will bring about the need to build shopping malls and departmental stores.

The children on Mars should be taught to become thinkers, innovators, and inventors. They should be allowed to follow a discipline of their choosing. The learning activities at schools should be focused on improving intelligence.

Colonising Mars will not be an easy task. It will require months and perhaps years of planning to send human and capital resources to Mars. Effective brainstorming and implementation of plans will be required to create an eco-friendly sustainable city that is suitable for animal and plant life.

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Will Mars be Earth 2.0? - The Nation

Dogelon Mars (ELON) gets a very bullish rating from InvestorsObserver Saturday. The token is up 4.72% to $0.000000258819364 while the broader crypto market is down 0.97%.

The Sentiment Score provides a quick, short-term look at the cryptos recent performance. This can be useful for both short-term investors looking to ride a rally and longer-term investors trying to buy the dip.

Dogelon Mars price is currently above resistance. With support set around $0.000000242615099854995 and resistance at $0.000000250853786032715, Dogelon Mars is potentially in a volatile position if the rally burns out.

Dogelon Mars has traded on low volume recently. This means that today's volume is below its average volume over the past seven days.

Due to a lack of data, this crypto may be less suitable for some investors.

Click here to unlock the rest of the report on Dogelon Mars

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Dogelon Mars (ELON) Receives a Very Bullish Rating Saturday: Is it Time to Get on Board? - InvestorsObserver

If humans were to ever set up a colony on Mars, what would we eat and what technologies would be needed to grow that food?

Dr. Evan Fraser pondered those questions during the early days of the pandemic lockdowns, when faraway travel plans seemed very far away indeed.

The director of the University of Guelphs Arrell Food Institute (AFI) started a texting conversation with Dr. Lenore Newman, aUniversity of the Fraser Valley professor who, like the U of G researcher, studies global food sustainability.

That conversationled to a recently released book co-authored by the pair entitled Dinner on Mars: The Technologies That Will Feed the Red Planet and Transform Agriculture on Earth.

This book started out as a thought experiment during a time of great uncertainty, said Fraser. But it became a serious look atthe future of agriculture. And almost everything I learned about for this book Ive learned through my many colleagues at U of G.

At AFI and with U of Gs Food from Thought project, Fraser considers ways to create a global food system that can adapt to economic and climate change and provide adequate nutrition to more than eight billion people.

He regularly interacts with U of G colleagues studying soil and plant science, such as Dr. Claudia Wagner-Riddle in the School of Environmental Sciences. He speaks with vertical faming experts such as Dr. Mike Dixon and Dr. Thomas Graham in U of Gs Controlled Environment Systems Research Facility and nanotechnology researchers such as Dr. John Dutcher in the Department of Physics. And he works regularly with U of G and community partners on ways to develop local, circular food economies.

What hes concluded is that the technology and the expertise needed to feed a colony on Mars is not that far off.

Were not talking about Star Trek-level replicators here; were talking about technology thats close, Fraser said. We already have the basic building blocks.

They include things like cellular agriculture, food nanotechnology, regenerative agriculture and vertical farming.

But the key to making those technologies work on Mars, Fraser says, is hyper-efficiency. That efficiency would need to be applied to everything, from water to energy and waste.

On Mars, every organic molecule would be precious, so you would use everything, he said.

Mars colonists would farm a small amount of land with as few inputs as possible and return every scrap of waste from one system back into use for another, he said. The result would be something akin to the natural regenerative cycles on Earth.

Whats interesting is that when you start thinking about how to feed a community in an environment where everything is scarce, you end up designing a food system that looks a lot like one that we could use here on Earth, said Fraser.

Beyond technology, the valueof human energy would also be used differently.

There would be no system built on the backs of migrant labour the way itis across most western countries, he said. Instead, there would be automation and robotics doing the manual labour. That move to automation is what the future of agriculture on Earth looks like, too.

Humans would be relied upon for their minds in designing and analyzing, because on Mars, every farmer would need to be a scientist, said Fraser.

As upbeat as Dinner on Mars is about technology, it is not a techno-topian book, said Fraser. The book makes a strong case for the need for good policies to back the technologies, tax structures, regulations, financial incentives, and land use zoning laws to support the imagined transition.

Technology is not a panacea. It alone cannot solve all our problems. What we argue is that these tools, used in the right way and supported with the right policies, can help.

Dinner on Mars was recently featured on CBC Radios Ideas, and Fraser and Newsman recently wrote a piece for CNN Opinion.

Fraser hopes the books musings on Mars will appeal to sci-fi and tech geeks. He also hopes its ideas spur policy makers and anyone concerned about the future of food to improve our own planets food systems.

As fun as this book was to write, the fact is were never moving to Mars en masse. It would just be too hard, he said. Mars is not really a Plan B, so we better figure out how to protect what we have here on Earth.

Contact:

Dr. Evan Fraserfrasere@uoguelph.ca

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New Book Imagines What a 'Dinner on Mars' Means for Future of Food on Earth - University of Guelph News

Starting in the late 1940s and running through to the end of the Cold War, an arms race occurred between the United States and the Soviet Union. The weapons developed by each nation during this time were swiftly tested and, oftentimes, accidents occurred. One of these incidents occurred in Mars Bluff, South Carolina in 1958.

The Second World War was a brutal conflict. The US put an end to it during the summer of 1945 by dropping the atomic bombs Little Boy and Fat Man on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The country, however, wasnt finished developing new and more powerful nuclear weapons.

The Mk 6 nuclear bomb was a successor of the explosive dropped on Nagasaki during WWII, and many variants were developed. The design process occurred between 1951-55, and it was in service until 1962. During this time, over 1,000 were produced with varying nuclear yields.

The US Air Force wanted to ensure its pilots understood how to fly with the bombs equipped, should a war break out with Russia. As such, the Mk 6 nuclear bomb regularly featured in training runs. Throughout the 1950s, some were accidentally deployed, with the US military referring to these incidents as broken arrows.

On March 11, 1958, a Boeing B-47 Stratojet took off from Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia. Onboard were members of the 375th Bombardment Squadron, 308th Bombardment Wing. The aircraft was headed to the United Kingdom, before traveling to North Africa as part in Operation Snow Flurry, where pilots would conduct mock bomb drops. Despite it being a training exercise, the aircrafts crew were feeling pressured, as they were being timed.

Prior to takeoff, the crew had haphazardly placed the Mk 6 nuclear bomb in the bomb bay, having had difficulty locking it into place. The solution to this was to put the explosive in a sling and hit the steel locking pin with a hammer until it was engaged. As was procedure, the mechanism unlocked during takeoff. However, it wouldnt re-engage once the B-47 was safely in the air.

Navigator and bombardier Capt. Bruce Kulka was notified of the issue. While inspecting the area, he accidentally pulled the emergency release pin, dropping the bomb 15,000-20,000 feet to the ground. Whats more, Kulka found himself in danger, having almost fallen out of the open bomb bay. Had it not been for him grabbing onto something and pulling himself to safety, he likely would have fallen to his death.

The Mk 6 nuclear bomb crashed into a playhouse that a man named Bill Gregg had built for his children. When it landed, Greggs children were playing approximately 200 feet away. The playhouse was destroyed in the blast, and the bomb left a 70-foot-wide crater in its wake. Gregg, his children and his wife all suffered injuries, and seven nearby buildings suffered damage.

Remarkably, none of those hurt in the blast were seriously injured, as the fissile nuclear core of the Mk 6 nuclear bomb was located in another area of the B-47. What had detonated was the TNT it contained. If a full-scale nuclear blast had occurred, extreme devastation would have been left in its wake.

Within a few hours of the incident, military officials were on the scene. The Gregg family, who had lost everything when the bomb detonated, sued the Air Force and were awarded $54,000. Despite the damage, Bill Gregg kept in good humor about what had happened, later telling the local newspaper, Ive always wanted a swimming pool, and now Ive got a hole for one at no cost.

More from us: The US Army Air Corps Once Dropped Bombs on Boise City, Oklahoma

The near-disaster became known as the Mars Buff Incident, and received local and international coverage. It also contributed to a change in the way the Air Force ran its training exercises going forward, especially since accidents like it were more common than the military would have liked to admit. Shortly after, the branch stopped carrying nuclear bombs during training missions.

Todd Neikirk is a New Jersey-based politics, entertainment and history writer. His work has been featured in psfk.com, foxsports.com, politicususa.com and hillreporter.com. He enjoys sports, politics, comic books, and anything that has to do with history.

When he is not sitting in front of a laptop, Todd enjoys soaking up everything the Jersey Shore has to offer with his wife, two sons and American Foxhound, Wally.

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Mars Bluff Incident: The US Air Force Accidentally Dropped a Nuclear Bomb on South Carolina - War History Online

The Mars that was and the Mars that is are two very different things. Three or so billion years ago, the Red Planet was awash with water, as now-dry riverbeds, deltas, and ocean basins reveal. But when the planet lost its magnetic field, it lost its protection from the solar wind, which stripped away much of the planets atmosphere and allowed most of its water to escape to space.

But the key here is most. There is plenty of water, in the form of ice, locked up in Marss polar capsabout the same amount as exists in Earths Greenland ice sheet. For exobiologists looking for possible life on Mars, water is essentialbut only in its liquid state, so ice is kind of a dealbreaker. Now, however, a new study In Nature Astronomy suggests that in the south Martian pole at least, there may be a lake buried beneath the ice. It could measure as much as 30 km (18 mi.) across and is kept warm by geothermal heating, similar to the kind generated on Earth by radioactive isotopes or subsurface magma.

One clue to the possible presence of water beneath Marss south pole came from the European Space Agencys (ESA) Mars Express orbiter, which conducted radar soundings in 2018 of a region in the ice cap known as Ultimi Scopuli. The scans revealed an area that was highly reflective in a frequency consistent with a large deposit of liquid water. On Earth, such a finding beneath an ice cap would not be at all uncommon. The overlying weight of thick ice sheets often creates enough pressure to generate heat, leading to ice liquefying deep below the surface.

But there were two problems with the Mars Express findings. For one thing, the frigid temperatures at the Martian poles ought to be enough to overcome the heating caused by pressure, keeping the ice solid all the way through. Additionally, there are other materials that reflect in a frequency similar to watersincluding metal bearing minerals and hydrated clayssuggesting that the Mars Express findings might simply be an illusion.

But Mars Express wasnt the only Martian satellite surveying Ultimi Scopuli. So too was NASAs Mars Global Surveyor. During the course of its mission, which lasted from 1997 through 2006, that satellite took the measure of the region using not ground-penetrating radar, but a laser altimeterand that scan revealed something intriguing. Stretching across a 10 to 15 km (6.2 to 9.3 mi) expanse of Ultimi Scopuli was a distinct surface undulationwith the ice dipping as low as 4 m (13 ft.) below the surrounding terrain and at the other end rising 7 m (22 ft.) above it.

That up and down pattern has analogs on Earth, where buried bodies of waterlike Antarcticas subsurface Lake Vostokdisplay precisely the same undulating pattern in the overlying ice, caused by upstream and downstream water flow. The question of just what is going on beneath the ice in Ultimi Scopuli has lingered since the twin spacecraft took their twin sightings, but now, an international team of researchers led by physical geographer Neil Arnold of the University of Cambridge has taken on the mystery and come to the conclusion that the south pole of Mars is indeed home to a liquid lake.

The investigators based their findings not on any new sightings taken at Mars, but on computer modeling. Beginning with the data returned by the two satellites, they plugged in multiple variablesincluding simulations of subsurface friction that would be caused by either solid ice or a body of water; varying depths of the theoretical subsurface lake; and the amount of geothermal heat beneath the surface of Mars in recent geological history. No matter how they ran their variables, the likeliest scenario the model spit out was that there is indeed a lake beneath Ultimi Scopulis ice, one that has been kept warm by geothermal heating.

The combination of the new topographic evidence, our computer model results, and the radar data make it much more likely that at least one area of subglacial liquid water exists on Mars today, and that Mars must still be geothermally active in order to keep the water beneath the ice cap liquid, said Arnold in a statement that accompanied the studys release.

What implications this could have for life on Mars are unknown. But multiple worlds in the solar systemespecially Jupiters Moon Europa and Saturns moon Enceladusharbor comparatively warm liquid oceans, where exobiologists believe the simple recipe of chemistry plus thermal energy plus time might have been sufficient for the basic mechanics of biology to have gotten started. In October 2024, NASA will launch the Europa Clipper spacecraft, which will make multiple flybys of the Jovian moon to gather new data on Europan geology, chemistry, and more.

No such close-up missions of the Martian poles are planned for now, but Arnold, for one, does see studies like his offering the next best thing. The quality of data coming back from Mars, from orbital satellites as well as from the landers, is such that we can use it to answer really difficult questions about conditions on, and even under the planets surface, he says. Its exciting to use these techniques to find out things about planets other than our own.

More Must-Read Stories From TIME

Write to Jeffrey Kluger at jeffrey.kluger@time.com.

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Scientists May Have Just Discovered A Lake On Mars - TIME

By NASA/JPLOctober 2, 2022

NASAs Ingenuity Mars Helicopter acquired this image using its navigation camera. This camera is mounted in the helicopters fuselage and pointed directly downward to track the ground during flight. This image was acquired on November 6, 2021 (Sol 254 of the Perseverance rover mission) at the local mean solar time of 12:06:00. This was the date of Ingenuitys 15th flight. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Footage from the Mars helicopters navigation camera reveals a small piece of foreign object debris (FOD).

During a portion of the Ingenuity Mars helicopters 33rd flight, a small piece of foreign object debris (FOD) was seen in footage (see video below) from the Mars helicopters navigation camera (Navcam).

This foreign object debris was not visible in Navcam footage from the previous flight (32). The FOD is seen in Flight 33 Navcam imagery from the earliest frames to around halfway through the video, when it fell from the leg and drifted back to the Mars surface. All telemetry from the flight and a post-flight search and transfer are nominal and show no indication of vehicle damage. The Ingenuity and Perseverance Mars 2020 teams are currently working to determine the source of the debris.

Navigation Camera Imagery of Ingenuitys Flight 33: A small piece of foreign object debris (FOD) is seen in this footage from the navigation camera of NASAs Ingenuity Mars Helicopter during its 33rd flight on Mars on September 24, 2022. The FOD is seen attached to one of the rotorcrafts landing legs (upper right part of image), then drifting away. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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NASAs Ingenuity Helicopter Spots Foreign Object Debris on Mars - SciTechDaily

Perseverances parachute and backshell on the surface of Jezero Crater as photographed by NASAs ... [+] Ingenuity Mars Helicopter on April 19, 2022.

Remember the nail-biting seven minutes of terror video in 2021 of NASAs Perseverance rover parachuting onto Mars on a tether from its descent or jetpack stage after a 314 million miles journey?

What NASA didnt tell the watching world was that while its astrobiology rover was landing safely on the red planet it was depositing heat shields, parachutes, metal springs, foam, netting and other space litter all over the ancient river bed the robot was sent to explore.

Now Perseverance and its Ingenuity helicopter keep finding lasting mementos of its dramatic entry, descent and landing on Mars. Its not the first rover to do so, with NASAs Curiosity identifying bits of its own trash on the floor of Gale Crater.

Should we be littering Mars?

Yes. Yes we shouldand future humans will cherish our space litter from these, the first steps of exploration, according to scientists.

More images of "space litter" from its own landing was captured by NASA's Mars Perseverance on June ... [+] 23, 2022.

When we study ancient civilizations on Earth we look through their trash piles, said Dr. Bethany Ehlmann, a Professor of Planetary Science at California Institute of Technology and a Mars rover scientist. But these are not just trash pilestheyre artifacts of our first footsteps on Mars.

In short, our interplanetary trash will be treasure for space archaeologists of the near future.

The landing zones for these rovers will one day be national parks when humans eventually land on Mars, said Ehlmann. And the portions of landing systems and foam that may have come off as the rover landed will become historical markers.

Of course, it wont just be bits of foam and metal that get wedged in between rocks that will be the extent of the space litter of space agencies. Perseverance itself will, in due course, stop workingprobably in about a decade and likely due to a dust storm. A similar fate is in store for the Ingenuity helicopter as well as Chinas Zhurong rover, which is now exploring Utopia Planitia. NASAs Sojourner, Spirit and Opportunity rovers stopped working years ago.

NASA's Opportunity rover's 2005 image of the remains of the heat shield that protected it as it made ... [+] its way through the Martian atmosphere.

With the exception of bits of NASA and ESAs Mars helicopter-aided Mars Sample Return mission, everything that goes to Mars dies on Mars. Glance at a list of artificial objects on Mars and youll discover that the red planet is covered in remnant-strewn landing sites. Some have been pinpointed and examined from orbit while otherssuch as several Soviet landers from the 1970s that didnt return any radio signalsare merely estimated. 1971s Mars 2 mission, which crashed, contains a vacuum cleaner-sized robot on skis and tethered by an umbilical cord.

A future exhibit in a future museum on Mars?

Most of this precious Martian history is covered in dust, as recreated in the 2015 Hollywood movie The Martian when stranded astronaut Mark Watney travels for a month across the red planet to dig out the remains of NASAs Pathfinder lander from 1987 to use its cameras to communicate with Earth.

All their tracks will be blown away but the hardware will be covered in dust and preserved, said Alice Gorman, a space archaeologist at the Flinders University of South Australias Department of Archaeology. She thinks that people have an emotional attachment to many of the rovers on Mars. Imagine if the Ingenuity helicopter was able to go photograph Curiosity or one of the older rovers covered in dustit would be such an amazing picture, said Gorman.

NASA's Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image of its own "space litter" on June 13, 2022.

Since humans are yet to land on Mars its hard to imagine the red planet having protected national parks and monuments recognising humans first steps on the planet. Having similar constructs on the Moon, however, doesnt seem so far-fetched.

The Moon is just as covered in trash. Its estimated that there is about 500,000 pounds of garbage on the Moon from canisters, cables and cameras to and hammers, tongs and, yes, bags of human waste. Most of it, of course, is from the Apollo missions.

NASAs history office has a complete list of artifacts left on the Moon, and for good reason. As the Moon becomes more accessible to both national space programs and private enterprise, it is important that we protect lunar artifacts for both their historic and scientific value, reads the lists introduction.

Since theres no atmosphere on the Moon, the tracks of the first lunar roversand, more importantly, the footsteps of the first human moonwalkers in the late 1960s and 1970swill be preserved for many thousands of years.

Or will they? Once humans go to the Moon in greater numbers, and on private missions, those early Apollo landing sites are going to become targets for souvenir-hunters.

Apollo 11 - NASA, 1969. Astronaut Edwin E."Buzz" Aldrin Jr., Lunar Module pilot, surveys the Apollo ... [+] 11 landing site on July 20, 1969. He has just deployed the Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package, with the Passive Seismic Experiment Package next to him. The Lunar Module "Eagle" is in the far right background. Artist NASA. (Photo by Heritage Space/Heritage Images via Getty Images)

Theres an antiquities trade in artifacts looted from archaeological sites and there's also a very big collecting market for space stuff, said Gorman. You can imagine that collectors would pay huge sums of money for a piece of Apollo 11 and its something were really gonna have to watch out for.

Gorman thinks that were going to have to protect the Apollo sites, but prior to that re-visit them to get an idea of their current condition and thereafter to assess them as they change over time. Only then can we catch thieves in the act. Future lunar orbiters will have to monitor these places, keep track of their condition and also gather evidence of people looting themsuch as fresh rover tracks, said Gorman, whos now working on heritage management guidelines for the Moon. This stuff will be some of the most collectible everwe really need to start thinking about this very seriously.

Its a double-edged sword, of course, because if you produce a list of valuable, collectible items on the Moon then you instantly inflate their value. Were working towards an international consensus so if someone goes to the Apollo 11 landing site theyre breaking an international treaty, said Gorman.

The Apollo 11 site is the post-child for historical sites on the Moon, but theres another thats potentially even more significant to future archaeologists. In 1959 the USSRs Luna 2 became the first spacecraft to reach the surface of the Moon. In 1957 there was the first satellite and just two years later a spacecraft hits the moon, said Gorman. Thats mind blowingthe first human site on the moon that's worthy of protection as well.

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.

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NASA Rovers Are Finding Human-Made Debris On Mars. This Is Why Its Treasure, Not Trash - Forbes

PTI

Bengaluru, October 2

Indias Mars Orbiter craft has run out of propellant and its battery drained beyond the safe limit, fuelling speculation that the countrys maiden interplanetary mission Mangalyaan may have finally completed its long innings.

The Rs 450-crore Mars Orbiter Mission was launched onboard PSLV-C25 on November 5, 2013, and the MOM spacecraft was successfully inserted into Martian orbit on September 24, 2014 in its first attempt.

Right now, there is no fuel left. The satellite battery has drained, sources in the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) told PTI. The link has been lost.

There was, however, no official word from the countrys national space agency, headquartered here.

With fuel on board, ISRO had been performing orbital manoeuvres on MOM spacecraft to take it to a new orbit to avoid an impending eclipse in the past.

But recently there were back-to-back eclipses, including one that lasted seven-and-half hours, officials said on condition of anonymity, noting that all the propellant on board the ageing satellite had been consumed.

As the satellite battery is designed to handle eclipse duration of only about one hour and 40 minutes, a longer eclipse would drain the battery beyond the safe limit, another official said.

ISRO officials noted that the Mars orbiter craft functioned for almost eight years, well beyond its designed mission life of six months.

It has done its job and yielded significant scientific results, they said.

The objectives of the mission were primarily technological and included design, realisation and launch of a Mars Orbiter spacecraft capable of operating with sufficient autonomy during the journey phase; Mars orbit insertion/ capture and in-orbit phase around Mars.

The MOMa technology demonstration venturecarried five scientific payloads (total 15 kg) collecting data on surface geology, morphology, atmospheric processes, surface temperature and atmospheric escape process.

The five instruments are: Mars Color Camera (MCC), Thermal Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (TIS), Methane Sensor for Mars (MSM), Mars Exospheric Neutral Composition Analyser (MENCA) and Lyman Alpha Photometer (LAP).

MOM is credited with many laurels like cost-effectiveness, short period of realisation, economical mass-budget, and miniaturisation of five heterogeneous science payloads, ISRO officials pointed out.

Highly elliptical orbit geometry of MOM enabled MCC to take snap shots of Full disc of Mars at its farthest point and finer details from closest point.

The MCC has produced more than 1000 images and published a Mars Atlas.

Meanwhile, plans on a follow-on Mangalyaan mission to the red planet, however, are yet to be firmed up.

ISRO came out with an Announcement of Opportunity (AO) for future Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM-2) in 2016 but officials acknowledged that its still on the drawing board, with the coming Gaganyaan, Chandrayaan-3 and Aditya - L1 projects being in the space agencys current priority list.

The AO had said: It is now planned to have the next orbiter mission around Mars for a future launch opportunity. Proposals are solicited from interested scientists within India for experiments onboard an orbiter mission around Mars (MOM-2), to address relevant scientific problems and topics. Not in the approved list as of now, a senior ISRO official told PTI on being asked about an update on the MOM-2.

We need to formulate the project proposals and payloads based on the wider consultation with the research community, the official said. Its still on the drawing board. But needs some more details and international collaboration for finalising the mission.

Originally posted here:

Mangalyaan mission: With drained battery and no fuel, Indias Mars Orbiter craft quietly bids adieu - The Tribune India

Visitors to the village of Drumnadrochit, on the western shore of Scotlands murky Loch Ness, come to see the nearby ruins of Urquhart Castle or to chance a glimpse of the elusive Loch Ness Monster. But growing up in Drumnadrochit, planetary scientist Robin Wordsworth says it was the unobscured view of the cosmos that seized his attention. There are incredibly clear skies up there, he says.

Today, Wordsworth lives on the other side of the Atlantic. Hes a researcher and professor at Harvard University. But his gaze is still set on the solar system and beyond. From studying how rocky planets may occasionally become encased in glaciers to exploring the sizes of alien raindrops or the details of how humans might one day settle Mars, Wordsworths scientific explorations vary widely. His research group tends to do a lot of different things at once, he says. If I was to summarize it in a sentence, it would be to understand what drives habitability on planets through time.

Wordsworth defines a planets habitability as its ability to support life. The idea that life could survive elsewhere in the cosmos has always fascinated Wordsworth, a science fiction fan. Apart from Earth, astronomers have discovered roughly 20 potentially habitable worlds in the universe. With data collected by ground-based observatories, satellites and rovers, he uses supercomputers to construct simulations of planets and the evolution of their climates. Climate is a big focus because it determines whether a planets surface can harbor liquid water a necessity for all known forms of life.

Wordsworths most notable research reconstructs the climate of early Mars. Martian river valleys and other geologic clues suggest that abundant liquid water once flowed across the Red Planet, and the early Martian climate has thus become a hot topic for scientists seeking signs of alien life. But for decades, the best researchers could do was build one-dimensional models that struggled to replicate key atmospheric components, such as clouds.

In 2013 while at the Laboratory of Dynamic Meteorology in Paris, Wordsworth and colleagues presented a 3-D model of the early Martian climate, with clouds and an atmosphere containing large amounts of carbon dioxide. Those are key components for studying how the early Martian atmosphere may have reflected and trapped heat, says astrobiologist James Kasting of Penn State.

Wordsworth was the one who figured out how to incorporate clouds into the model, thanks to his strong programming skills, handle over mathematics and determination, Kasting says. Hes been publishing the best climate calculations for early Mars. Theres really nobody else who is in his lane.

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Wordsworths otherworldly reconstructions may help us better understand whether life might have emerged on Mars or elsewhere. Another strand of his research could help humans one day settle the Red Planet.

Today, most of Mars surface is too cold to sustain liquid water, and the planets thin atmosphere offers little protection from the suns intense ultraviolet radiation. These conditions make it inhospitable to would-be Martian settlers. But in a 2019 study, Wordsworth and colleagues proposed that sheets of insulating silica aerogel deployed over ice-covered areas might make survival possible.

In lab tests, layers of aerogel just centimeters thick filtered out 60 percent of UVA and UVB radiation and almost all of the more dangerous UVC rays, while permitting enough light through for photosynthesis. Whats more, the shields warmed the air underneath by more than 50 degrees Celsius, which could make liquid water and growing crops possible. Looking ahead, Wordsworth plans to investigate how settlers on Mars might use bioplastics or other renewable materials to become self-sustaining.

And far beyond the Red Planet, the exoplanets await. The James Webb Space Telescope has just begun to collect new exoplanet data, Wordsworth says. Observations of their atmospheres will help researchers test ideas about how these distant planets and their climates evolve, he says. Its just an incredibly exciting time.

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Robin Wordsworth re-creates the atmosphere of ancient Mars - Science News Magazine