Category Archives: Mars

NASA's Perseverance rover is slowly getting ready to deploy the first helicopter on Mars even as it takes a look back at the litter it's dropping on the Red Planet.

The rover, which was carefully sterilized on Earth to avoid contaminating Mars with microbes, dropped a protective debris shield onto the planet's surface on March 21. The shield is no longer needed as it was designed to protect Ingenuity during the "seven minutes of terror" landing in February.

An image from the WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and engineering) camera on the rover's robotic arm shows the debris shield safely on the surface of Jezero Crater, between the rover's six wheels. It's the second thing Perseverance dropped in recent weeks, after an unneeded belly pan relating to its sampling system.

Video: Perseverance rover's latest tracks & Mars 'litter' (with Sol 16 audio)

"Away goes the debris shield, and here's our first look at the helicopter," the Perseverance Twitter account tweeted March 21.

In a series of images from Perseverance, the Mars helicopter can be seen slowly unfolding from its initial position on the rover's belly.

"It [the helicopter] is stowed sideways, folded up and locked in place, so there's some reverse origami to do before I can set it down. First though, I'll be off to the designated 'helipad,' a couple days' drive from here," Perseverance team members wrote on Twitter as the rover.

The Ingenuity helicopter is expected to attempt its first flight as soon as April 8, according to NASA, and it will be the first time an aircraft will attempt to fly through another world's atmosphere. "A couple more drives should get me there," the tweet added.

The rover is on a larger quest to seek signs of habitability in Jezero Crater, which appears to have been rich in water earlier in its history. Perseverance will cache the most promising samples it finds for a future sample-return mission to ferry back to Earth. As for Ingenuity, if it can fly it will hail a potential new generation of Martian explorers that can scout ahead of rovers and even humans, in the decades to come, to make surface exploration easier.

NASA plans to start the Ingenuity flight campaign no earlier than April 8, assuming that Perseverance will be able to deploy the helicopter safely on the surface a complicated six-sol or Martian day process. (A sol is roughly 24 hours, 40 minutes of Earth time.) Perseverance and Ingenuity are also working mostly on their own, as radio communications must send preprogrammed instructions to Mars, which is several minutes' light speed away from us.

Perseverance teams are working on Mars time for a few months to make the most of the mission start, and hope to get Ingenuity off the ground within 30 sols or 31 Earth days of the drone's deployment.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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NASA's Mars helicopter is slowly unfolding beneath the Perseverance rover - Space.com

As their respective spacecraft headed to Mars, China and the U.S. held consultations earlier this year in a somewhat unusual series of exchanges between the rivals

ByThe Associated Press

March 31, 2021, 8:15 AM

2 min read

BEIJING -- As their respective spacecraft headed to Mars, China and the U.S. held consultations earlier this year in a somewhat unusual series of exchanges between the rivals.

China's National Space Agency confirmed Wednesday that it had working-level meetings and communications with NASA from January to March to ensure the flight safety" of their craft.

U.S. law bans almost all contacts between NASA and China over concerns about technology theft and the secretive, military-backed nature of Chinas space program.

However, exceptions can be made when NASA can certify to Congress that it has protections in place to safeguard information, acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk said during a video meeting last week.

Jurczyk said the most recent exchange was about China providing orbital and other data for its Mars mission so they could analyze the risk of collision. We do have targeted engagement with them, he said.

His remarks were first reported by the SpaceNews website.

Jurczyk added that it will be up to the Biden administration and Congress to determine if and how the U.S. engages with China on non-military space activities as part of the nation's overall China strategy.

As the administration and Congress sets those policies, we look forward to how we can contribute in respect to civil space dialogue and collaboration with China, he said.

The area around Mars has become a bit more crowded this year with the arrival of spacecraft from the U.S., China and the U.A.E.

NASAs Perseverance rover landed on Mars in February and has begun exploration. China's Tianwen-1 is orbiting Mars in preparation for a landing in May or June. The U.A.E. craft is only orbiting and will not attempt to land.

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US, China consulted on safety as their craft headed to Mars - ABC News

Mars, fourth planet in the solar system in order of distance from the Sun and seventh in size and mass. It is a periodically conspicuous reddish object in the night sky. Mars is designated by the symbol .

An especially serene view of Mars (Tharsis side), a composite of images taken by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft in April 1999. The northern polar cap and encircling dark dune field of Vastitas Borealis are visible at the top of the globe. White water-ice clouds surround the most prominent volcanic peaks, including Olympus Mons near the western limb, Alba Patera to its northeast, and the line of Tharsis volcanoes to the southeast. East of the Tharsis rise can be seen the enormous near-equatorial gash that marks the canyon system Valles Marineris.

Britannica Quiz

Can You Match The Moon To Its Planet? Quiz

You may be the expert on Earths Moon. But how much do you know about the moons of other planets? Test your knowledge by matching the moon to its planet in this quiz.

Sometimes called the Red Planet, Mars has long been associated with warfare and slaughter. It is named for the Roman god of war. As long as 3,000 years ago, Babylonian astronomer-astrologers called the planet Nergal for their god of death and pestilence. The planets two moons, Phobos (Greek: Fear) and Deimos (Terror), were named for two of the sons of Ares and Aphrodite (the counterparts of Mars and Venus, respectively, in Greek mythology).

In recent times Mars has intrigued people for more-substantial reasons than its baleful appearance. The planet is the second closest to Earth, after Venus, and it is usually easy to observe in the night sky because its orbit lies outside Earths. It is also the only planet whose solid surface and atmospheric phenomena can be seen in telescopes from Earth. Centuries of assiduous studies by earthbound observers, extended by spacecraft observations since the 1960s, have revealed that Mars is similar to Earth in many ways. Like Earth, Mars has clouds, winds, a roughly 24-hour day, seasonal weather patterns, polar ice caps, volcanoes, canyons, and other familiar features. There are intriguing clues that billions of years ago Mars was even more Earth-like than today, with a denser, warmer atmosphere and much more waterrivers, lakes, flood channels, and perhaps oceans. By all indications Mars is now a sterile frozen desert. However, close-up images of dark streaks on the slopes of some craters during Martian spring and summer suggest that at least small amounts of water may flow seasonally on the planets surface, and radar reflections from a possible lake under the south polar cap suggest that water may still exist as a liquid in protected areas below the surface. The presence of water on Mars is considered a critical issue because life as it is presently understood cannot exist without water. If microscopic life-forms ever did originate on Mars, there remains a chance, albeit a remote one, that they may yet survive in these hidden watery niches. In 1996 a team of scientists reported what they concluded to be evidence for ancient microbial life in a piece of meteorite that had come from Mars, but most scientists have disputed their interpretation.

Since at least the end of the 19th century, Mars has been considered the most hospitable place in the solar system beyond Earth both for indigenous life and for human exploration and habitation. At that time, speculation was rife that the so-called canals of Marscomplex systems of long, straight surface lines that very few astronomers had claimed to see in telescopic observationswere the creations of intelligent beings. Seasonal changes in the planets appearance, attributed to the spread and retreat of vegetation, added further to the purported evidence for biological activity. Although the canals later proved to be illusory and the seasonal changes geologic rather than biological, scientific and public interest in the possibility of Martian life and in exploration of the planet has not faded.

During the past century Mars has taken on a special place in popular culture. It has served as inspiration for generations of fiction writers from H.G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs in the heyday of the Martian canals to Ray Bradbury in the 1950s and Kim Stanley Robinson in the 90s. Mars has also been a central theme in radio, television, and film, perhaps the most notorious case being Orson Welless radio-play production of H.G. Wellss novel War of the Worlds, which convinced thousands of unwitting listeners on the evening of October 30, 1938, that beings from Mars were invading Earth. The planets mystique and many real mysteries remain a stimulus to both scientific inquiry and human imagination to this day.

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Mars | Facts, Surface, Temperature, & Atmosphere | Britannica

The red planet Mars, named for the Roman god of war, has long been an omen in the night sky. And in its own way, the planets rusty red surface tells a story of destruction. Billions of years ago, the fourth planet from the sun could have been mistaken for Earths smaller twin, with liquid water on its surfaceand maybe even life.

Now, the world is a cold, barren desert with few signs of liquid water. But after decades of study using orbiters, landers, and rovers, scientists have revealed Mars as a dynamic, windblown landscape that couldjust maybeharbor microbial life beneath its rusty surface even today.

With a radius of 2,106 miles, Mars is the seventh largest planet in our solar system and about half the diameter of Earth. Its surface gravity is 37.5 percent of Earths.

Mars 101

Recent NASA exploratory expeditions revealed some of the red planet's biggest mysteries. This video explains what makes it so different from Earth and what would happen if humans lived there.

Mars rotates on its axis every 24.6 Earth hours, defining the length of a Martian day, which is called a sol (short for solar day). Marss axis of rotation is tilted 25.2 degrees relative to the plane of the planets orbit around the sun, which helps give Mars seasons similar to those on Earth. Whichever hemisphere is tilted closer to the sun experiences spring and summer, while the hemisphere tilted away gets fall and winter. At two specific moments each yearcalled the equinoxesboth hemispheres receive equal illumination.

But for several reasons, seasons on Mars are different from those on Earth. For one, Mars is on average about 50 percent farther from the sun than Earth is, with an average orbital distance of 142 million miles. This means that it takes Mars longer to complete a single orbit, stretching out its year and the lengths of its seasons. On Mars, a year lasts 669.6 sols, or 687 Earth days, and an individual season can last up to 194 sols, or just over 199 Earth days.

The angle of Marss axis of rotation also changes much more often than Earth's, which has led to swings in the Martian climate on timescales of thousands to millions of years. In addition, Marss orbit is less circular than Earths, which means that its orbital velocity varies more over the course of a Martian year. This annual variation affects the timing of the red planets solstices and equinoxes. On Mars, the northern hemispheres spring and summer are longer than the fall and winter.

Theres another complicating factor: Mars has a far thinner atmosphere than Earth, which dramatically lessens how much heat the planet can trap near its surface. Surface temperatures on Mars can reach as high as 70 degrees Fahrenheit and as low as -225 degrees Fahrenheit, but on average, its surface is -81 degrees Fahrenheit, a full 138 degrees colder than Earths average temperature.

The primary driver of modern Martian geology is its atmosphere, which is mostly made of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and argon. By Earth standards, the air is preposterously thin; air pressure atop Mount Everest is about 50 times higher than it is at the Martian surface. Despite the thin air, Martian breezes can gust up to 60 miles an hour, kicking up dust that fuels huge dust storms and massive fields of alien sand dunes.

Once upon a time, though, wind and water flowed across the red planet. Robotic rovers have found clear evidence that billions of years ago, lakes and rivers of liquid water coursed across the red planets surface. This means that at some point in the distant past, Marss atmosphere was sufficiently dense and retained enough heat for water to remain liquid on the red planets surface. Not so today: Though water ice abounds under the Martian surface and in its polar ice caps, there are no large bodies of liquid water on the surface there today.

Mars also lacks an active plate tectonic system, the geologic engine that drives our active Earth, and is also missing a planetary magnetic field. The absence of this protective barrier makes it easier for the suns high-energy particles to strip away the red planets atmosphere, which may help explain why Marss atmosphere is now so thin. But in the ancient pastup until about 4.12 to 4.14 billion years agoMars seems to have had an inner dynamo powering a planet-wide magnetic field. What shut down the Martian dynamo? Scientists are still trying to figure out.

Like Earth and Venus, Mars has mountains, valleys, and volcanoes, but the red planets are by far the biggest and most dramatic. Olympus Mons, the solar systems largest volcano, towers some 16 miles above the Martian surface, making it three times taller than Everest. But the base of Olympus Mons is so widesome 374 miles acrossthat the volcanos average slope is only slightly steeper than a wheelchair ramp. The peak is so massive, it curves with the surface of Mars. If you stood at the outer edge of Olympus Mons, its summit would lie beyond the horizon.

Mars has not only the highest highs, but also some of the solar systems lowest lows. Southeast of Olympus Mons lies Valles Marineris, the red planets iconic canyon system. The gorges span about 2,500 miles and cut up to 4.3 miles into the red planets surface. The network of chasms is four times deeperand five times longerthan Earths Grand Canyon, and at its widest, its a staggering 200 miles across. The valleys get their name from Mariner 9, which became the first spacecraft to orbit another planet when it arrived at Mars in 1971.

About 4.5 billion years ago, Mars coalesced from the gaseous, dusty disk that surrounded our young sun. Over time, the red planets innards differentiated into a core, a mantle, and an outer crust thats an average of 40 miles thick.

Its core is likely made of iron and nickel, like Earths, but probably contains more sulfur than ours. The best available estimates suggest that the core is about 2,120 miles across, give or take 370 milesbut we dont know the specifics. NASAs InSight lander aims to unravel the mysteries of Marss interior by tracking how seismic waves move through the red planet.

Marss northern and southern hemispheres are wildly different from one another, to a degree unlike any other planet in the solar system. The planets northern hemisphere consists mostly of low-lying plains, and the crust there can be just 19 miles thick. The highlands of the southern hemisphere, however, are studded with many extinct volcanoes, and the crust there can get up to 62 miles thick.

What happened? Its possible that patterns of internal magma flow caused the difference, but some scientists think it's the result of Mars suffering one or several major impacts. One recent model suggests Mars got its two faces because an object the size of Earths moon slammed into Mars near its south pole.

Both hemispheres do have one thing in common: Theyre covered in the planets trademark dust, which gets its many shades of orange, red, and brown from iron rust.

At some point in the distant past, the red planet gained its two small and irregularly shaped moons, Phobos and Deimos. The two lumpy worlds, discovered in 1877, are named for the sons and chariot drivers of the god Mars in Roman mythology. How the moons formed remains unsolved. One possibility is that they formed in the asteroid belt and were captured by Marss gravity. But recent models instead suggest that they could have formed from the debris flung up from Mars after a huge impact long ago.

Deimos, the smaller of the two moons, orbits Mars every 30 hours and is less than 10 miles across. Its larger sibling Phobos bears many scars, including craters and deep grooves running across its surface. Scientists have long debated what caused the grooves on Phobos. Are they tracks left behind by boulders rolling across the surface after an ancient impact, or signs that Marss gravity is pulling the moon apart?

Either way, the moons future will be considerably less groovy. Each century, Phobos gets about six feet closer to Mars; in 50 million years or so, the moon is projected either to crash into the red planets surface or break into smithereens.

Since the 1960s, humans have robotically explored Mars more than any other planet beyond Earth. Currently, eight missions from the U.S., European Union, Russia, and India are actively orbiting Mars or roving across its surface. But getting safely to the red planet is no small feat. Of the 45 Mars missions launched since 1960, 26 have had some component fail to leave Earth, fall silent en route, miss orbit around Mars, burn up in the atmosphere, crash on the surface, or die prematurely.

More missions are on the horizon, including some designed to help search for Martian life. NASA is building its Mars 2020 rover to cache promising samples of Martian rock that a future mission would return to Earth. In 2020, the European Space Agency and Roscosmos plan to launch a rover named for chemist Rosalind Franklin, whose work was crucial to deciphering the structure of DNA. The rover will drill into Martian soil to hunt for signs of past and present life. Other countries are joining the fray, making space exploration more global in the process. In July 2020, the United Arab Emirates is slated to launch its Hope orbiter, which will study the Martian atmosphere.

Perhaps humans will one day join robots on the red planet. NASA has stated its goal to send humans back to the moon as a stepping-stone to Mars. Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, is building a massive vehicle called Starship in part to send humans to Mars. Will humans eventually build a scientific base on the Martian surface, like those that dot Antarctica? How will human activity affect the red planet or our searches for life there?

Time will tell. But no matter what, Mars will continue to occupy the human imagination, a glimmering red beacon in our skies and stories.

Read more from the original source:

Mars, the red planet: Facts and information

Curiosity's Selfie at Mont Mercou: The panorama is made up of 60 images from the MAHLI camera on the rovers robotic arm along with 11 images from the Mastcam on the mast, or head, of the rover. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS. Full image and caption

The rover also snapped a pair of panoramas to create a 3D view of the stark cliff face featured in the selfie.

At the start of March, NASAs Curiosity Mars rover began approaching an impressive rock formation that scientists dubbed Mont Mercou, a nickname taken from a mountain in France. Standing about 20 feet (6 meters) tall, the outcrop is captured in all its majesty in a new selfie, as well as in a pair of panoramas that offer a 3D view. The selfie shows Curiosity in front of Mont Mercou with a new drill hole nearby at a rock sample nicknamed Nontron the missions 30th sample to date.

Curiositys drill powderized the sample before trickling it into instruments inside the rover so the science team could get a better understanding of the rocks composition and what clues it might offer about Mars past. This area is at the transition between the clay-bearing unit Curiosity is departing and the sulfate-bearing unit thats ahead on Mount Sharp, the 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain that the rover has been rolling up since 2014. Scientists have long thought this transition might reveal what happened to Mars as it became the desert planet we see today.

Frances Mont Mercou is located near the village of Nontron in the southeast of the country. The team chose Nontron-related nicknames for this part of the Red Planet because Mars orbiters detected nontronite, a type of clay mineral found close to Nontron, in the region. Surface missions assign nicknames to landmarks to provide the missions team members a common way to refer to rocks, soils, and other geologic features of interest.

The selfie is composed of 60 images taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on the rovers robotic arm on March 26, 2021, the 3,070th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. These were combined with 11 images taken by the Mastcam on the mast, or head, of the rover on March 16, 2021, the 3,060th Martian day of the mission.

Curiosity's 3D View of Mont 'Mercou': NASAs Curiosity Mars rover used its Mastcam instrument to take the 32 individual images that make up this panorama of the outcrop nicknamed Mont Mercou. It took a second panorama to create a stereoscopic view. Both panoramas were taken on March 4, 2021, the 3,049th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS. Full image and caption

Curiosity also provided a pair of panoramas using its Mastcam on March 4, 2021, the 3,049th Martian day of the mission. By shooting one panorama from about 130 feet (40 meters) away from the outcrop, then rolling to the side and shooting another from the same distance, the rover created a stereoscopic effect similar to those seen in 3D viewfinders. Studying the outcrop from more than one angle helps scientists get a better idea of the 3D geometry of Mount Mercous sedimentary layers. An anaglyph of the image can be viewed through red-blue glasses, which you can learn to make here.

Curiosity's 360-Degree View Approaching 'Mont Mercou': NASAs Curiosity Mars rover used its Mastcam instrument to take the 126 individual images that make up this 360-degree panorama on March 3, 2021, the 3,048th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS. Full image and caption

In addition to the stereo view and the selfie, Curiosity took a 360-degree panorama of Mont Mercou and its surroundings with its Mastcam.

For more about Curiosity, visit:

https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/

For more about NASAs Mars program, visit:

https://mars.nasa.gov

News Media Contacts

Andrew GoodJet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.818-393-2433andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov

Alana Johnson / Grey HautaluomaNASA Headquarters, Washington202-672-4780 / 202-358-0668alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov / grey.hautaluoma-1@nasa.gov

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NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover Takes Selfie With 'Mont Mercou' NASA's Mars Exploration Program - NASA Mars Exploration

Scientists have, for the first time, directly measured the core of another planet. NASAs InSight mission on Mars has discovered the Red Planets core is considerably bigger than expected.

Instruments on the spacecraft have listened to seismic energy deep within the planet. The data suggests a measurement of 1,810-1,860km in diameter, roughly half the size of the Earths core. Its larger than some predictions, which means the Martian core is less dense than previous estimates, probably due to the presence of lighter elements such as oxygen.

The measurements have not yet been published in a journal but were reported at a virtual gathering of the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. The finding could help researchers piece together more about how the planet evolved and raises questions about conditions for potential life on the planet.

The measurement was taken with a seismometer, says Divya Persaud, a planetary scientist at UCL, who was not involved in the research.

Its like a very sensitive ear pressed against the ground, listening for energetic events in the interior of a planet. On Earth, these are usually earthquakes. InSight has detected hundreds of seismic events in the first Martian year of its mission. Seismic events on Mars, like marsquakes or meteorite impacts, are exciting on their own to geologists, but they are also a useful tool.

On Earth, when an earthquake releases a lot of energy, these waves of energy travel quickly throughout the interior of the planet and bounce off of different materials, like magma, or the boundaries between layers of different types of rock. They also slow down in some materials or speed up in others.

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By measuring the strength of these signals, and how they interact with material underground, scientists can detect the internal structure of the planet. The InSight team used the same technique on Mars.

Persaud is intrigued that the core isnt as dense as expected, because it may lead to new understandings about how planets and the wider Solar System evolved. Cores also tell us about energy in the Solar System over time, she says, not just for Mars but all of the terrestrial planets which formed at the same time but in very different ways from each other.

Understanding the structure of Mars tells us about how much heat it started with, at what depths, and at what rate through time, and is an important puzzle piece in the bigger mystery of how and why the planets formed the way they did.

InSight, which sits close to the Martian equator, may not be reporting many more findings. Dust is beginning to build up on its solar panels and as Mars moves farther away from the Sun in its orbit, the spacecraft will soon begin to lose its ability to recharge.

However, its discoveries are already game-changing and hint at bigger puzzles to work out. The planets core might tell us more about an ancient magnetic field that once sustained a Martian atmosphere, not unlike Earths. This could tell us more about potential life on Mars in the distant past.

Theres also significance in that InSight has been really successful, technologically, Persaud says. We only have seismic measurements from the Earth, the Moon, and Mars, and here we have a really successful, advanced instrument that is changing our perspective of Mars. In future, a seismometer on a body like Europa could give us a fantastic look into a radically different world.

The future of planetary seismology is really exciting.

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Scientists have measured the core of Mars (and found something unexpected) - BBC Focus Magazine

The triumphant landing of the Perseverance rover has inspired all Americans, and indeed much of the world. President Biden should follow it up by launching a program to send humans to Mars.

While robotic rovers are wonderful, they cannot resolve the fundamental scientific question that Mars poses to humanity, which relate to the potential prevalence and diversity of life in the universe. The early Mars was very much like the early Earth; a rocky, warm and wet planet with a carbon dioxidedominated atmosphere. Life appeared on Earth virtually as soon as our planet was cool enough for liquid water. Did it appear on Mars too? If so, did it use the same DNA-RNA information system underlying all life on Earth, or something else? We now know that billions of stars have planets. Is life likely to found everywhere? Is life as we know it on Earth what life is, or is it just a particular example drawn for a vast tapestry of possibilities?

These are questions that thinking men and women have wondered about for thousands of years. They can only be resolved by sending humans.

Finding evidence of past life requires fossil hunting. Perseverance will make a stab at that, but human rock hounds, capable of traveling far over difficult terrain, climbing, digging, doing delicate work and intuitively following up clues, can do that job vastly better. Finding extant life to determine its nature will require drilling down hundreds of meters to reach underground water where life might still thrive, bringing up samples, culturing them and subjecting them to analysis. That is light-years beyond the ability of robotic rovers.

If we dont go, we wont know.

Some say that sending humans to Mars is a task for the far future, far beyond our abilities. In fact, the means to do such a mission are close at hand.

Sending humans to Mars does not require building gigantic nuclear-powered ion-drive science-fiction spaceships in a futuristic world of orbital spaceports. It requires sending a payload of 10 tons or more capable of supporting a small group of people from Earth to Mars, landing it and then sending that or a comparable payload back.

The currently operational SpaceX Falcon Heavy could throw a 10-ton class lander to Mars. The soon to be operational NASA SLS and SpaceX Starship booster will be able to send a 20-ton lander. So, we have that part covered. The next thing we need is the lander.

The Perseverance landing system can deliver one ton to the surface of Mars. To get started with human exploration, we need a 10-ton class lander. There are a number of ways to create such a system. For example, we could use aeroshells, parachutes and landing jets, or perhaps a miniature version of Starship. I wont go into the details. But the bottom line is if we can land one ton on Mars, we can land 10. It requires no scientific breakthroughs, just engineering.

Once we have a 10-ton lander, we can use it send large robotic expeditions to Mars. Instead of landing one rover, we land a platoon of robots. These could include science explorers like Perseverance, and much bigger versions of the Ingenuity helicopter capable of broad-ranging reconnaissance. A team of smaller rovers armed with high resolution cameras could create a high-definition map of the area and transmit it to Earth, allowing millions of people here to walk the landscape with virtual-reality gear, directly assisting the robots in exploration by calling their attention to features of interest.

But the expedition would also include construction robots, possibly humanoid in form with arms and legs, capable of building a Mars base. These would set up a power system and put in operation units for converting Martian carbon dioxide and water ice into methane and oxygen rocket propellant, which would be stored in tanks. With such a base set up and fully equipped with housing, power, a lab, a workshop and supplies in advance, all astronauts will need to do is show up with a credit card, and check in. Everything they need to live and work on Mars, and return from Mars, will be there waiting for them.

The is nothing in this plan that is beyond our capability, either technically or financially. Joe Biden could take the key step that would allow America to once again to astonish with world with what free people can do. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the importance of science to our lives. Science comes from scientists, who come from children who want to become scientists. Youth loves adventure. As during the Apollo days, a bold space program would make science the great adventure, inspiring millions of young people to want to become scientists, engineers, inventors, medical researchers and technological entrepreneursthe ultimate resource we will need to meet whatever challenges the future may bring.

Seize the moment, Joe.

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President Biden Should Push for the Human Exploration of Mars - Scientific American

Figure 1: Mars Biosphere Engine. a, The zonally averaged Mars elevation from MOLA8 shows how the formation of the planetary crustal dichotomy has driven hydrology and energy flux throughout geological times, creating both conditions for an origin of life, the formation of habitats, and dispersal pathways. While conditions do not allow sustained surface water in the present day, recent volcanic activity and subsurface water reservoirs may maintain habitats and dispersal pathways for an extant biosphere. The origin(s) of methane emissions remain enigmatic, their spatial distribution overlapping with areas of magma and water/ice accumulations at the highland/lowlands boundary. b, Young volcanoes in Coprates Chasma, Valles Marineris estimated to be 200-400 million years old by Bro et al. (2017). c, Regions of subglacial water (blue) detected at the base of the south polar layered deposits by the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) instrument. ). Credit: (b) NASA-JPL/MRO-University of Arizona (c) Lauro et al., (2020)

In a comment recently published in Nature Astronomy, Dr. Nathalie Cabrol, Director of the Carl Sagan Center for Research at the SETI Institute, challenges assumptions about the possibility of modern life on Mars held by many in the scientific community.

As the Perseverance rover embarks on a journey to seek signs of ancient life in the 3.7 billion years old Jezero crater, Cabrol theorizes that not only life could still be present on Mars today, but it could also be much more widespread and accessible than previously believed. Her conclusions are based on years of exploration of early Mars analogs in extreme environments in the Chilean altiplano and the Andes funded by the NASA Astrobiology Institute. Its essential, she argues, that we consider microbial habitability on Mars through the lens of a 4-billion-year-old environmental continuum rather than through frozen environmental snapshots as we tend to do. Also critical is to remember that, by all terrestrial standards, Mars became an extreme environment very early.

In extreme environments, while water is an essential condition, it is far from being enough. What matters most, Cabrol says, its how extreme environmental factors such as a thin atmosphere, UV radiation, salinity, aridity, temperature fluctuations and many more interact with each other, not only water. You can walk on the same landscape for miles and find nothing. Then, maybe because the slope changes by a fraction of a degree, the texture or the mineralogy of the soil is different because there is more protection from UV, all of a sudden, life is here. What matters in extreme worlds to find life is to understand the patterns resulting from these interactions. Follow the water is good. Follow the patterns is better.

This interaction unlocks lifes distribution and abundance in those landscapes. That does not necessarily make it easier to find, as the last refuges for microbes in extreme environments can be at the micro- to nanoscale within the cracks in crystals. On the other hand, observations made in terrestrial analogs suggest that these interactions considerably expand the potential territory for modern life on Mars and could bring it closer to the surface than long theorized.

If Mars still harbors life today, which Cabrol thinks it does, to find it we must take the approach of Mars as a biosphere. As such, its microbial habitat distribution and abundance are tightly connected not only to where life could theoretically survive today but also where it was able to disperse and adapt over the entire history of the planet, and the keys to that dispersion lie in early geological times. Before the Noachian/Hesperian transition, 3.7-3.5 billion years ago, rivers, oceans, wind, dust storms would have taken it everywhere across the planet. Importantly, dispersal mechanisms still exist today, and they connect the deep interior to the subsurface, Cabrol says.

But a biosphere cannot run without an engine. Cabrol proposes that the engine to sustain modern life on Mars still exists, that it is over 4 billion years old and migrated out of sight today, underground.

If thisiscorrect, these observations may modify our definition of what we call Special Regions to include the interaction of extreme environmental factors as a critical element, one that potentially expands their distribution in substantial ways and could have us rethink how to approach them. The issue, here, says Cabrol, is that we do not yet have the global environmental data at a scale and resolution that matters to understand modern microbial habitability on Mars. As human exploration gives us a deadline to retrieve pristine samples, Cabrol suggests options regarding the search for extant life, including the type of missions that could fulfill objectives critical to astrobiology, human exploration, and planetary protection.

Reference: Tracing a modern biosphere on Mars by Nathalie A. Cabrol, 16 March 2021, Nature Astronomy.DOI: 10.1038/s41550-021-01327-x

The work reported here was supported by the NASA Astrobiology Institute via Grant No. NNA15BB01A.

Originally posted here:

Tracing a Modern Biosphere on Mars: Is There Life on Mars Today And Where? - SciTechDaily

A little less than 120 years after the first aircraft took to the sky above windswept fields near Kitty Hawk, a small helicopter is preparing to buzz around the surface of Mars.

In what's being billed as a Wright Brothers moment, NASA's Ingenuity helicopter will go down in history if it succeeds.

"We've never had an aircraft that can power itself off another planet," said Tim Canham, who leadsNASA's helicopter operations team.

The small table-sized helicopter arrived on Mars in February tucked up safely underneath the Perseverance rover, which charged the chopper's batteries and kept it warm.

Ingenuity has now reached its helipad and cameras onboard Perseverance have captured it slowly unfurling and hanging under the rover.

Supplied: NASA/JPL-Caltech

When the rover drops Ingenuityon the ground this week, the little helicopter'smission begins.

Not only must it survive the Martian nights where temperatures can drop to minus 100 degrees Celsius but it's on its own when it flies.

Supplied: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Its first flightcould take off aroundApril 8.

"We have 90 seconds of terror every single time we fly because once we send the command in the morning to say 'fly' we send then a whole heap of commands then hit go there's nothing we can do to change the outcome at that point," Mr Canham said.

Ingenuity might look like a mini-copter, but it could not fly on Earth.

Standing at just knee height and weighing a mere 1.8 kg, Ingenuity has been designed from scratch for the conditions on Mars.

At a cost of $80 million, the helicopter took three years to build using a combination of high-tech nous with components you can buy in a hobby shop.

Supplied: NASA/JPL-Caltech

One of the biggest sticking points the team had to overcome was the planet's thin atmosphere.

"If the mass of air is really thin, the helicopter has to work a lot harder to take off," Mr Canham said.

To counter this, the helicopter's 1.2-metre-long blades spin up to three times faster than they would need to on Earth.

Each blade is made out of stiff carbon fibre so they can grasp the air better, but they are so light they weigh the same as a piece of A4 paper.

"You can barely feel it because it's so thin but it's super strong," Mr Canham said.

And the legs are springy so they won't break if it bounces when it lands.

Many of the components, such as motors, have been miniaturised to stick to the weight limit.

At the heart of Ingenuity is a tiny computer designed to run its custom-made software and handle the avalanche of images and data captured by its cameras and sensors.

This computer is actually a processor you'd find in a three-year-old mobile phone. While already obsolete on Earth, it is surprisingly powerful.

"The processor on the helicopter is about 100 times more powerful than the processor on the rover itself," Mr Canham said.

The helicopter will buzz over a flat area not far from where Perseverance first landed.

Supplied: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Perseverance will observe Ingenuity from a spot about 60 metres away and relay data to and from the helicopter.

The helicopter is set to perform five flights in 31 (Earth) days.

In the days leading up to each flight, the team will do health checks to see that everything on the helicopter is working,and they'll monitor conditions such as air density and wind speed.

Once everything is OK, they'll send the "fly"commands up. Then it's up to Ingenuity.

Unlike drones on Earth, Ingenuity will have to fly itself, combining instructions about each flight with data from sensors and two onboard cameras which take 30 images per second to tell it where it's going and how fast it is travelling, as well as adjust for conditions such as wind gusts and other hazards.

Supplied: NASA/JPL-Caltech

On its first flight Ingenuity will rise about 3 metres, hover for about 30 seconds, then return back to its helipad.

"That will be very basic so we can get an idea of the dynamics of flying in the atmosphere and how much power we'd use," Mr Canham said.

"It's kind of a baby step."

On the second and third flights it will climb to a height of 5 metres and cover up to 15 metres travelling at 2 metres per second before returning to the helipad.

Once they see how those flights go, they'll work out what to do for the last two.

"If we just go bam, bam, bam, and do our first three flights and everything looks great then maybe we can do something more adventurous go further, go faster, go higher," Mr Canham said.

But first it needs to survive its first night on the ground.

Although Ingenuity has been tested on multiple occasions on Earth, there are two very stressfulpoints in the mission.

"The first scary touch point is that first drop," Mr Canham said.

After Ingenuity fully unfurls,Perseverance will drop it on the ground and drive away.

All going to plan, this will bethe first time we'll see what Ingenuity looks like on the Martian surface as Perseverance backs away and takes some snap shots.

But a lot can go wrong at this point. No longer connected to its life support, Ingenuity must get enough Sun on its solar panels to charge its batteries.

This must happen within 25 hours of dropping,said NASA systems engineer Farah Alibay, who is coordinating the two robots.

"If we dont drive off on time, if we have any problem, then theres a chance the helicopter might not survive the Martian night, she said.

The helicopter has a heater and thermostat designed to keep it warm as it sleeps through the cold Martian nights.But if this is also a bit off, the batteries will freeze.

"That first night we're going to find out whether or not our models were true about how warm it can keep itself because if we're wrong it can completely discharge the battery and the project might be over," Mr Canham said.

If it survives, the team will prepare it for its next hairy moment: the first flight.

Despite all the testing on Earth the team built a special space chamber to simulate conditions on Mars they're not really sure what the Red Planet will throw at them.

Once theysend the "fly"command up in the Martian morning, they then have to wait another four to five hours before the data starts streaming back to Earth via Perseverance in the afternoon.

"So it's going to fly when nobody is there to watch it except for the rover.

"We're pretty confident it's going to work. but you never know until you try it for the first time,MrCanham added.

"So we're going to be on the edge of our seats when that first flight data comes down."

Supplied: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Ingenuity's sensors will capture data such as height and speed as it tracks along its flight path. It will also takeimages withtwo cameras.

Perseverance will also try to capture images and video from its vantage point 60m away. That won't be easy, Dr Alibay said.

"Were going to be doing our very best to capture Ingenuity in flight," shesaid.

"Weve got to get that timing right to get that first flight, but were trying very, very hard to catch that."

NASA is planning to live stream the momentdata starts flowing into mission control.

"Depending on how much data can be transferred during the downlink after the flight, there is [also] a good chance we will see images of the helicopter from the rover on the day the flight occurs," Mr Canham said.

Scientists are on a quest to find out if another planet other than our own ever hosted life. Clues to what they might find are hidden in the ancient landscapes of Australia.

Over the next day or so we should get even more vision of the flight taken by both Perseverance and Ingenuity.

The area has already been extensively imaged by satellites and Perseverance, so the images won't contribute to the main mission;but they will give the team a bird's-eye view of the flight path.

"It's a good proof of concept, because it gives you anidea of how far it can see when it's above the ground ... and how well it can see.

"It's not science per se, they really are just snapshots like a selfie on Mars, but there is value for the future."

After Ingenuity finishes its five flights, its job is done.

"We are just trying to get there,fly around, get a lot of performance data and see what it's like to fly in the Martian atmosphere," Mr Canham said.

Because it isa proof of concept, it was not designed to last more than 31 (Earth) days on Mars.

As Perseverance moves on to its main mission, Ingenuity will be left alone in the Martian night. Its batteries will fail and it will fallsilent.

"Many of the parts we have in [the helicopter] are commercial off-the-shelf ones and theyaren't really designed to go through -100C nights all the time," Mr Canham said.

But the data that comes from those five flights will help scientistsin the future.

Ingenuity willpave the way for bigger and better drones, just as Sojourner the first rover to land on Mars in 1997 started the rover revolution.

"It really is that first step in enabling [development of] bigger, more capable drones," Mr Canham said.

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Dronehelicopters could transform exploration on the Red Planet.

Not only can they move much faster than rovers, they can get into hard-to-reach nooks and crannies that a rover can't.

Basic data from Ingenuity will give scientists more of an idea about what it takes to fly in Mars's atmosphere, and what tweaks they need to make to their systems.

But it will take a much hardier drone than Ingenuity to fully explore Mars.

"To have a helicopterthat would last a year or two,you'd need to invest more in the hardware, making it more rugged against temperature and radiation," Mr Canham said.

"You would also need a more advanced navigation system that can look ahead and detect hazards such as rocks.

"That's not in our algorithms because ... we weren't trying to prove that part of it, we're justtrying to prove we canfly."

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NASA's Ingenuity helicopter is getting ready to fly on Mars. This is what happens next - ABC News

Mars Edge President Jean-Christophe Flatin told theFoodNavigator 2021 Digital Summit: Positive Nutrition that consumers are increasingly interested in exploring new products in thehealth and wellnessspace.

"Nutrition is moving from the fringes; where itwas for a small number of very passionate, very expert people, he said. We see this nutrition territory going mainstream and clearly the pandemic has accelerated the rising awareness on health as well the desire to take care of ourselves.

Meanwhile, huge technological advancements are giving companies better access to data about the specific needs of consumers, allowing them to target customers with individual nutrition solutions.

"Thanks to data, digital AI, machine learning, we see absolute breakthroughs happening in nutritional science, said Flatin.

He continued: What we see is higher need for solutions to empower consumers with nutritional solutions and we see a much higher opportunity to provide those answers and provide a personalised version of products, services, solutions and nudging where consumers feel empowered.

In 2019 Mars Edge acquired a majority stake in foodspring, a direct-to-consumer targeted nutrition company based in Berlin. Foodspring offers evidence-based and data-driven products for consumers with needs around sports performance, healthy living and shape, such as protein shakes, snacks and bars, muesli and porridge, and a range of beverages, explained Flatin. Alongside its product range, it offers a nutrition and fitness content platform through fitness videos, recipes, nutrition advice and a product recommendation engine.

Mars Edge has also created a nutritional supplement called CocoaVia, which is a cocoa extract dietary supplement based on Mars 20-year research on cocoa flavanols to aid cognition and heart health.

According to its president, these moves demonstrate the companys efforts to reconcile the food we want with the nutrition we need. We are taking a consumer-led and evidence-based approach, implementing data-enabled and digital solutions, all grounded in science and research, he observed.

We put data at the centre of what we do to drive differentiation, innovation, personalization and accuracy. And we focused on digital solutions with Direct-to-Consumer businesses that would enable us to stay close to consumers, listen and respond to their needs. We are doing so by focusing on consumers who are looking to keep healthy through sports, fitness, weight management, heart and brain health.

Mars Edge demonstrates how a global giant like Mars is cultivating its entrepreneurial mind set and reinventing itself to remain relevant for the next generation of consumers.

Through its acquisition of KIND, for example, Mars is expanding choices for consumers in the on-the-go snacking options. "Equally in our Mars food business we are constantly evolving our portfolio bring more vegetables, more legumes, more grains," noted Flatin.

Now, Mars Edge is focussed on offering 'better lives through nutrition'.

There are millions of people out there that have a genuine motivation of wanting to be healthier, sharper and who are looking for solutions to solve their pain points, he said. That's why Im convinced we are moving into mainstream territory here and so are the solutions we are democratising.

With increasing numbers of consumers able, for example via nutrition apps on mobile phones, to take control of their nutrition and diet, Flatin also predicts prices in the realm of personalised nutrition will democratise too. I see [prices] going much more into the mainstream territory, he said.

Democratising solutions to bring access to millions of people is exactly what we intend and what we endeavour to do, he insisted.

Meanwhile, direct-to-consumer business models have clearly gained during the pandemic. Will the D2C channel remain as relevant after COVID? Yes, as long as we consider the D2C as part of the multiple channels that we as consumers like to shop into, responded Flatin.

The mix of different channels will continue to evolve and what's important for us as companies is to remember that not one single channel can be the winning one. We need to learn, and we need to develop how to be omnipresent in those different channels and offer the consumers a seamless navigation across those channels so that you can find us everywhere.

Missed any of the FoodNavigator Digital Summit 2021: Positive Nutrition? Don't worry, you can still access all of our sessions and handouts, which will be available on-demand for the next 90 days.Click here to REGISTER FOR FREE.

Continued here:

Why Mars is betting on personalised nutrition for the masses - FoodNavigator.com