Los Angeles CA (SPX) Oct 16, 2024
Sandia National Laboratories' National Solar Thermal Test Facility is utilizing solar energy to simulate the intense heat experienced during atmospheric reentry and hypersonic flight. The latest tests aim to support NASA missions, including the Mars Sample Return campaign, a joint effort with the European Space Agency to bring Martian rock samples to Earth for analysis. These samples could revea

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Oct 13, 2024
The Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers continue to provide a wealth of information about the Red Planet. This was made possible in part by the sky crane landing systems that safely lowered them to the planet's surface. Their successful descent, managed by eight powerful engines, depended on one small part - a valve. The engines produced about 750 poun

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Oct 13, 2024
Lichens, those resilient organisms made up of fungi and photosynthetic partners, are found just about everywhere on Earth, thriving on surfaces like rocks, trees, and even buildings. Known from all continents, some species have even endured the harsh environment outside the International Space Station. Their adaptability has intrigued scientists, particularly astrobiologists who see Earth's lich

Paris, France (SPX) Oct 10, 2024
ESA's Mars Express has unveiled a striking collection of landforms as winter frost melts in Mars' southern polar region. Some of these darker features, emerging from the ice, have been dubbed "cryptic terrain" due to their distinct contrast with the surrounding frost. The polar caps on Mars consist mostly of carbon dioxide ice, with some water ice. During spring, the ice sublimates, releas

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Sep 30, 2024
The extreme environmental conditions on Mars, with its 95.32% carbon dioxide atmosphere and significant temperature fluctuations, pose major challenges for energy storage systems on the planet. To overcome these hurdles, Prof. Peng Tan and Dr. Xu Xiao from the University of Science and Technology of China have developed a new type of Mars battery, which uses the Martian atmosphere as a fuel sour

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Sep 26, 2024
Mars' ancient landscape was shaped by wind and water, with these forces sculpting the planet's sand and sediment into patterns such as dunes and ripples, known as bedforms. Over billions of years, many of these formations hardened into rock, becoming what scientists call paleo-bedforms. These features, largely frozen in time, have only been altered by slow erosion from wind, ancient lava flows,

Boston MA (SPX) Sep 26, 2024
Mars wasn't always the cold desert we see today. There's increasing evidence that water once flowed on the Red Planet's surface, billions of years ago. And if there was water, there must also have been a thick atmosphere to keep that water from freezing. But sometime around 3.5 billion years ago, the water dried up, and the air, once heavy with carbon dioxide, dramatically thinned, leaving only

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Sep 26, 2024
A volunteer crew recently "returned" from a simulated 45-day mission to Mars at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston. The crew completed their stay in a small habitat, contributing to research essential for future human space missions to the Moon and Mars. The HERA (Human Exploration Research Analog) missions are part of NASA's effort to study how humans cope with the unique challe

Pasadena CA (JPL) Sep 25, 2024
Last week, team scientists and the internet alike were amazed when Perseverance spotted a black-and-white striped rock unlike any seen on Mars before. Is this a sign of exciting discoveries to come? It has now nearly been a month since the rover began its climb up the steep slopes leading to the crater rim, on the hunt for ancient rocks that could teach us about early Martian history. Whil

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Sep 22, 2024
A new algorithm called Nested Fusion, developed by Georgia Tech Ph.D. student Austin P. Wright, is enhancing scientists' ability to search for evidence of life on Mars while also providing broader applications for data analysis on Earth. Nested Fusion, which was introduced in a paper by Wright, supports NASA's Mars 2020 mission and can also assist researchers from various fields who work with co

Sydney, Australia (SPX) Sep 20, 2024
A new study led by Postdoctoral Researcher Jiawei Gao from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGGCAS), reveals how Mars' magnetic field responds to the influence of solar winds. Unlike Earth, Mars lacks a global dipolar magnetic field but possesses localized crustal magnetic fields. The planet's interaction with the Interplanetary Magnetic Field (IMF) carried b

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Sep 20, 2024
Mars, now a cold and dry planet, once had liquid water, which raises the possibility of ancient life. In pursuit of this idea, researchers at Tohoku University developed a model showing how organic matter could have formed in Mars' ancient atmosphere. Organic matter, which can originate from living organisms or chemical processes, contains carbon isotopes that give clues about its formatio

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Sep 19, 2024
Researchers at the Swedish Institute of Space Physics (IRF) in Kiruna have discovered that the induced magnetosphere of Mars can break down under certain conditions. These findings were recently published in 'Nature', a prominent scientific journal. Mars, lacking a natural internal magnetic field, forms an induced magnetosphere as its atmosphere interacts directly with the solar wind. This

Pasadena CA (JPL) Sep 17, 2024
The Perseverance rover is reaching new heights as it ascends the rim of Jezero crater (over 300 meters in elevation higher than the original landing site)! The rover is now enroute to its first campaign science stop Dox Castle (image in the far ground) a region of interest for its potential to host ancient Mars' bedrock in the exposed rocks on the rim. Impact craters like Jezero may be the

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Sep 15, 2024
NASA scientists have successfully recreated the mysterious spider-shaped formations found on Mars, providing new insights into how these unique geologic features form. The laboratory experiments were conducted under simulated Martian conditions, helping to confirm a theory that these "spiders" are carved by processes involving carbon dioxide ice. First discovered in 2003 through orbiter im