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Best geologic map for a European rover on Mars
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By European Space Agency
ESA’s Mars Express has captured an astonishing array of landforms emerging from a thick winter blanket of frost as spring arrives in the south polar region of Mars. Some of these features are surprisingly dark compared with their icy surroundings, earning their nickname of ‘cryptic terrain’.
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By European Space Agency
In 2023, ESA published more than 400 vacancies in engineering, science and business and administration and more positions continue to be published as we are always on the lookout for talented new colleagues to join us. So, what does it mean to join ESA? Here are five reasons why you should consider ESA as the next step in your career!
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By NASA
5 min read
NASA: New Insights into How Mars Became Uninhabitable
NASA’s Curiosity rover, currently exploring Gale crater on Mars, is providing new details about how the ancient Martian climate went from potentially suitable for life – with evidence for widespread liquid water on the surface – to a surface that is inhospitable to terrestrial life as we know it.
This is an artist’s concept of an early Mars with liquid water (blue areas) on its surface. Ancient regions on Mars bear signs of abundant water – such as features resembling valleys and deltas, and minerals that only form in the presence of liquid water. Scientists think that billions of years ago, the atmosphere of Mars was much denser and warm enough to form rivers, lakes, and perhaps even oceans of water. As the planet cooled and lost its global magnetic field, the solar wind and solar storms eroded away to space a significant amount of the planet’s atmosphere, turning Mars into the cold, arid desert we see today. NASA/MAVEN/The Lunar and Planetary Institute Although the surface of Mars is frigid and hostile to life today, NASA’s robotic explorers at Mars are searching for clues as to whether it could have supported life in the distant past. Researchers used instruments on board Curiosity to measure the isotopic composition of carbon-rich minerals (carbonates) found in Gale crater and discovered new insights into how the Red Planet’s ancient climate transformed.
“The isotope values of these carbonates point toward extreme amounts of evaporation, suggesting that these carbonates likely formed in a climate that could only support transient liquid water,” said David Burtt of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of a paper describing this research published October 7 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Our samples are not consistent with an ancient environment with life (biosphere) on the surface of Mars, although this does not rule out the possibility of an underground biosphere or a surface biosphere that began and ended before these carbonates formed.”
Isotopes are versions of an element with different masses. As water evaporated, light versions of carbon and oxygen were more likely to escape into the atmosphere, while the heavy versions were left behind more often, accumulating into higher abundances and, in this case, eventually being incorporated into the carbonate rocks. Scientists are interested in carbonates because of their proven ability to act as climate records. These minerals can retain signatures of the environments in which they formed, including the temperature and acidity of the water, and the composition of the water and the atmosphere.
The paper proposes two formation mechanisms for carbonates found at Gale. In the first scenario, carbonates are formed through a series of wet-dry cycles within Gale crater. In the second, carbonates are formed in very salty water under cold, ice-forming (cryogenic) conditions in Gale crater.
“These formation mechanisms represent two different climate regimes that may present different habitability scenarios,” said Jennifer Stern of NASA Goddard, a co-author of the paper. “Wet-dry cycling would indicate alternation between more-habitable and less-habitable environments, while cryogenic temperatures in the mid-latitudes of Mars would indicate a less-habitable environment where most water is locked up in ice and not available for chemistry or biology, and what is there is extremely salty and unpleasant for life.”
These climate scenarios for ancient Mars have been proposed before, based on the presence of certain minerals, global-scale modeling, and the identification of rock formations. This result is the first to add isotopic evidence from rock samples in support of the scenarios.
The heavy isotope values in the Martian carbonates are significantly higher than what’s seen on Earth for carbonate minerals and are the heaviest carbon and oxygen isotope values recorded for any Mars materials. In fact, according to the team, both the wet-dry and the cold-salty climates are required to form carbonates that are so enriched in heavy carbon and oxygen.
“The fact that these carbon and oxygen isotope values are higher than anything else measured on Earth or Mars points towards a process (or processes) being taken to an extreme,” said Burtt. “While evaporation can cause significant oxygen isotope changes on Earth, the changes measured in this study were two to three times larger. This means two things: 1) there was an extreme degree of evaporation driving these isotope values to be so heavy, and 2) these heavier values were preserved so any processes that would create lighter isotope values must have been significantly smaller in magnitude.”
This discovery was made using the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) and Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS) instruments aboard the Curiosity rover. SAM heats samples up to nearly 1,652 degrees Fahrenheit (almost 900°C) and then the TLS is used to analyze the gases that are produced during that heating phase.
Funding for this work came from NASA’s Mars Exploration Program through the Mars Science Laboratory project. Curiosity was built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California. JPL leads the mission on behalf of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. NASA Goddard built the SAM instrument, which is a miniaturized scientific laboratory that includes three different instruments for analyzing chemistry, including the TLS, plus mechanisms for handling and processing samples.
By William Steigerwald
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
Media contacts:
Nancy Neal-Jones/Andrew Good
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md./Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
301-286-0039/818-393-2433
nancy.n.jones@nasa.gov / andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Oct 07, 2024 Editor wasteigerwald Contact wasteigerwald william.a.steigerwald@nasa.gov Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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By NASA
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA MSFC HERC is the annual engineering competition – one of NASA’s longest standing challenges – held its concluding event April 19 and April 20, at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, near NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.NASA NASA has selected 75 student teams to begin an engineering design challenge to build rovers that will compete next spring at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center near the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The competition is one of the agency’s Artemis Student Challenges, encouraging students to pursue degrees and careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
Recognized as NASA’s leading international student challenge, the 31st annual Human Exploration Rover Challenge (HERC) aims to put competitors in the mindset of NASA’s Artemis campaign as they pitch an engineering design for a lunar terrain vehicle which simulates astronauts piloting a vehicle, exploring the lunar surface while overcoming various obstacles.
Participating teams represent 35 colleges and universities, 38 high schools, and two middle schools from 20 states, Puerto Rico, and 16 other nations from around the world. The 31st annual Human Exploration Rover Challenge (HERC) is scheduled to begin on April 11, 2025. The challenge is managed by NASA’s Southeast Regional Office of STEM Engagement at NASA Marshall.
Following a 2024 competition that garnered international attention, NASA expanded the challenge to include a remote-control division, Remote-Operated Vehicular Research, and invited middle school students to participate. The 2025 HERC Handbook includes guidelines for the new remote-control division and updates for the human-powered division.
NASA’s Artemis Student Challenges reflects the goals of the Artemis campaign, which seeks to land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon while establishing a long-term presence for science and exploration.
More than 1,000 students with 72 teams from around the world participated in the 2024 challenge as HERC celebrated its 30th anniversary as a NASA competition. Since its inception in 1994, more than 15,000 students have participated in HERC – with many former students now working at NASA, or within the aerospace industry.
To learn more about HERC, please visit:
HERC Website Taylor Goodwin
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256.544.0034
taylor.goodwin@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Oct 04, 2024 EditorBeth RidgewayLocationMarshall Space Flight Center Related Terms
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Middle/high school and college-level student teams design, build, test, and launch a high-powered rocket carrying a scientific or engineering payload.
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By USH
A photo recently captured by NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars has revealed a surprising object that stands out from the planet's natural landscape.
The object in question looks like an artificial piece of glass or eventual a mirror, (the contours of the glass/mirror are clearly visible), partially located behind a rock formation.
The fact that it could be a mirror is because the reflection in the mirror seems to show a part of what appears to be a metallic rectangular object what lies in front of the mirror.
Both the glass/mirror and the metallic object seem to be remnants of something either abandoned or wrecked long ago. They clearly do not belong to the rover's equipment or any known NASA gear.
This discovery joins a growing list of mysterious objects found on Mars hinting at the possibility that intelligent civilizations may have once existed on the planet potentially wiped out due to a catastrophic event which made life on the planet impossible.
Link to the photo uploaded by Neville Thompson on his Gigapan page. http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/236036View the full article
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