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By USH
Years ago, physicist Dr. John Brandenburg stated that there is evidence of two nuclear explosions on Mars. These explosions could have been caused by thermonuclear bombs.
Remnants of an ancient city on Mars destroyed by thermonuclear attack.
Evidence supporting this theory includes the presence of nuclear isotopes in the Martian atmosphere and the detection of a thin layer of substances such as uranium, thorium, and radioactive potassium on the surface of Mars.
The absence of craters at the sites indicates that the bombs were likely detonated above ground in an air blast, which worsens the global fallout but dampens the immediate ground impact. Conversely, if detonated on the ground, the local devastation is immense but the global impact is minimized. Regardless, these explosions were powerful enough to cause a global catastrophe and significantly alter Mars' climate. According to Brandenburg, the nuclear attack apparently wiped out two races: the Cydonians and Utopians.
The MRO HiRISE image ESP_019103_1460 shows the "Atlantic Chaos," and a closer examination reveals a city that was almost destroyed by the thermonuclear explosions. Amid the ruins of destroyed buildings and towering structures, a largely intact dome-shaped structure is visible (See image below.)
The remnants of this city suggest that Mars was once inhabited by intelligent species like the Cydonians and Utopians, who lived there under conditions similar to those on Earth. This also serves as evidence that far more advanced civilizations may have existed for millions of years and possessed the capability to annihilate all life on a planet using thermonuclear bombs, among other means.
See also:
J.E. Brandenburg:Evidence for a Large Anomalous Nuclear Explosions in Mars Past
Gigapan images (zoom) of the destroyed city on Mars: Javed Raza's-Atlantis Chassis-ESP 019103 1460 by Neville Thompson
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By European Space Agency
Less than a month after it was launched, ESA’s EarthCARE satellite has returned the first image from one of its instruments – an image that, for the first time from space, unveils the internal structure and dynamics of clouds.
This remarkable first image, captured by the satellite’s cloud profiling radar, offers a mere glimpse of the instrument's full potential once it is fully calibrated.
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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
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Imagery captured by a navigation camera aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover on Jan. 23 shows the position of a cover on the SHERLOC instrument. The cover had become stuck several weeks earlier but the rover team has since found a way to address the issue so the instrument can continue to operate.NASA/JPL-Caltech After six months of effort, an instrument that helps the Mars rover look for potential signs of ancient microbial life has come back online.
The SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) instrument aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has analyzed a rock target with its spectrometer and camera for the first time since encountering an issue this past January. The instrument plays a key role in the mission’s search for signs of ancient microbial life on Mars. Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California confirmed on June 17 that the instrument succeeded in collecting data.
“Six months of running diagnostics, testing, imagery and data analysis, troubleshooting, and retesting couldn’t come with a better conclusion,” said SHERLOC principal investigator Kevin Hand of JPL.
Imagery captured by a navigation camera aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover on Jan. 23 shows the position of a cover on the SHERLOC instrument. The cover had become stuck several weeks earlier but the rover team has since found a way to address the issue so the instrument can continue to operate.NASA/JPL-Caltech Mounted on the rover’s robotic arm, SHERLOC uses two cameras and a laser spectrometer to search for organic compounds and minerals in rocks that have been altered in watery environments and may reveal signs of past microbial life. On Jan. 6, a movable lens cover designed to protect the instrument’s spectrometer and one of its cameras from dust became frozen in a position that prevented SHERLOC from collecting data.
Analysis by the SHERLOC team pointed to the malfunction of a small motor responsible for moving the protective lens cover as well as adjusting focus for the spectrometer and the Autofocus and Context Imager (ACI) camera. By testing potential solutions on a duplicate SHERLOC instrument at JPL, the team began a long, meticulous evaluation process to see if, and how, the lens cover could be moved into the open position.
Perseverance’s team used the SHERLOC instrument’s Autofocus and Context Imager to capture this image of its calibration target on May 11 to confirm an issue with a stuck lens cover had been resolved. A silhouette of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes is at the center of the target.NASA/JPL-Caltech SHERLOC Sleuthing
Among many other steps taken, the team tried heating the lens cover’s small motor, commanding the rover’s robotic arm to rotate the SHERLOC instrument under different orientations with supporting Mastcam-Z imagery, rocking the mechanism back and forth to loosen any debris potentially jamming the lens cover, and even engaging the rover’s percussive drill to try jostling it loose. On March 3, imagery returned from Perseverance showed that the ACI cover had opened more than 180 degrees, clearing the imager’s field of view and enabling the ACI to be placed near its target.
“With the cover out of the way, a line of sight for the spectrometer and camera was established. We were halfway there,” said Kyle Uckert, SHERLOC deputy principal investigator at JPL. “We still needed a way to focus the instrument on a target. Without focus, SHERLOC images would be blurry and the spectral signal would be weak.”
Like any good ophthalmologist, the team set about figuring out SHERLOC’s prescription. Since they couldn’t adjust the focus of the instrument’s optics, they relied on the rover’s robotic arm to make minute adjustments in the distance between SHERLOC and its target in order to get the best image resolution. SHERLOC was commanded to take pictures of its calibration target so that the team could check the effectiveness of this approach.
This image of NASA’s Perseverance rover gathering data on the “Walhalla Glades” abrasion was taken in the “Bright Angel” region of Jezero Crater by one of the rover’s front hazard avoidance cameras on June 14. The WATSON camera on the SHERLOC instrument is closest to the Martian surface.NASA/JPL-Caltech “The rover’s robotic arm is amazing. It can be commanded in small, quarter-millimeter steps to help us evaluate SHERLOC’s new focus position, and it can place SHERLOC with high accuracy on a target,” said Uckert. “After testing first on Earth and then on Mars, we figured out the best distance for the robotic arm to place SHERLOC is about 40 millimeters,” or 1.58 inches. “At that distance, the data we collect should be as good as ever.”
Confirmation of that fine positioning of the ACI on a Martian rock target came down on May 20. The verification on June 17 that the spectrometer is also functional checked the team’s last box, confirming that SHERLOC is operational.
“Mars is hard, and bringing instruments back from the brink is even harder,” said Perseverance project manager Art Thompson of JPL. “But the team never gave up. With SHERLOC back online, we’re continuing our explorations and sample collection with a full complement of science instruments.”
Perseverance is in the later stages of its fourth science campaign, looking for evidence of carbonate and olivine deposits in the “Margin Unit,” an area along the inside of Jezero Crater’s rim. On Earth, carbonates typically form in the shallows of freshwater or alkaline lakes. It’s hypothesized that this also might be the case for the Margin Unit, which formed over 3 billion years ago.
More About the Mission
A key objective of Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including caching samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
For more about Perseverance:
science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance
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DC Agle
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agle@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Charles Blue
NASA Headquarters
202-385-1600 / 202-802-5345
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / charles.e.blue@nasa.gov
2024-091
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Last Updated Jun 26, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Science Instruments Science Highlights News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Mars Resources Mars Exploration All Planets Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets 6 min read
Sols 4219-4221: It’s a Complex Morning…
There are many whiteish rocks in the area that lately attracted the team’s special interest, as this image, taken by Right Navigation Camera onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 4217 (2024-06-17 02:10:34 UTC) shows. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Monday, June 17, 2024
Who thought it was a good idea to select a name with the word ‘mammoth’ in it? Well, we don’t remember who did it, and if we did, we wouldn’t say anyways… but these rocks take ‘Mammoth Lakes’ and seem to translate it into ‘Mammoth Effort’ for the team here on Earth! You may have seen my colleague Conor’s blog about ‘The best laid plans’, and today we tried again.
For a start, orbital mechanics wasn’t our friend on this nervous Monday morning: the data we needed reached us – as scheduled – in the early morning hours; hence assessment could only begin shortly before the normal start of the planning day. The assessment of a preload test is not a quick task as it concerns rover health and safety. Even with over 11 years of experience, engineers want to look very, very closely. Or shall I say, tongue in cheek, after over 11 years of experience we want to look even closer as we have seen many of the ways Mars rocks can play tricks on us and we are pretty sure that the rocks have even more surprises up their sleeves! We don’t want to get caught out by… a rock!
With that assessment still ongoing (can you feel the nerves?!), the team had to start planning assuming we would go ahead with the drill. I was Geo Science Theme Lead today, and it was my task to help navigate through the things that we would want to do, if we pass the preload assessment and are going to drill. And it was also agreed that if this isn’t going to work today, we would try another preload test. The science team really wants to see what these bright rocks are made of, as bright, almost white colour on a basaltic planet always means that it is different and interesting.. Water rock interactions are my favourite possible explanation, but I don’t want to speculate, I prefer to interpret data… but those would come after the drill! Cliffhanger, part one, we kept asking those with an ear close to the engineering rooms for updates, but the only updates were that there are no updates… yet. I am not good at waiting, are you?
We were planning four sols today, but one of them is a ‘soliday’ – a day on Earth with no corresponding sol on Mars. They come up occasionally to re-synchronise Earth and Mars timings (and to not make downlinks even closer to start of planning). This is because an Earth day is 24 hours long, but a Mars day is 24 hours, 39 minutes, 35 seconds long. Therefore, Mars and Earth days get slowly but surely out of sync and planning would have to happen in the middle of the Earth night. Therefore, Curiosity gets a break thanks to orbital mechanics (and human sleep patterns). But just before Curiosity gets a break (and the humans, too, for Juneteenth), there is a lot of work to do, even with this cliffhanger still ongoing.
The plan started – optimistically, and yes, with the cliffhanger STILL ongoing – with the full drill and everything we always do to assess whether the drill is successful. This includes an image of the newly accomplished (hopefully, are you keeping your fingers crossed?!) drill hole, an image of the drill bit inspecting our tools, and a ChemCem Remote Micro Imager mosaic of the drill hole. ChemCam also does a passive spectral investigation of the drill tailings (are you still holding your breath that we even get to uplink the commands?!). Most of the drill activities happen on sol 4219, and just the ChemCam activities happen in sol 4220. Also, on sol 4220 ChemCam investigates the target “Longley Pass,” which is also a whitish rock.
Well, if these rocks play tricks on us and make us wait this long for an answer, we can at least shoot them with a laser and get some more data this way. Mastcam documents the ChemCam target Longley Pass and does two more single frame images of the targets “Walker Lake2” and “Finch Lake,” both of which you will have seen in previous blogs. They are part of a change detection campaign, where we repeatedly image the same location to find out if the sand moves. This helps with assessing the current winds on Mars. But that’s just the warm up for Mastcam, which will then embark on a 334 image journey 360° around the rover, also known as a 360-panorama. Given the very exciting landscape, we are all very much looking forward to getting to see this! But before that, the question is still there: will we get the go for drilling?! It’s one and a half hours into planning, and we still don’t know.
Finally on sol 4221 there is more ChemCam laser activity, this time on the target Quarry Peak, and there is a long-distance mosaic by ChemCam, too, to further document all the different sedimentary structures around us. Last but not least, our part of the plan had some ‘homework’ in form of a ChemCam calibration activity. There is more, of course, as the environmental group looks at dust devils and the opacity of the atmosphere and the DAN instrument performs its routine cadence of measurements. It’s a fully packed plan!
And the cliffhanger? Well, not so fast… after the initial planning meeting everyone who has assembled parts of the plan will meet in the so-called Science Operations Working Group meeting. I was really hoping for a result then, but we were told we had to wait just a little longer. Mars doesn’t make things easy, and we fully trust the engineers to make the right call. But will that call be the one the scientist in me wants? Will we drill?
We got through all of this meeting and about an hour later had a fully integrated plan, and still no word from the engineers. Come on, Mars, do you have to make it this hard?!
Planning rarely gets this tight and nerve wracking to be honest. But then, when Mars decides to write the script, we can either decide that we forego the measurement… or that we try again. And try again was what we were after.
Almost two hours of planning done, time for a break in the planning meeting cadence and dinner in my part of the world, but I wasn’t really hungry, to be honest. I just wanted to hear the outcome.
And finally, 3 hours and 38 minutes after the start of planning, “GO GO GO” accompanied by a smiley with a wide grin appeared in the chat, straight from Ashwin, the project scientist.
And breathe… Let’s hope Mars rewards our brilliant engineers’ efforts!
Written by Susanne Schwenzer, Planetary Geologist at The Open University
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Last Updated Jun 18, 2024 Related Terms
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5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
The WL 20 group of stars is located in the Rho Ophiuchi star-forming region, imaged here by NASA’s now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope. Located near the constellations Scorpius and Ophiuchus, the region is about 407 light-years from Earth. NASA/JPL-Caltech Managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory through launch, Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument also revealed jets of gas flowing into space from the twin stars.
Scientists recently got a big surprise from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope when they turned the observatory toward a group of young stars called WL 20. The region has been studied since the 1970s with at least five telescopes, but it took Webb’s unprecedented resolution and specialized instruments to reveal that what researchers long thought was one of the stars, WL 20S, is actually a pair that formed about 2 million to 4 million years ago.
The discovery was made using Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and was presented at the 244th meeting of the American Astronomical Society on June 12. MIRI also found that the twins have matching jets of gas streaming into space from their north and south poles.
“Our jaws dropped,” said astronomer Mary Barsony, lead author of a new paper describing the results. “After studying this source for decades, we thought we knew it pretty well. But without MIRI we would not have known this was two stars or that these jets existed. That’s really astonishing. It’s like having brand new eyes.”
This artist’s concept shows two young stars nearing the end of their formation. Encircling the stars are disks of leftover gas and dust from which planets may form. Jets of gas shoot away from the stars’ north and south poles. The team got another surprise when additional observations by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a group of more than 60 radio antennas in Chile, revealed that disks of dust and gas encircle both stars. Based on the stars’ age, it’s possible that planets are forming in those disks.
The combined results indicate that the twin stars are nearing the end of this early period of their lives, which means scientists will have the opportunity to learn more about how the stars transition from youth into adulthood.
“The power of these two telescopes together is really incredible,” said Mike Ressler, project scientist for MIRI at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and co-author of the new study. “If we hadn’t seen that these were two stars, the ALMA results might have just looked like a single disk with a gap in the middle. Instead, we have new data about two stars that are clearly at a critical point in their lives, when the processes that formed them are petering out.”
This image of the WL 20 star group combines data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array and the Mid-Infrared Instrument on NASA’s Webb telescope. Gas jets emanating from the poles of twin stars appear blue and green; disks of dust and gas surrounding the stars are pink.U.S. NSF; NSF NRAO; ALMA; NASA/JPL-Caltech; B. Saxton Stellar Jets
WL 20 resides in a much larger, well-studied star-forming region of the Milky Way galaxy called Rho Ophiuchi, a massive cloud of gas and dust about 400 light-years from Earth. In fact, WL 20 is hidden behind thick clouds of gas and dust that block most of the visible light (wavelengths that the human eye can detect) from the stars there. Webb detects slightly longer wavelengths, called infrared, that can pass through those layers. MIRI detects the longest infrared wavelengths of any instrument on Webb and is thus well equipped for peering into obscured star-forming regions like WL 20.
Radio waves can often penetrate dust as well, though they may not reveal the same features as infrared light. The disks of gas and dust surrounding the two stars in WL 20S emit light in a range that astronomers call submillimeter; these, too, penetrate the surrounding gas clouds and were observed by ALMA.
These four images show the WL 20 star system as seen by (from left) NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility at the Mauna Kea Observatory, the Hale 5.0-meter telescope the Palomar Observatory, the Keck II telescope, and the NASA’s Webb telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. But scientists could easily have interpreted those observations as evidence of a single disk with a gap in it had MIRI not also observed the two stellar jets. The jets of gas are composed of ions, or individual atoms with some electrons stripped away that radiate in mid-infrared wavelengths but not at submillimeter wavelengths. Only an infrared instrument with spatial and spectral resolution like MIRI’s could see them.
ALMA can also observe clouds of leftover formation material around young stars. Composed of whole molecules, like carbon monoxide, these clouds of gas and dust radiate light at these longer wavelengths. The absence of those clouds in the ALMA observations shows that the stars are beyond their initial formation phase.
“It’s amazing that this region still has so much to teach us about the life cycle of stars,” said Ressler. “I’m thrilled to see what else Webb will reveal.”
More About the Mission
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
MIRI was developed through a 50-50 partnership between NASA and ESA. A division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL led the U.S. efforts for MIRI, and a multinational consortium of European astronomical institutes contributes for ESA. George Rieke with the University of Arizona is the MIRI science team lead. Gillian Wright is the MIRI European principal investigator.
The MIRI cryocooler development was led and managed by JPL, in collaboration with Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, California, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
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Calla Cofield
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
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2024-085
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Last Updated Jun 13, 2024 Related Terms
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