https://spacenews.com/nasa-dealing-with-cost-growth-on-planetary-science-flagship-missions/?fbclid=IwAR1BVIjpeAYa0C6mVTNSCn14FdtBEkbasqx7ZCrMSMe3IPGXwWA3XJRok-E
Friday, March 22, 2019
Thursday, March 14, 2019
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
Mars: Missing Water
Missing Water
The mystery surrounding Mars’ missing water will not be resolved anytime soon.
Even so, scientists recently uncovered evidence that a massive groundwater network may have once existed below the red planet’s surface, the Smithsonian Magazine reported.
Researchers studied images of 24 craters in the planet’s northern hemisphere and found relief features on the floors that they believe might have been caused by rising and falling groundwater.
They posit that these pockets of groundwater may have been interconnected at one point as a vast underground reservoir, which may have in turn linked to a Martian ocean that could have existed three to four billion years ago.
“We found the first geological evidence of a planet-wide groundwater system on Mars,” according to lead author Francesco Salese.
A massive, interconnected water system would have been possible because Mars is thought to be a “one-plate planet” – meaning that its crust is composed of one solid piece.
Such interconnectivity, however, wouldn’t be possible on Earth, because of the various tectonic plates that make up its outer shell.
The research team also found that some of the craters housed minerals that are linked to the emergence of life on Earth.
The team made no claims about whether life ever existed on Mars but its findings could help identify the most promising regions of the planet to hunt for it.
The Rover Endeavor's Final Picture
Opportunity's Parting Shot Was a Beautiful PanoramaOver 29 days last spring, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity documented this 360-degree panorama from multiple images taken at what would become its final resting spot in Perseverance Valley. Located on the inner slope of the western rim of Endurance Crater, Perseverance Valley is a system of shallow troughs descending eastward about the length of two football fields from the crest of Endeavor's rim to its floor.
"This final panorama embodies what made our Opportunity rover such a remarkable mission of exploration and discovery," said Opportunity project manager John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "To the right of center you can see the rim of Endeavor Crater rising in the distance. Just to the left of that, rover tracks begin their descent from over the horizon and weave their way down to geologic features that our scientists wanted to examine up close. And to the far right and left are the bottom of Perseverance Valley and the floor of Endeavour crater, pristine and unexplored, waiting for visits from future explorers."
The trailblazing mission ended after nearly 15 years of exploring the surface of Mars, but its legacy will live on. Opportunity's scientific discoveries contributed to our unprecedented understanding of the planet's geology and environment, laying the groundwork for future robotic and human missions to the Red Planet.
The panorama is composed of 354 individual images provided by the rover's Panoramic Camera (Pancam) from May 13 through June 10, or sols (Martian days) 5,084 through 5,111. This view combines images taken through three different Pancam filters. The filters admit light centered on wavelengths of 753 nanometers (near-infrared), 535 nanometers (green) and 432 nanometers (violet).
A few frames (bottom left) remain black and white, as the solar-powered rover did not have the time to record those locations using the green and violet filters before a severe Mars-wide dust storm swept in on June 2018.
The gallery includes the last images Opportunity obtained during its mission (black-and-white thumbnail images from the Pancam that were used to determine how opaque the sky was on its last day) and also the last piece of data the rover transmitted (a "noisy," incomplete full-frame image of a darkened sky).
After eight months of effort and sending more than a thousand commands in an attempt to restore contact with the rover, NASA declared Opportunity's mission complete on Feb. 13, 2019.
JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, managed the Mars Exploration Rover Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
For more information about Opportunity, visit http://www.nasa.gov/rovers and https://mars.nasa.gov/mer/.
For more information about the agency's Mars Exploration program, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/mars
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)