https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/28/science/elon-musk-mars.html
Saturday, September 30, 2017
Large Solar Storm Sparks Global Aurora and Doubles Radiation Levels on the Martian Surface
Large Solar Storm Sparks Global Aurora and Doubles Radiation Levels on the Martian Surface: An unexpectedly strong blast from the Sun hit Mars this month, observed by NASA missions in orbit and on the surface.
Friday, September 29, 2017
Lockheed Martin Unveils Its Fully Reuseable Mars Lander
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/09/28/lockheed-martin-unveils-fully-reusable-crewed-martian-lander.html
Thursday, September 28, 2017
Wednesday, September 27, 2017
Tuesday, September 26, 2017
How Vanadium Could Be A Beacon For Martian Life
How vanadium could be a beacon for Martian life
An artist's rendering of the Mars 2020 rover on the surface of the Red Planet
If all goes according to plan, in 2020 NASA (in addition to several other space agencies) will launch a rover towards Mars. When it lands there, it will begin looking for signs of past or present life on the Red Planet. To help astrobiologists tease out biological material from other deceiving compounds in the planet's regolith, researchers at the University of Kansas (KU) suggest focusing efforts on finding the element vanadium.
In terms of seeking out previous life, astrobiologists analyzing the findings of the rovers will focus, in part, on the fossilized remains of ancient Martian microorganisms. They'll do this by looking for carbon in the soil samples through a process known as Raman spectroscopy, which measures the vibrations and therefore composition of molecules by examining the way light (such as that from a laser) scatters when it hits a sample. But, the KU researchers say, this method is far from foolproof.
"People say, 'If it looks like life and has a Raman signal of carbon, then we have life,'" said Craig Marshall, the lead author of a paper on the findings published in the journal Astrobiology and an associate professor of geology at the University of Kansas. "But, of course, we know there can be carbonaceous materials made in other processes – like in hydrothermal vents – consistent with looking like microfossils that also have some carbon signal. People also make wonderful carbon structures artificially that look like microfossils – exactly the same. So, we're at a juncture now where it's really hard to tell if there's life only based on morphology and Raman spectroscopy."
So Marshall and his team recommend a different approach: using a process called X-ray fluorescence microscopy to seek out the element vanadium in samples. This process relies on reading the results that come back to a monitor after a test sample is bombarded with X-rays, and NASA's rover will have the proper equipment on board to conduct such tests. Using it to look for vanadium, they say, will result in a more accurate idea of whether the sample under question did indeed come from a long-ago microorganism.
That's because vanadium is often left behind in substances formed from biological samples. On Earth, for example, it occurs in crude oil and black shale. Vanadium also tends to worm its way into biological samples through its entanglement with chlorophyll.
A tangled mess
"Vanadium gets complexed in the chlorophyll molecule," Marshall said. "Chlorophylls typically have magnesium at the center – under burial, vanadium replaces the magnesium. The chlorophyll molecule gets entangled within the carbonaceous material, thus preserving the vanadium.
"It's like if you have a rope stored in your garage and before you put it away you wrap it so you can unravel it the next time you need it. But over time on the garage floor it becomes tangled, things get caught in it. Even when you shake that rope hard, things don't come out. It's a tangled mess. Similarly, if you look at carbonaceous material there's a tangled mess of sheets of carbon and you've got the vanadium mixed in."
To see if their process works, the team tested it on Earth-based microfossils called acritarchs, which might be similar to the remains of ancient life we could find on Mars. Sure enough, the samples analyzed by the team contained the vanadium they expected to find.
"We tested acritarchs to do a proof-of-concept on a microfossil where there's no shadow of a doubt that we're looking at preserved ancient biology," Marshall said. "The age of this microfossil we think is Devonian. These guys are aquatic microorganisms — they're thought to be microalgae, a eukaryotic cell, more advanced than bacterial. We found the vanadium content you'd expect in cyanobacterial material."
NASA is also currently testing equipment for finding life by using Earth-based samples from the Atacama desert in Chile. Marshall hopes the new vanadium-based technique will help further future efforts.
"Hopefully someone at NASA reads the paper," said Marshall. "Interestingly enough, the scientist who is lead primary investigator for the X-ray spectrometer for the space probe – they call it the PIXL – was his first graduate student from Macquarie University, before his KU times. I think I'll email her the paper and say, 'This might be of interest.'"
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Friday, September 22, 2017
Sean Penn To Star In New Hulu Mars Series
http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/sean-penn-to-be-one-of-the-first-on-mars-for-hulu
Risk Takers Are Back in the Space Race—and That's a Good Thing
Risk Takers Are Back in the Space Race—and That's a Good Thing: Exponential technologies are a big reason startups can now contemplate space exploration. This will change how fast we move into space and what we do there.
Mars Society Announces "Red Eagle" International Student Engineering Contest To Design Mars Lander
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Wednesday, September 20, 2017
Friday, September 15, 2017
NASA's Cassini Spacecraft Ends Its Historic Exploration of Saturn
NASA's Cassini Spacecraft Ends Its Historic Exploration of Saturn: NASA's Cassini spacecraft made a fateful plunge into the atmosphere of Saturn, ending its 13-year tour of the ringed planet.
NASA's Incredible Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Everyone in little over an hour the Cassini spacecraft will crash into Saturn. After twenty years of spectacular scientific work, it ran out of fuel. We taxpayers truly got value for money here.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory made all of this happen. This center sits on slightly more land than Disneyland in Anaheim occupies. It has been around since the 1940's. It has sent the Voyager probe out of the solar system and had many other accomplishments in space exploration.
Not well known is that JPL had the Explorer I satellite ready to launch into orbit in 1956. Had President Eisenhower agreed to the launch, we would have beaten the Russians and never had the humiliation of Sputnik. This launch was turned down because the satellite was deemed to be a military satellite. It went into orbit on January 31, 1958.
JPL was a pioneer in another way. It was one of the first employers to recognize the talents of women and to hire them for serious scientific and engineering work. It was also one of the first organizations to hire minorities before the law required such hiring.
I have been honored to have the opportunity to tour this facility two times thanks to Explore Mars,Inc. and the Mars Society.
Thursday, September 14, 2017
Cassini Spacecraft Makes Its Final Approach to Saturn
Cassini Spacecraft Makes Its Final Approach to Saturn: NASA's Cassini spacecraft is on final approach to Saturn, following confirmation by navigators that it is on course to dive into the planet's atmosphere on Friday, Sept. 15.
Wednesday, September 13, 2017
Monday, September 11, 2017
FMARS 160 Crew Final Thoughts
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Wednesday, September 6, 2017
The Mars Society Approves Of NASA's New Administrator-Designate
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