Nasa Curiosity rover takes a bite of Martian soil

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#1
http://www.straitstimes.com/breaking-new...l-20121031

PASADENA, California (AP) - Scientists say the Martian soil at the rover Curiosity's landing site contains minerals similar to what's found on Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano.

The finding released on Tuesday is the latest step in trying to better understand whether the environment could have been hospitable to microbial life.

Curiosity recently ingested its first soil sample and used one of its instruments to tease out the minerals present.

An analysis revealed it contained feldspar and olivine, minerals typically associated with volcanic eruptions. Mission scientists say the Martian soil is similar to volcanic soil on the flanks of Mauna Kea.
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#2
I would like to place my bet on the scenario that when our solar system was young, Mars evolve early earth-like conditions and alien life did began on Mars but died out due to atmosphere gases escaping into space through time.
1:2 anyone? Big Grin

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#3
(04-11-2012, 11:17 PM)arthur Wrote: I would like to place my bet on the scenario that when our solar system was young, Mars evolve early earth-like conditions and alien life did began on Mars but died out due to atmosphere gases escaping into space through time.
1:2 anyone? Big Grin

One of the favorite science friction, Mar is the first colony of ET in solar system, while Earth is the second.

Anyway, it is very interesting to follow-up new finding(s) from Nasa Curiosity Tongue
“夏则资皮,冬则资纱,旱则资船,水则资车” - 范蠡
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#4
there was a post on straits times recentlyon nasa efficient communication to curiousity using em waves. hmm..seems like earthlings are paying a high price to their local telcos!

http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/11/03...osity.html

By Brian Palmer — Special to The Washington Post


We live in a chaos of electromagnetic energy. Visible, infrared and ultraviolet light courses omnidirectionally from the sun and stars up to 4,000 light-years away. With instruments, astronomers can detect gamma rays from stars 13 billion light-years away and radio waves from remote galaxies.

Once per day, a minuscule stream of radio waves joins this cacophony, making the 13.8-minute trip from an antenna on Earth to an SUV-size machine parked on the surface of Mars. Those short-lived waves represent our way — our only way — of communicating with Curiosity, the rover that NASA landed on Mars in August.

Earthbound engineers exchange messages with Curiosity on a set daily schedule. Actually, “daily” isn’t quite accurate. Mars takes about 37 minutes longer than Earth to complete a rotation, so astronomers refer to a Martian day as a “sol” for the sake of clarity. From here on, when I refer to a time, it’s Mars time.

At approximately 10 a.m. each sol, after the sun peeks over the Martian horizon and floods the landscape near the rover in light, NASA sends a packet of commands to Curiosity.

Since a sol doesn’t coincide with an Earth day, the agency can’t always use the same antenna on Earth, which might not be facing Mars at the right moment. Instead, NASA uses the Deep Space Network, a system of antennae in the Mojave Desert, Spain and Australia.

The content of the instructions encoded in these radio waves depends on the sol. On many sols, the rover doesn’t move a Martian inch. It digs into the soil, for example, or spends its time analyzing the mineral contents of samples it collects.

When NASA does tell Curiosity to move, the process is deliberate. First, the engineers use imagery from the rover itself and from orbiters passing overhead to create a three-dimensional model of the surroundings. It’s critically important to ensure that, wherever they direct the machine to go, it won’t face any hazards. (Spirit’s six-year tour of Mars ended in 2009 when it got stuck in a sand pit.)

When NASA is convinced a destination is safe, it transmits a set of coordinates for where the rover should go. NASA will also include a suggested path, but the rover has autonomy to make changes if necessary.

A set of commands also tells Curiosity when it should listen for a new set of instructions. There are contingency plans, so the rover is prepared if a transmission is delayed or missed for some reason. In the event that no instructions come for several sols, the rover is programmed to stop conducting scientific missions, stay put and listen for communications at predetermined times.

More important to the average Mars enthusiast than this daily to-do list is the information — and dazzling photos —traveling from Curiosity to Earth.

“Curiosity’s transmitter is about one foot in diameter and uses less power than the light bulb in your refrigerator,” says Chad Edward, the chief telecommunications engineer for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program.

To get its messages to Earth, Curiosity first sends information to a pair of orbiters, Odyssey and Reconnaissance, that were sent in 2001 and 2005, respectively, to analyze Mars from a distance and are constantly circling the planet. (The Mars Express orbiter, operated by the European Space Agency, is also available.) The antennae on the orbiters are more than 1,300 times as powerful as the antenna on Curiosity. The rover waits for the orbiters to pass overhead to ship its messages, usually around 3 p.m. and 3 a.m.

“Some of the composite panoramas that the rover has sent to Earth comprise a few hundred megabits of data,” says Edward. “Curiosity would take weeks to send that much data. Using the relays, we can have it in a day.”

Since most of us live in a world where our laptops can lose WiFi signals if we walk out the front door and our cellphones drop calls if we stray too far from a tower, it may seem incredible that NASA can control a robot millions of miles away.

Curiosity, however, is relatively close by space communications standards. Voyager 1 is the most distant human-made object in the universe. It’s about three times the distance to Pluto, and, with some antennae upgraded in the 1980s, we’re still able to receive information from the spacecraft.

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/11/03...rylink=cpy
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#5
WASHINGTON: NASA downplayed Wednesday talk of a major discovery by its Martian rover after remarks by the mission chief raised hopes it may have unearthed evidence life once existed on the Red Planet.

Excitement is building over soon-to-be-released results from NASA's Curiosity rover, which is three months into a two-year mission to determine if Mars has ever been capable of supporting microbial life.

Its Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments have been sending back information as it hunts for compounds such as methane, as well as hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, that would mean life could once have existed there.

In an interview with US broadcaster National Public Radio, aired Tuesday, lead mission investigator John Grotzinger hinted at something major but said there would be no announcement for several weeks.

"We're getting data from SAM," he said. "This data is gonna be one for the history books. It's looking really good."

A spokesman for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managing the project, appeared to pour cold water Wednesday on the hopes of space enthusiasts looking forward to an earth-shattering discovery.

"John was delighted about the quality and range of information coming in from SAM during the day a reporter happened to be sitting in John's office last week. He has been similarly delighted by results at other points during the mission so far," spokesman Guy Webster told AFP.

"The scientists want to gain confidence in the findings before taking them outside of the science team. As for history books, the whole mission is for the history books," Webster said.

Scientists do not expect Curiosity to find aliens or living creatures but they hope to use it to analyze soil and rocks for signs the building blocks of life are present and may have supported life in the past.

The $2.5 billion Curiosity rover -- which landed in Gale Crater on the Red Planet on August 6 -- also aims to study the Martian environment to prepare for a possible human mission there in the coming years.

US President Barack Obama has vowed to send humans to the planet by 2030.
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#6
AFP
Sunday, Dec 09, 2012

LONDON - British astronomer Patrick Moore, renowned for his work mapping the Moon's surface, died Sunday at the age of 89, his friends and staff announced.

The eccentric astronomer "passed away peacefully at 12:25 pm (8:25pm local time)", at his home in Selsey on the southern English coast, they said in a statement.

"After a short spell in hospital last week, it was determined that no further treatment would benefit him, and it was his wish to spend his last days in his own home."

Moore fronted the monthly BBC programme "The Sky At Night" since 1957, making him the world's longest-running presenter of the same television show.

He believed he was the only person to have met Orville Wright, the first man to fly; Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space; and Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon.

Queen Elizabeth II knighted him in 2001 for "services to the popularisation of science and to broadcasting".
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