Items tagged with mars
NASA's Mars Curiosity rover captured an image on April Fool's Day that left one person seeing 'the back of a fossilized Martian dragon, curled up in its final resting place.' Others thought the image resembled a mackerel fillet, a fir tree branch, and the skeleton of a prehistoric creature.
This is not the first...
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NASA invited the media to take a gander at its Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) facility on Tuesday, which will house four volunteers for a year beginning this summer. The facility is designed to simulate what it may be like for the first inhabitants of Mars.
CHAPEA is a 1,700-square-foot...
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Venturi Astrolab, Inc. has reached an agreement with SpaceX for the company to transport Astrolab's Flexible Logistics and Exploration (FLEX) rover on an upcoming mission to the Moon. The mission is currently slated for as soon as mid-2026 and will utilize SpaceX's Starship to launch and land the rover onto the lunar...
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NASA's Mars Perseverance rover continues its exploration of the Red Planet, as it begins a new science campaign. The rover took its first core sample of the new campaign at the top of Jezero Crater's delta on March 30, 2023.
Since launching back in July 2020, NASA's Perseverance rover has been surveying and probing...
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NASA's Perseverance rover captured a fantastically eerie video of drifting clouds just before sunset on the Red Planet. The series of images were collected by one of the Martian rover's navigation cameras on March 18, 2023, the 738th Martian day.
Since Perseverance made its landing on Mars, scientists and...
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A groundbreaking discovery of a relict glacier near the equator of Mars has scientists excited about the possible implications for future human exploration of the Red Planet. The announcement was made at the 54th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference held in The Woodlands, Texas.
As NASA and others continue to...
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While sand dunes come in many shapes and sizes on Mars, the nearly perfect circular sand dunes found recently are unusual. The images were captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which was launched in 2005 and arrived at Mars in 2006.
The images were captured by the High Resolution Imaging Science...
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NASA's Curiosity rover captured "sun rays" clearer than ever before earlier this month. Sun rays are also referred to as crepuscular rays, from the Latin word for "twilight."
The new images are part of the rover's newest twilight cloud survey, which is a continuance of its observations in 2021 of noctilucent, or...
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Some nighttime sky watchers will be privy to seeing a lunar occultation tonight, as the Moon passes in front of Mars. While the viewing of the occultation will be limited, many others will still be able to witness a conjunction or close approach of the pair of celestial objects.
A lunar occultation happens when the...
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Rolls-Royce, a company well known for its luxury vehicles, teased a nuclear reactor on its Twitter account that could power a moonbase, or space travel to Mars and beyond. The company also announced its partnership with the UK Space Agency for a study to look into nuclear power for space exploration.
While the race...
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NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured an image of the Red Planet's surface that resembles that of a bear's face. The image was taken with the High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Since arriving in Mars' orbit in 2006, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has...
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NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will partner on developing a new nuclear thermal rocket engine to be used for space travel. The Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) program, is a non-reimbursable agreement that outlines roles, responsibilities, and processes aimed...
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NASA's Perseverance Mars rover caught the first-ever audio of a Martian dust devil while its weather sensors and left navigation were in operation. The dust devil passed directly over the rover on September 27, 2021.
Capturing a Martian dust devil is no easy feat. In order to do so, rovers like Perseverance and...
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NASA's Mars InSight Lander measured the largest Marsquake yet, with a magnitude of nearly 5 and lasting for almost ten hours. All six of the largest measurements recorded have occurred since the middle of 2021.
On the night of May 4, the Mars InSight Lander seismometer detected a quake on Mars which was at least 5...
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With 2022 coming to a close, sky-watchers will have a few celestial light shows to look forward to. This year will close out with the Full Cold Moon, the Geminid Meteor Shower, and more cosmic events.
On December 7th, the Sun's light will fully light up the Moon for the final time this year. This full Moon is...
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NASA's Perseverance rover recently began exploring an area on Mars with the potential of finding organics and biosignatures. The rover is currently in Yori Pass, an area said to be rich in sandstone.
There has been no shortage of exciting events this year in terms of exploring all that lies beyond our home planet...
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NASA's Mars InSight lander captured the sound from a large meteoroid impact back in December of 2021. The spacecraft recorded the first audio of a meteoroid impacting another planet back in September, 2021.
On December 24, 2021, the Mars InSight lander felt the ground beneath it shake. InSight's team later...
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In order to test for possible micrometeorites impacting a spacecraft, NASA is utilizing a 2-stage light gas gun to simulate potential hazards for future space missions. The test fires a bullet with a speed that is equal to 25 times the velocity of a 44 magnum, or like flying from New York to San Francisco in five...
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ESA's Mars Express captured a rare moment, when Mars' moon Deimos passed in front of Jupiter and its four largest moons. The footage precedes the European Space Agency's upcoming launch of the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer next year.
Since launching in 2003, Mars Express has been able to create the most complete map...
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A dust storm 2,175 miles (3,500 kilometers) in size, has been wreaking a bit of havoc on NASA's InSight Mars lander. The storm was first spotted on September 21, 2022, by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). While the enormous storm did not have an immediate impact on the Mars lander, on October 3 the team noticed...
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NASA's Ingenuity helicopter's navigation camera captured the spacecraft picking up a small piece of foreign object debris (FOD) on one of its landing legs. Moments later, the debris could be seen drifting away.
The foreign debris on the landing leg of the helicopter is not the first that has been spotted on the red...
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NASA's InSight lander has captured the first audio of a meteoroid impacting another planet, and it sounds quite different than one might imagine. The lander's seismometer has been able to pick up vibrations from four separate impacts in the past two years.
InSight first landed on the Red Planet in 2018. Since its...
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