…anding position. NASA has also confirmed the precise timing of Monday’s touchdown. The rover’s computer put this at 05:17:57 UTC on Mars. With a one-way light-travel time of 13 minutes and 48 seconds to cover the 250 million km to Earth, this equates to a receive time here at mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of 05:31:45 UTC (GMT). …
…g site in the equatorial Gale Crater provides the first real ground truth for those observations. By luck, the rover just happened to roll past a spectacular example of the conglomerate. A large slab, 10-15 cm thick, was lifted out of the ground at an angle. “We’ve named it Hottah,” said rover project scientist John Grotzinger. The name refers to a lake in Canada’s Northwes…
Images of the surface of Mars taken by the Curiosity rover as it made its historic descent yesterday have now been released. NASA has provided almost 300 thumbnails from a sequence of pictures that will eventually be run together as a color hi-def movie. Visible in the timelapse is the heatshield discarded by the vehicle as it neared the ground. It was the crane that finally settled the robot on…
It was expected to be just another lump of dull basalt, but the first rock examined up close by NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars proved to be a little more interesting. The pyramidal object, nicknamed “Jake Matijevic” after a recently deceased mission engineer, had a composition not seen on the planet before. Scientists have likened it to some unusual but well known rocks on Earth…
to realize this mission will be different,” commented Steve Squyres, the lead scientist of the Opportunity and Spirit rovers landed in 2004. “When we landed we only thought we’d get 30 sols (Martian days) on the surface, so we had to hit the ground running. Curiosity has plenty of time,” he said. Initially, the rover is funded for two years of operations. But many expect t…
NASA has released the first spectacular images taken by the Mars rover Curiosity, detailing a mound of layered rock where scientists plan to focus their search for the chemical ingredients of life on the Red Planet. The stunning photographs reveal distinct tiers of near the base of the 3-mile-tall mountain that rises from the floor of the vast, ancient impact basin known as Gale Crater, where Cur…
…of the arm’s “hand lens” and X-ray spectrometer. Curiosity has now continued driving. Curiosity rover has completed its first close-contact science on Mars On Monday, it moved some 42 m (138 ft), the single biggest roll for the robot since landing seven weeks ago in Mars’ equatorial Gale Crater. The vehicle is endeavoring to get to location that scientists have nicknamed…
…that held sway in ancient times, hopefully ones where water played key roles. “The place where Curiosity is right now is a small stack of layers – very impressive – and they could be 3-3.5 billion years old, and so we’re very excited about this because unlike the soil which we were analyzing before the holiday season – a loose, windswept patch of dirt on the surface o…
…el Limonadi. “We use gravity and vibration to get things into little parts of Chimra that make very controlled volumes of portions for us to drop off.” The rover has now driven at total of 484 m (of about 1,590 ft) since its 6 August landing on the floor of Gale Crater, a huge depression on Mars’ equator. It still has about 176 m to travel to get to a location dubbed Glenelg, a p…
The Curiosity rover remains perfectly on course to make its Monday (GMT) landing on the Red Planet, NASA says. The NASA robot’s flight trajectory is so good engineers cancelled the latest course correction they had planned. To be sure of touching down in the right place on the surface, the vehicle must hit a box at the top of the atmosphere that is just 3 km by 12 km. “Our inbound tra…
…a large fraction of all the igneous rocks on Mars,” said Roger Wiens, the instrument’s principal investigator. “A basalt, which is also common under the ocean on Earth, typically has 48% silicon dioxide and percent amounts of iron, calcium and magnesium, and sodium and potassium oxides as well. We’re not expecting any surprises,” said the Los Alamos National Laborator…
…ocks inside Gale Crater, one of the deepest holes on Mars, for signs that the planet may once have supported microbial life. The $2.5 billion mission is due to touch down at 05:31 GMT Monday 6 August; 22:31 PDT, Sunday 5 August. It will be a totally automated landing. Engineers here at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, can only watch and wait. The vast distance between M…
…“We should make tracks.” Another major engineering milestone passed this week has been the unpacking of Curiosity’s robotic arm. It was flexed to exercise its joints. The arm holds a 30 kg tool turret on its end that includes a drill to take powered samples from rocks. …
…s exploration site in Gale Crater, a deep impact bowl on Mars’ equator. This was delivered to the two big onboard laboratories, Sam and Chemin, for analysis. The rock sample was found to contain 20-30% smectite – a particular group of clay minerals. Their high abundance and the relative lack of salt are strongly suggestive of a fresh-water environment for the mudstone’s formation…
atkins. “We’re about a football field or so away from the touch-down point – from Bradbury Landing.” Curiosity is heading to a point dubbed Glenelg by scientists. This is about 300 m further to the east from its current position. Satellite pictures point to Glenelg being an intersection of three distinct types of rock terrain. Researchers think it will be a good place to st…
An IBM team in Zurich has published single-molecule images so detailed that the type of atomic bonds between their atoms can be discerned. The same pioneering team took the first-ever single-molecule image in 2009 and more recently published images of a molecule shaped like the Olympic rings. The new work opens up the prospect of studying imperfections in the “wonder material” graphen…
Jade Jagger stepped out in an unflattering tulip style dress as she attended the unveiling of Range Rover Sport in New York on Tuesday, just weeks after she made the same faux pas in a different version of the same style dress. Despite raising eyebrows in a silver version of the dress during Paris Fashion Week earlier in the month, Jade Jagger, 41, has clearly decided it’s a good look for her. Sw…
NASA has released the first full color mosaic from its Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars. Scientists have remarked that the rover’s surroundings resembled parts of the southwestern US. Curiosity’s ultimate goal is to drive towards a peak – informally known as Mount Sharp – to study its rocks. NASA has released the first full color mosaic from its Curiosity rover on t…
Curiosity rover has returned its first 360-degree color panorama from the surface of Mars. The robot used its wideangle science camera placed high up on a mast to acquire the frames. The low-resolution vista shows at centre the big mountain that lies in the middle of Gale Crater, the deep depression in which the rover landed. Curiosity rover has returned its first 360-degree color panorama from…
…ble to classify a huge range of terrain. Dr. Jason Ur said this had removed subjectivity and allowed them to look at a much larger area. In all, about 9,000 possible settlements were identified across 23,000 sq km. Ideally, Dr. Jason Ur said, some of these would be excavated, but the volatile political situation in Syria had forced them to put any ground searches on hold. However, Dr. Jason Ur sai…
…fter Kate was admitted to hospital with extreme morning sickness, sparked by a rare condition called Hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), they had little choice but to make the announcement. Kate Middleton, 30, who is thought to be between six and eight weeks pregnant, was taken to the hospital just after lunch on Sunday by her husband and put on a drip to stop her becoming dehydrated. But the news deli…
…ysis of images “indicates that North Korea continues to develop long-range missiles”. There had been at least two tests of rocket motors since a failed rocket launch in April, it said. The 30 m (100 ft) rocket crashed into the sea shortly after take off. Pyongyang said the launch was aimed at putting a satellite into orbit, but it was widely criticized by the US, South Korea and Japan…
It has been built to drive at least 20 km across the Martian landscape to investigate whether the planet ever had the conditions necessary for life. Wednesday’s drive saw the rover roll forward 4.5 m, turn clockwise on the spot, and then reverse up 2.5 m. It took about five minutes to complete the manoeuvre. NASA’s Curiosity rover turned its six wheels briefly on Wednesday to satisfy engin…
fferent items on the map, displayed on a screen. They include a huge tangle of the remains of a deckhouse; a large chunk of the side of the ship measuring more than 60 feet long and weighing more than 40 tons; pieces of the ship’s bottom; and a hatch cover that blew off of the bow section as it crashed to the bottom. Other items include five of the ship’s huge boilers, a revolving door…
…spacecraft passed Enceladus, the cameras made a nine-frame mosaic of the surface of Enceladus’s leading hemisphere. Cassini then flew by the small moon Janus with a closest approach distance of 44,000 km. The planet was in the background in some of these views. On 28 March, the spacecraft passed Dione at roughly the same distance and captured, among other observations, a nine-frame mosaic d…
Kim Kardashian cuts a striking figure in clingy long-sleeved black dress as she dines with Jonathan Cheban and her motherAfter being prone to several maternity dress disasters, heavily pregnant Kim Kardashian looked simply stunning as she stepped out for dinner at Cipriani in New York with her…
Keanu Reeves weight gain: Actor almost unrecognizable while boating in CannesWhen Keanu Reeves hit the Cannes scene on Sunday, it came as a shock to see the Hollywood hunk look anything less than handsome. Keanu Reeves, 48, stepped onto a yacht…
Angelina Jolie to play her mother Marcheline Bertrand in biopicAngelina Jolie will play her own mother in a biopic of the late actress Marcheline Bertrand, who died from ovarian cancer in 2007. Angelina Jolie, 37, who last week revealed…
Anna Wintour bans Kris Jenner from Met Gala 2013Anna Wintour may have accepted Kim Kardashian to the Met Gala last week, but she apparently banned Kris Jenner from attending as well. Kim Kardashian’s mother was…
John Lennon guitar sells for $408,000 at Julien's AuctionsA guitar played by John Lennon and George Harrison of the Beatles has sold for $408,000 at auction. The custom-made instrument, built in 1966 by the VOX company, was bought…
Kim Kardashian finally puts her swollen feet in flatsAfter she raised eyebrows on Thursday as she crammed her swollen feet into Perspex heels, with painful looking results, Kim Kardashian finally seems to be giving her feet a…
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