…to point correctly at first, but the problem has now been fixed. The mast was stowed for the journey to Mars, lying flat on the deck of the rover. Raising it into the vertical was the main task of Sol 2 – the second full Martian day of surface operations. Locked in the upright position, the masthead and its cameras stand some 2m above the ground. Curiosity has two pairs of black and white, g…
…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…
rth had been billed as the “seven minutes of terror” – the time it would take to complete a series of high-risk, automated manoeuvres that would slow the rover from an entry speed of 20,000 km/h to allow its wheels to set down softly. The Curiosity team had to wait 13 tense minutes for the signals from Odyssey and the lander to make their way back to Earth. After the landing, the…
to start to characterize the geology of Gale Crater. The rover’s arrival at the junction is still some weeks away, however. Engineers have parked the vehicle for a few days to practice using the 2 m-long robotic arm. This carries a 30 kg tool turret on its end and the mission team needs to learn how to move the device in the weaker gravity conditions that exist on Mars. “Mars has about…
…to choose our first drilling target, because suddenly we’ve come into an area that represents a very high diversity of things we haven’t seen before,” said Prof. John Grotzinger. In 2012, Curiosity examined the dusty soils that gave it an insight into the processes that drive the dry and cold environment that dominates Mars today. Drilling into rock this month will allow scienti…
…we can work around that,” said Curiosity’s deputy project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada. All the other REMS measurements look good. Air temperatures in Gale Crater have been up to about minus 2C in the Martian afternoon, and down to minus 75C in the middle of the Martian night. In general, the rover is in rude health. On Monday, it wiggled its front and back wheels to check its steering c…
…the Mars Descent Imager (Mardi), even in their thumbnail form, have now allowed engineers to work out Curiosity’s precise position on the planet – a latitude of -4.5895 and a longitude of 137.4417. Pictures from the Mars Descent Imager (Mardi), even in their thumbnail form, have now allowed engineers to work out Curiosity's precise position on the planet The full set of high-reso…
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…
…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…
Curiosity rover is getting ready to zap its first Martian rock. A small stone lying just to the side of the vehicle at its landing site on the floor of Gale Crater has been selected as a test target for the ChemCam laser. The brief but powerful burst of light from this instrument will vaporize the surface of the rock, revealing details of its basic chemistry. Dubbed N165, the object is not expect…
…e only fine-grained material, less than the width of a human hair in diameter, reaches the instruments. The team will be mindful of the extreme difficulty a previous Mars mission, the Phoenix probe of 2008, had in getting material to go through its sample handling system. “Phoenix had a relatively uncontrolled drop off capability; they had just the one scoop and that scoop had to do everythi…
s approaching Mars at about 13,000 km/h on Saturday. By the time the spacecraft hits the top of Mars’ atmosphere, about seven minutes before touch-down, gravity will have accelerated it to about 21,000 km/h. The vehicle is being aimed at Gale Crater, a deep depression just south of the planet’s equator. It is equipped with the most sophisticated science payload ever sent to another wor…
…NASA’s $2.6 billion mission touched down on the Red Planet on 6 August (GMT). Much of the time since then has been spent commissioning the immensely complex, six-wheeled machine and its suite of 10 instruments. The Jake Matijevic investigation allowed the science team to use the X-ray spectrometer (APXS) and the hand lens (Mahli) in unison with the rover’s infrared laser instrument (Ch…
…as dispatched to hunt for organic materials and other chemistry considered necessary for microbial life to evolve. The $2.5 billion Curiosity project, NASA’s first astrobiology mission since the 1970s-era Viking probes to Mars, is the first to bring all the tools of a state-of-the-art geochemistry laboratory to the surface of a distant planet. But the latest images from Curiosity, taken at a…
…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…
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…
NASA’s Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars two weeks ago, turned its six wheels briefly on Wednesday to satisfy engineers that its locomotion system was in full working order. Curiosity is a sophisticated mobile science laboratory. 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’…
the desolate planet was ever capable of supporting life Curiosity is a mobile lab, the size of a small car, which is expected to be lowered by giant jet pack on to the surface of Mars in August 2012. Doug McCuistion, director of NASA’s Mars exploration programme said: “It will be the largest and most complex piece of equipment ever placed on the surface of another planet.” NASA’s earlier Vi…
NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity has zapped its first Martian rock. Curiosity rover fired its ChemCam laser at a tennis-ball-sized stone lying about 2.5 m away on the ground. The brief but powerful burst of light from the instrument vaporized the surface of the rock, revealing details of its basic chemistry. This was just target practice for ChemCam, proving it is ready to begin the…
…complex piece of equipment ever placed on the surface of another planet”, said Doug McCuistion, director of NASA’s Mars exploration programme. Curiosity rover is expected to land on Mars on August 5, 2012, after travelling nearly 354 million miles from our planet. One of the chief tasks of the $2.5billion mission will be to discover the source of the methane gas scientists have detected in the Ma…
…ecently to collect his MBE. The new Range Rover Sport – the sportier “baby brother” of the bigger Range Rover – goes on sale in September priced from $83,358. It will ultimately be introduced in 169 markets worldwide….
Just two weeks after landing its Curiosity rover on Mars, NASA has announced it will send another robot to the planet in 2016. The InSight spacecraft will be a static lander that will carry instruments to investigate Mars’ deep interior. Scientists say this will give them a clearer idea of how the rocky planets formed – the Earth included. InSight beat two other proposals in a competi…
ind evidence of extraterrestrial microbes in soil samples from Mars The reassessment was prompted by the discovery of “perchlorates” in the soil at the landing site of another Mars lander, Phoenix, in 2008. The presence of the chemicals in Viking’s samples had led scientists to conclude the samples were contaminated. The scientists behind the experiment remain divided over how conclusive the…
A meteorite from Mars has been given to science to help unravel the Red Planet’s secrets. The Natural History Museum (NHM) in London has acquired the 1kg piece of the Tissint rock thanks to an anonymous benefactor. The meteorite was seen to land in Morocco last July and retrieved quickly, resulting in minimal contamination with Earth. Researchers hope Tissint’s geochemistry will provi…
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…
Eva Longoria humiliating wardrobe malfunction at Cannes Film FestivalEva Longoria has suffered an extremely embarrassing wardrobe malfunction as she unfortunately revealed far more than she intended to upon screening of Jimmy P. (Psychotherapy…
Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart split after cheating scandalRobert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart have split after almost four years together, People magazine is reporting. The couple – who reportedly broke up briefly in December…
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