…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…
…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…
…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…
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…
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…
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…
Curiosity, the world’s biggest extraterrestrial explorer has been launched today on a 354 million mile journey to Mars that hopes to discover whether the desolate planet was ever capable of supporting life. NASA launched Curiosity rover – officially called the Mars Science Laboratory – at 10:02 am ET today into a cloudy Florida sky. Curiosity, described by one expert as a “Mars…
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…
…“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. …
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…
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…
…eras – one wideangle, one telephoto. It is these Mastcams that will provide the really exquisite, true color views of the Martian landscape. We should see something of their output following Sol 3. Most of the pictures we have seen so far have been low-resolution thumbnails – easy to downlink. But we are now starting to get one or two hi-res versions also. Mike Malin, the principal inv…
…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…
…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…
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…
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…
no particular science value, and was expected to be just another lump of ubiquitous Martian basalt, a volcanic rock. Its appeal was the nice smooth face it offered to the laser. ChemCam zapped it with 30 pulses of infrared light during a 10-second period. Each pulse delivered to a tiny spot more than a million watts of power for about five billionths of a second. The instrument observed the result…
…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…
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’…
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…
…right to prevent them from being further published. FBI agents from “Operation Hackerazzi” spoke to Scarlett Johansson along with as many as 50 other celebrity victims. Christopher Chaney, 35, was later identified as the man who hacked Scarlett Johansson’s phone, along with those of Christina Aguilera, Vanessa Hudgens and Mila Kunis. He admitted offering the stolen photos to cele…
Australian scientists, who have made an overall study of temperature and pressure conditions of Mars, say that a greater percentage of the Red Planet is habitable than Earth. Scientists from the Australian National University say that 3% of Mars could sustain life, while just one per cent of Earth’s volume contains life – from the core to upper atmosphere. However, the researchers say that most E…
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…
…44, no one named Brian or Nigel and stating they “Must be blind enough to think I’m gorgeous.” The rambling revelations are particularly unusual as Sinead O’Connor came out as a lesbian in 2000, but is writing about her search for a man. Before she signed off, Sinead O’Connor wrote: “I must end now as I have a hot date with a banana.” Four days later, Sinead blogged again that sh…
Liam Gallagher, former Oasis front-man is suing brother Noel for what he claims are “lies” over the band split in 2009. Liam Gallagher, who has re-launched his music career as front-man of Beady Eye, has filed a High Court action against Noel Gallagher’s claim that he pulled out of a 2009 headline performance at V festival due to a “hangover”. He also has bee…
Full spring cleaning burns more calories than running a marathonNew research shows that spring cleaning can burn off even more calories than running a marathon. Houseproud homeowners typically burn up 3,655 calories each year just by…
Face Trainer: Training balaclava claims to tone up saggy facesFace Trainer, the latest product to hit the market promising a youthful complexion, may leave even the most dedicated beauty disciple at a loss for words. In the same way…
EU bans refillable bottles and dipping bowls of olive oil at restaurant tablesStarting with 2014, the European Commission will ban the use of refillable bottles and dipping bowls of olive oil at restaurant tables. From 1 January 2014, restaurants may…
DSM-5: Controversial updates to mental health manual to be publishedDSM-5, an update to one of the most important manuals in mental health - known as the bible of psychiatry - is to be published later. Controversy and criticism has…
Recipe: Super slimming mushroom inspired mealMushroom-rich diet followed by Katy Perry, Kelly Osbourne and Roxanne Pallett can help women lose weight without shrinking their bust. The mushroom plan is being touted as…
Mushroom diet: M-Plan promises to help women lose weight still keeping their curvesThe mushroom plan is being touted as the latest weapon for savvy celeb dieters who want to shed pounds quickly but still keep some of their curves. Dubbed the “M-Plan”,…
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