Strong Evidence of Life in Ancient Lake at Mars Gale Crater

Scientists at NASA's Mars Science Laboratory have discovered evidence of an ancient lake on Mars that they believe may have supported life billions of years ago.

Using the Mars rover Curiosity, they analysed sedimentary rocks at Yellowknife Bay in the Gale Crater. Evidence from the analysis suggest that the site had at least one lake around 3.6 billion years ago. The analysis showed that the lake likely had fresh water and elements such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and sulphur which are suitable in sustaining life.

Compared to other previous Mars rovers, Curiosity is two times longer and five times heavier than the others. It carried equipment to gather samples of rocks and soil, process them and distribute them to onboard test chambers inside analytical instruments.

The Gale Crater, a depression made by an asteroid or comet billions of years ago, was the main target of Curiosity as it is believed to be made up of ancient sediment deposited when Mars still had abundant water at its surface.

Science of Terradynamics Opens up Possibility of Developing Walking Robots on Mars

Terradynamic researchers are developing small legged robots that someday may be used in scouting missions regardless of the surface. These robots are perfect for use in scouting missions as well as in exploration in environments such as Mars.

For years, robots have been imagined to be human like. Most science fiction movies have even featured androids; robots that resemble humans. But one big hurdle is the development of legs.

Most robots used now use wheels to move on surfaces. Having "legs" to travel allows robots to travers difficult surfaces such as sandy environments. Sand can clog up wheel mechanisms and hinder movement.

By developing other ways for robots to move around may develop more applications that are now limited because of factors such as sandy environments.

Study On Effects of Deep Space Travel Reveals Sodium Rhythm Cycle of the Human Body

Researchers simulating humans living in a closed habitat while on deep space travel found that the human body balances its sodium levels in a cycle that is independent on the actual salt intake. They have published their findings in the journal Cell Metabolism.

Sodium is used by the body to regulate blood pressure and control blood volume. It also is used for osmotic equilibrium and pH. A cell is said to be in osomotic equilibrium when there is no water loss or gain while in the body. Sodium ions are used by the central nervous system for the proper function of its nerve cells.

Salt (Sodium chloride) is the prime source of sodium in the diet. It contains 40% sodium. The minimum physiological requirement for sodium is 500 milligrams per day while the DRI (Dietary Recommended Intake) is 2300 milligrams per day. Anything above 3400 milligrams may cause hypertension.

The body through the kidneys (as part of its renin-angiotensin system) regulate the sodium concentration of the body. As mentioned in the article (detailed below), the textbook explanation of sodium regulation is that when the body detects an uneven concentration of sodium in the fluids, the kidney will either retain or decrease water to maintain the optimal concentration. Thirst is a sign that the body needs more water to maintain this balance.

A 150 pound (70 kilogram) person would have 15 liters (~4 gallons) of water in his body. The sodium content maintained by the body in the water would be about 1.75 ounces (50 grams).

Study Finds Sleep Patterns And Neurobehavioral Effects As A Concern On Manned Mission To Mars

Researchers analyzing data on the the sleep, performance, and mood behavioral impact of deep space travel to astronauts find that sleep patterns and neurobehavioral effects on the crew members must be addressed for successful adaption to prolonged space missions.

For quite some time, Mars has been a hot topic when it comes to sending humans into outer space. Just recently, NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover landed on Mars and have been taking tests of the surface of the planet. It has even picked up what might possibly be evidence of water on Mars.

Travelling to Mars takes lots of preparation. For one, there are only four windows of opportunity that cycles every fifteen years to require the least amount of energy to transfer from an Earth orbit to the Mars orbit.

The next window for a low energy orbit transfer would occur in 2018.

It would take roughly 250 days to travel from the Earth to Mars. During the trip, astronauts are exposed to dangerous cosmic radiation, space debris, a zero gravity environment and even psychological effects from prolonged isolation.

The United States delayed its plan to send astronauts to Mars by 2020. Instead, the plan is to send a manned mission to an asteroid in 2025 and plan for a Mars trip by 2030.

Mars One, a private endeavor to set up a human colony on Mars led by Dutch entrepreneur, Bas Lansdorp, was announced on June 2012. The project's plan is to land humans on Mars to establish a permanent settlement in 2023. A new set of four astronauts would then arrive every two years.

Mars One is set up to be a one way trip to Mars for the astronauts.

NASA Mars Rover Curiosity Lands Successfully At Mars Gale Crater

Credit: NASA/JPL

The Curiosity Rover, also called the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), landed successfully in Mars at the Gale Crater. It was reported to have landed in the crater near the planet's equator at 05:32 GMT.

Curiosity was designed to steer itself during the descent into Mars and through its atmosphere mimicking maneuvers done by NASA space shuttle astronauts called S-curve maneuvers.

A parachute, retro rocket and a "sky crane" then helps put Curiosity on the ground. The upper stage of the space craft acts as the sky crane lowering the upright rover on a tether to the surface.

The target site for Curiosity's landing is The Gale Crater.

Credit: BBC News/NASA/JPL

The Gale Crater

The Gale Crater is a depression made by an asteroid or comet billions of years ago. From the crater floor rises a huge mound of rock rising 5km. The mound of rock, named Mount Sharp, is believed to be made up of ancient sediments; some deposited when Mars still had abundant water at its surface.

From orbit, Mount Sharp looks like Australia. Gale is named after an Australian astronomer. That makes it an exciting place to consider the possibility that those distant times may also once have supported microbial life

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Images Shed Light On Movement of Sand Dunes In Mars

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is a multipurpose spacecraft designed to orbit Mars and conduct reconnaissance and exploration of the red planet.

The spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin under the supervision of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for US$ 720 Million. The craft was launched on 12 August 2005 and reached Mars orbit on 10 March 2006. Upon reaching orbit, there were five other active space craft and vehicles on Mars. These are the Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Express, Mars Odyssey, and two Mars Exploration Rovers.

Upon arrivla, MRO began collecting data on the history of water on Mars. The on-board instruments took extreme close-up photography of the martian surface, analyze minerals, look for subsurface water, trace how much dust and water are distributed in the atmosphere, and monitor daily global weather.

Technology developed at Caltech measures Martian sand movement

Last year, images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured sand dunes and ripples moving across the surface of Mars—observations that challenged previously held beliefs that there was not a lot of movement on the red planet's surface. Now, technology developed by a team at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has allowed scientists to measure these activities for the very first time.

The new method for data processing is outlined in an advance online publication of the journal Nature.

Coiling Spiral Patterns Found In Mars Lava Flow

Hi Res Image of  Mars Lava Flow

The planet Earth is bigger than Mars, about two times the diameter of Mars. While nearly 70% of Earth is covered with liquid water, Mars has no visible water at all. Although Mars is said to have had liquid water at one time in its early years.

Despite the differences, Mars is similar to Earth, geologically, than any other planet in the solar systems. It has valleys and mountains, weather and seasons, and volcanoes and ice caps. At 24 hours and 39 minutes, the Martian day is only a little bit longer than Earth's. Because of these similarities, studying some geographical features in Earth helps scientists know more about Mars.

New form of Mars lava flow dicovered

High-resolution photos of lava flows on Mars reveal coiling spiral patterns that resemble snail or nautilus shells. Such patterns have been found in a few locations on Earth, but never before on Mars. The discovery, made by Arizona State University graduate student Andrew Ryan, is announced in a paper published April 27, 2012, in the scientific journal Science.

The new result came out of research into possible interactions of lava flows and floods of water in the Elysium volcanic province of Mars.

"I was interested in Martian outflow channels and was particularly intrigued by Athabasca Valles and Cerberus Palus, both part of Elysium," says Ryan, who is in his first year as a graduate student in ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration, part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Philip Christensen, Regents' Professor of Geological Sciences at ASU, is second author on the paper.

Studying Earth Craters For Clues on Life On Mars

Earth, Mars, and the Moon

Earth is bigger than Mars. Earth is about two times the diameter of Mars. Nearly 70% of Earth is covered with liquid water; Mars has none. Although Mars may have had liquid water at one time in its early years.

Despite the differences, Mars is similar to Earth than any other planet in the solar systems. Mars, like Earth, has valleys and mountains, weather and seasons, and volcanoes and ice caps. At 24 hours and 39 minutes, the Martian day is only a little bit longer than Earth's. Because of these similarities, studying some geographical features in Earth helps scientists know more about Mars.

Asteroid craters on Earth give clues in search for life on Mars

Craters made by asteroid impacts may be the best place to look for signs of life on other planets, a study suggests.

Tiny organisms have been discovered thriving deep underneath a site in the US where an asteroid crashed some 35 million years ago.

Scientists believe that the organisms are evidence that such craters provide refuge for microbes, sheltering them from the effects of the changing seasons and events such as global warming or ice ages.

The study suggests that crater sites on Mars may also be hiding life, and that drilling beneath them could lead to evidence of similar life forms.

Studying The Gravitational Field of Mars Moon Phobos

The Mars moon, Phobos is of interest to astronomers. The Potato-shaped moon is thought to be an asteroid that got caught by the gravity of Mars. Some think that it may be a collection of rocks that formed around Mars after its formation.

It is one of two moons at Mars (the other being Deimos) and has an extremely low density may mean that it has many interior voids.

Phobos is the larger and closer of the two natural satellites of Mars. Despite decades of Martian exploration, little is known about Phobos. Many fundamental properties of this small potato-shaped body stay vague, for example, its gravitational field. SHI Xian and coauthors from Shanghai Astronomical Observatory and Technical University Berlin recently updated working models for the gravitational field of Phobos. Their work, entitled "Working models for the gravitational field of Phobos", was published in SCIENCE CHINA Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy, 2012, Vol 55(2).

Mars has two natural satellites, Phobos and Deimos. Unlike the Earth's Moon, the Martian moons are relatively small in size and irregularly shaped. Different scenarios have been suggested for the origin of these two bodies, such as captured asteroids or reaccreted ejectas from an impact event on Mars. However, none of the origin theories has yet been confirmed. To unveil the mysteries of the Martian moons, scientists need more detailed understandings of their physical properties, among which the gravitational field is of great importance. Existing gravitational field models of Phobos are all based on early shape models with relatively low resolution and precision. Since 2003, ESA's Mars Express (MEX) probe has been orbiting Mars in an elliptical polar orbit. This special orbit allows it to perform regular flybys of Phobos, during which plenty of high-quality imaging data are accumulated. These data have helped establish a new, high-resolution shape model of Phobos. This provides a good opportunity to improve the gravitational field model.

Mars Rover Curiosity to Look for Signs of Life

On November 26, the United Launch Alliance Atlas V carrying NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) will launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. It has already been delayed one day to allow time for the team to remove and replace a flight termination system battery.

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Update: Nov 26
The rocket successfully lifted off. Video at end of post
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The MSL Mission's main feature is Curiosity. It is the largest and most advanced rover ever sent to the planet Mars. It has 10 science instruments to use to search for evidence of environment favorable for microbial life. It is equipped with a laser to look inside rocks and release their gasses for the onboard spectrometer to analyze and send the data back to Earth.

The Curiosity rover has multiple cameras and instruments, including Goddard's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite. SAM will help the rover discover whether Mars ever had the potential to carry life by analyzing the Martian soil and environment for evidence of water, carbon, and other life building materials.

Video: NASA Mission Briefing on the Martian Rover, Curiosity and its mission to Mars

Paul Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center asks, "Did microbial life ever originate on Mars, and what happened to it as the planet changed? Did it just go extinct, or did it go underground, where it would be protected from space radiation and temperatures might be warm enough for liquid water?"

He further adds, "Curiosity will focus on geology and minerals to determine if the environment on Mars in the distant past had the potential to support life. It will be digging in the dirt trying to understand the habitability issue in a place where water may have flowed, where there could have been a lake..."

Curiosity will arrive at the Gale crater, a 96-mile-wide crater that contains a record of environmental changes in its sedimentary rock, in August 2012.

Video: NASA confirm that the Mars Science Laboratory is on its way to the Red Planet


As per NASA: NASA's Curiosity rover has begun the journey to Mars after its Atlas V rocket launched successfully from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Nov. 26. Ten instruments aboard MSL will provide new data about whether the area within and around Mars' Gale Crater could ever have supported microbial life. The Mars Science Laboratory is expected to reach Mars next August.

Last month, Russia's Phobos-Gunt mission to Mars failed when the rocket failed to activate shortly after launching. It is presently orbiting the Earth.

Video: Lift off the the Atlas V rocket carrying Curiosity

Russians Send Probe To Mars Moon

Russian Phobos-Grunt mission will launch a probe to the Mars moon Phobos. It will scoop up rock and dust samples from the Martian moon and bring them back to Earth.

On Wednesday at 00:16 local time (20:16 GMT Tuesday), the probe will lift off from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It will be lifted off to space on a Zenit-2SB rocket. According to calculations, the probe will reach Phobos in September 2012. The Mars moon samples will be back on Earth in 33 months time.

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UPDATE 07:48 GMT Nov 9: The Phobos-Grunt rocket veered off course within minutes of starting its mission. An engine designed to keep the probe on track failed to start and is currently stuck in an Earth orbit. Russian engineers have three days to correct the fault before its batteries run out
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Aside from its main mission, the Phobos-Grunt will also carry China's first Mars satellite, the Yinghuo 1. It will ride piggy back and be released into an observational orbit around Mars.

The European Space Agency assisted with the mission by giving detailed mapping of the moon by it's Mars Express (MEx) satellite. This information is used to identify a suitable location for landing. They also are providing ground support for the mission.

Video: News report on the stalled mission to Mars

Phobos is of interest to astronomers. The Potato-shaped moon is thought to be an asteroid that got caught by the gravity of Mars. Some think that it may be a collection of rocks that formed around Mars after its formation.

It is one of two moons at Mars (the other being Deimos) and has an extremely low density may mean that it has many interior voids.

Once the probe has landed on Phobos, a robotic arm will pick up samples of the regolith or "soil". Analysis will be made within the probe's instruments and around 200g of the material will be transferred to a canister and sent back to Earth. The canister is expected to fall to Earth in the Kazakh desert by August 2014.

Aside from ESA, The French (Cnes) and German (DLR) space agencies also participated by providing instrumentation for Phobos-Grunt. The US advocacy group, The Planetary Society is also contributing to the mission by sending a payload of live microorganisms to test the hypothesis that life can survive in space after being blasted off planets from meteor impacts.

On another front, NASA is partnering with Astrobotic Technology to plan a mission that will mine fuel and minerals (specially Helium 3) on the moon.

Video: Mission animation of the Phobos-Gunt made by the Russian Federal Space Agency