LARGEST CARBONITE-RICH DEPOSIT ON MARS

FROM:  NASA
This view combines information from two instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to map color-coded composition over the shape of the ground in a small portion of the Nili Fossae plains region of Mars' northern hemisphere.

This site is part of the largest known carbonate-rich deposit on Mars. In the color coding used for this map, green indicates a carbonate-rich composition, brown indicates olivine-rich sands, and purple indicates basaltic composition.

Carbon dioxide from the atmosphere on early Mars reacted with surface rocks to form carbonate, thinning the atmosphere by sequestering the carbon in the rocks.

An analysis of the amount of carbon contained in Nili Fossae plains estimated the total at no more than twice the amount of carbon in the modern atmosphere of Mars, which is mostly carbon dioxide. That is much more than in all other known carbonate on Mars, but far short of enough to explain how Mars could have had a thick enough atmosphere to keep surface water from freezing during a period when rivers were cutting extensive valley networks on the Red Planet. Other possible explanations for the change from an era with rivers to dry modern Mars are being investigated.

This image covers an area approximately 1.4 miles (2.3 kilometers) wide.  A scale bar indicates 500 meters (1,640 feet).  The full extent of the carbonate-containing deposit in the region is at least as large as Delaware and perhaps as large as Arizona.

The color coding is from data acquired by the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM), in observation FRT0000C968 made on Sept. 19, 2008.  The base map showing land shapes is from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera. It is one product from HiRISE observation ESP_010351_2020, made July 20, 2013. Other products from that observation are online at http://www.uahirise.org/ESP_032728_2020.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been using CRISM, HiRISE and four other instruments to investigate Mars since 2006. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland, led the work to build the CRISM instrument and operates CRISM in coordination with an international team of researchers from universities, government and the private sector. HiRISE is operated by the University of Arizona, Tucson, and was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colorado.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the orbiter and collaborates with JPL to operate it.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JHUAPL/Univ. of Arizona

NASA 360 Talks - Life on Mars

NASA VIDEO: CURIOSITY ROVER REPORT (May 8, 2015): ROVER ROAD TRIP

CHEMCAM EXCEEDS 100.000 SHOTS ON MARS

Curiosity Heads To Mars.  Credit:  NASA

FROM:  LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Los Alamos’s ChemCam team fills scrapbook from Mars road trip

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Dec. 5, 2013—The ChemCam laser instrument aboard NASA’s Curiosity rover fired its 100,000th shot recently, chronicling its adventures on Mars with a coffee-table-book’s worth of spectral data that might rival snapshots gathered during a long and satisfying family vacation here on Earth. ChemCam zaps rocks with a high-powered laser to determine their composition and carries a camera that can survey the Martian landscape.

“ChemCam has greatly exceeded our expectations,” said Roger Wiens, Los Alamos National Laboratory planetary scientist and Principal Investigator of the ChemCam Team. “The information we’ve gleaned from the instrument will continue to enhance our understanding of the Red Planet, and will nicely complement information from the other nine instruments aboard Curiosity as we continue our odyssey to Mount Sharp.”

Curiosity landed on Mars at the edge of Gale Crater near the base of Mount Sharp on Aug. 6, 2012. The rover is a rolling laboratory about the size of a small SUV that will roam the Martian landscape for at least another year in search of clues about the planet’s habitability. Using a suite of 10 instruments that can perform diverse and amazing tasks ranging from digging up and baking soil samples, to shooting rocks with pinpoint accuracy with a high-powered laser, Curiosity already has helped show scientists that Mars apparently once had a very wet history and still retains enough moisture in its dust and rocks to quench the thirst of future astronauts.

Curiosity’s laser instrument, ChemCam, fires a short laser burst that packs the wallop of nearly one million light bulbs into a single pinpoint of light to vaporize rock and dust. A camera aboard the instrument reads the spectral signature of the resultant flash and translates the information into the composition of whatever happened to be in ChemCam’s crosshairs at the moment. The instrument also has a camera that scientists have been using to survey the Martian landscape.

The ChemCam concept was developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, but the instrument aboard Curiosity is a partnership between Los Alamos and the French national space agency, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and research agency, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).

The U.S. operations center for the ChemCam team is located in downtown Los Alamos. Wiens said a teleprompter showing the latest slideshows from Mars will soon be erected in downtown Los Alamos for public viewing.

“Like those family slideshows from summer vacations along Route 66, people will be able to enjoy and experience the highlights of our trip,” Wiens said. “ChemCam was designed to fire one million shots, so we’ll have lots of stories to tell later on.”

MARS MOSAIC

FROM: NASA
Panoramic View From Near 'Point Lake' in Gale Crater, Sol 106

This panorama is a mosaic of images taken by the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on the NASA Mars rover Curiosity during the 106th Martian day, or sol, of the mission (Nov. 22, 2012). The rover was near a location called "Point Lake" for an overlook of a shallow depression called "Yellowknife Bay" which is in the left third of this scene, in the middle distance.

The image spans 360 degrees, with south at the center. It has been white-balanced to show what the rocks and soils in it would look like if they were on Earth.

Image Credit-NASA-JPL-Caltech-Malin Space Science Systems

FIRST ROCK CONTACT ON MARS

CURIOSITY REPORT AFTER LANDING ON MARS

FROM: NASA
NASA's most advanced Mars rover, Curiosity, has landed on the Red Planet. The one-ton rover, hanging by ropes from a rocket backpack, touched down onto Mars early Monday EDT to end a 36-week flight and begin a two-year investigation. President Obama said the landing "will stand as a point of national pride far into the future."
After seven dramatic minutes of entry, descent, and landing, everyone will want to know: did Curiosity survive? There’s a possibility we won’t know. At least not right away.

During its descent through the atmosphere, Curiosity must switch to a new antenna for each transformation it makes. At each switch, we could lose lock on the signal for a short time. That won’t hurt the rover. It just means we won’t know what’s happening right way.

Even with a solid signal, the communications link direct to Earth only works during the first half of the rover’s descent. Why? Like Earth, Mars is spinning – and during landing, Curiosity and its landing site will disappear from view, like the sun setting.

Out of sight equals the end of direct radio contact.

BUT…NASA has two spacecraft orbiting Mars that can help.

For the second half of Curiosity’s descent, the Mars Odyssey orbiter is in a good place to pick up the rover’s signal and send it right back to Earth. To best hear Curiosity’s signal, Odyssey must rotate about an hour before landing.

That sounds easy, but engineers are asking Odyssey to perform a maneuver it’s never tried before. Will it work? Probably. But it’s not a sure thing.

If Odyssey doesn’t rotate successfully, never fear! The rover won’t be affected whatsoever! Once again, it just means we have to wait longer to hear from the rover.

Odyssey could perform as hoped, but we’re still not home free! Engineers always think of ‘what ifs.’ For instance, what if the rover lands on a slope? If so, the low flying Odyssey orbiter might not be able to pick up its signal.

Even if everything goes according to plan with Odyssey, there’s a final challenge: time. The rover may be standing safe on Mars, but Odyssey has to be quick in getting the signal. Odyssey is moving fast. It will only be in the line of sight to hear from the rover for a few minutes--perhaps no more than 5.

So the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter plays the role of backup. It will also fly overhead to capture what happens and then store the landing data it collects onboard, for playback to Earth a few hours later. Engineers then have to decode the data, which takes several hours.

Sometime in the middle of the night for Curiosity’s mission team, it’s possible that the orbiter could tell us the rover’s fate.

Or, there are other scenarios where the rover might be perfectly safe, but we might not hear from it for three days.

That’s all to say: Curiosity’s landing is filled with drama and we’ll need lots of patience. No wonder they call this ‘rocket science.’


› View Now

NASA PLANNING GROUP TAKES KEY STEPS FOR FUTURE MARS EXPLORATION

Three generations of Mars Rovers.  Credit: NASA


FROM:  NASA 
NASA's Mars Program Planning Group (MPPG), established 
to assist the agency in developing a new strategy for the exploration 
of the Red Planet, has begun analyzing options for future robotic 
missions and enlisting the assistance of scientists and engineers 
worldwide. 


NASA is reformulating the Mars Exploration Program to be responsive to 
high-priority science goals and the President's challenge of sending 
humans to Mars in the 2030s. 


"We're moving quickly to develop options for future Mars exploration 
missions and pathways," said John Grunsfeld, an astrophysicist, 
five-time space shuttle astronaut and associate administrator for 
NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in 
Washington. "As part of this process, community involvement, 
including international, is essential for charting the new 
agency-wide strategy for our future Mars exploration efforts." 


Grunsfeld leads the agency-wide Mars program reformulation effort 
along with William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for the 
Human Exploration and Operations Directorate, Chief Scientist Waleed 
Abdalati and Chief Technologist Mason Peck. 


In February, Grunsfeld named veteran aerospace engineer Orlando 
Figueroa to lead the MPPG. In March, the group established an initial 
draft framework of milestones and activities that will include 
options for missions and sequences bridging the objectives of NASA's 
science, human exploration and operations and technology. 


Starting today, the scientific and technical community across the 
globe can submit ideas and abstracts online as part of NASA's effort 
to seek out the best and the brightest ideas from researchers and 
engineers in planetary science. Selected abstracts will be presented 
during a workshop in June hosted by the Lunar and Planetary Institute 
in Houston. 


The workshop will provide an open forum for presentation, discussion 
and consideration of concepts, options, capabilities and innovations 
to advance Mars exploration. These ideas will inform a strategy for 
exploration within available resources, beginning as early as 2018 
and stretching into the next decade and beyond. 


"Receiving input from our community is vital to energize the planning 
process," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration 
Program at NASA Headquarters. "We'll integrate inputs to ensure the 
next steps for the Mars Exploration Program will support science, as 
well as longer-term human exploration and technology goals." 


The new strategy also will be designed to maintain America's critical 
technical skills, developed over decades, to achieve the highest 
priority science and exploration objectives. 


NASA has a recognized track record of successful missions on Mars, and 
exploration of the planet is a priority for the agency. The rover 
Opportunity, which landed on Mars in 2004, is still operating well 
beyond its official mission of 90 days. There also are two NASA 
satellites, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey, 
orbiting Mars and returning unprecedented science data and images. 


In August, NASA will land the Mars Science Laboratory, "Curiosity," on 
the planet's surface. This roving science laboratory will assess 
whether Mars was in the past or present an environment able to 
support life. In 2013, NASA will launch the Mars Atmosphere and 
Volatile Evolution orbiter, the first mission devoted to 
understanding the Martian upper atmosphere.