PROGRESS ON PRESIDENT OBAMA'S SPACE EXPLORATION VISION VIDEO

FROM: NASA

NASA Shows Progress of President's Space Exploration Vision

On the third anniversary of President Obama's visit to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where he set his space exploration vision for the future, news media representatives were given an opportunity to see up close the Orion spacecraft that could take astronauts on an asteroid sampling mission as early as 2021. Key leaders from across the agency shared progress being made on the spacecraft and infrastructure that will send humans to the asteroid, and eventually to Mars. Orion currently is being prepared in Kennedy's Operations and Checkout Building (O&C) for its first flight test, Exploration Flight Test (EFT)-1, in 2014.

FORMATIONS ON THE MARTIAN SURFACE

 

FROM:  NASA
Landforms on Mars
This image was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) flying onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission.

Gully landforms like those in this image are found in many craters in the mid-latitudes of Mars. Changes in gullies were first seen in images from the Mars Orbiter Camera in 2006, and studying such activity has been a high priority for HiRISE. Many examples of new deposits in gullies are now known.

This image shows a new deposit in Gasa Crater, in the Southern mid-latitudes. The deposit is distinctively blue in enhanced-color images. This image was acquired in southern spring, but the flow that formed the deposit occurred in the preceding winter.

Current gully activity appears to be concentrated in winter and early spring, and may be caused by the seasonal carbon dioxide frost that is visible in gully alcoves in the winter.

Written by: Colin Dundas

Image Credit-- NASA-JPL-University of Arizona

SPRINGTIME THAW ON MARS-NASA VIDEO

FROM: NASA
Mars - Dry Ice and Dunes

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captures the springtime thaw of seasonal carbon dioxide ice on Mars.

Credit: NASA-JPL-Caltech

THE MARS FLOAT LANDS IN INAUGUARAL PARADE

FROM: NASA
Curiosity Replica Preps for Parade
On Saturday morning, Jan. 19, 2013, at Joint Base Anacostia Bolling (JBAB) in Washington, Steve LaDrew, with Capitol Exhibit Services, adjusts the Mastcam on a replica of the Mars Curiosity Rover.

The NASA float will participate in Monday's Inaugural Parade honoring President Barack Obama. Image Credit-NASA-Paul E. Alers

CURRENT STATUS OF THE MARS ROVER MISSION



The NASA Mars rover Curiosity used its left Navigation Camera to record this view of the step down into a shallow depression called "Yellowknife Bay." Image credit: NASA-JPL-Caltech

FROM: NASA

Mission status report

PASADENA, Calif. -- The NASA Mars rover Curiosity this week is driving within a shallow depression called "Yellowknife Bay," providing information to help researchers choose a rock to drill.

Using Curiosity's percussive drill to collect a sample from the interior of a rock, a feat never before attempted on Mars, is the mission's priority for early 2013. After the powdered-rock sample is sieved and portioned by a sample-processing mechanism on the rover's arm, it will be analyzed by instruments inside Curiosity.

Yellowknife Bay is within a different type of terrain from what the rover has traversed since landing inside Mars' Gale Crater on Aug. 5, PDT (Aug. 6, UTC). The terrain Curiosity has entered is one of three types that intersect at a location dubbed "Glenelg," chosen as an interim destination about two weeks after the landing.

Curiosity reached the lip of a 2-foot (half-meter) descent into Yellowknife Bay with a 46-foot (14-meter) drive on Dec. 11. The next day, a drive of about 86 feet (26.1 meters) brought the rover well inside the basin. The team has been employing the Mast Camera (Mastcam) and the laser-wielding Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) for remote-sensing studies of rocks along the way.

On Dec. 14, Curiosity drove about 108 feet (32.8 meters) to reach rock targets of interest called "Costello" and "Flaherty." Researchers used the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) and Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) at the end of the rover's arm to examine the targets. After finishing those studies, the rover drove again on Dec. 17, traveling about 18 feet (5.6 meters) farther into Yellowknife Bay. That brings the mission's total driving distance to 0.42 mile (677 meters) since Curiosity's landing.

One additional drive is planned this week before the rover team gets a holiday break. Curiosity will continue studying the Martian environment from its holiday location at the end point of that drive within Yellowknife Bay. The mission's plans for most of 2013 center on driving toward the primary science destination, a 3-mile-high (5-kilometer) layered mound called Mount Sharp.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project is using Curiosity during a two-year prime mission to assess whether areas inside Gale Crater ever offered a habitable environment for microbes. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

THE MARS ROVER CELEBRATES THE NEW YEAR

FROM: NASA

From Mars Curiosity to Times Square - Happy New Year
New Year's Eve revelers watching giant screens in New York's Times Square saw a special Happy New Year greeting from Mars, currently 206 million miles away.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA VIDEO: WHAT'S UP FOR JANUARY 2013

What's Up for January 2013
Spy Saturn, Jupiter, Venus and Mars as they make appearances next to the moon this month, making them easy and fun to spot in the sky.  Credit:  NASA.

THE MARTIAN ATMOSPHERE, GONE WITH THE WIND

FROM: NASA

Billions of years ago, Mars had a lot more air than it does today. (Note: Martian "air" is primarily carbon dioxide, not the nitrogen-oxygen mix we breathe on Earth.) Ancient martian lake-beds and river channels tell the tale of a planet covered by abundant water and wrapped in an atmosphere thick enough to prevent that water from evaporating into space. Some researchers believe the atmosphere of Mars was once as thick as Earth's. Today, however, all those lakes and rivers are dry and the atmospheric pressure on Mars is only 1% that of Earth at sea-level. A cup of water placed almost anywhere on the Martian surface would quickly and violently boil away—a result of the super-low air pressure.

 

Mars Atmosphere Loss

This video illustration shows how Mars may have lost its atmosphere to the solar wind after the Red Planet's magnetic field died.

 

THE MAGNETIC FIELDS OF EARTH AND MARS

FROM: NASA

Comparing Magnetic Fields on Earth and Mars
This animation compares the magnetic fields on Earth and Mars. The Earth has a large-scale planetary magnetic field that can protect it from space weather and other hazards. Mars, on the other hand, only has small pockets of magnetic fields scattered around the planet.

A PLANETARY GEODYNAMICS SCIENTIST

FROM: NASA

Planetary Scientist Profile: Lynn Carter
The dry, ancient surfaces of the moon, Venus, and Mars look nothing like the dynamic planet we live on, but the same forces that shape our world have also driven the evolution of our closest neighbors. As part of NASA’s Planetary Geodynamics Laboratory, scientist Lynn Carter discusses her passion for volcanoes, impact cratering, and tectonic activity throughout the solar system.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

NASA VIDEO: WIND AND RADIATION ON MARS

FROM: NASA　

Wind and Radiation on Mars
Curiosity monitors radiation and spots elusive whirlwinds on Mars.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

ROBOT TEST OF THE INTERPLANETARY INTERNET

Photo:  International Space Station.  Credit:  NASA

FROM: NASA

NASA, ESA Use Experimental Interplanetary Internet to Test Robot From International Space Station

WASHINGTON -- NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) successfully have used an experimental version of interplanetary Internet to control an educational rover from the International Space Station. The experiment used NASA's Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) protocol to transmit messages and demonstrate technology that one day may enable Internet-like communications with space vehicles and support habitats or infrastructure on another planet.

Space station Expedition 33 commander Sunita Williams in late October used a NASA-developed laptop to remotely drive a small LEGO robot at the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany. The European-led experiment used NASA's DTN to simulate a scenario in which an astronaut in a vehicle orbiting a planetary body controls a robotic rover on the planet's surface.

"The demonstration showed the feasibility of using a new communications infrastructure to send commands to a surface robot from an orbiting spacecraft and receive images and data back from the robot," said Badri Younes, deputy associate administrator for space communications and navigation at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The experimental DTN we've tested from the space station may one day be used by humans on a spacecraft in orbit around Mars to operate robots on the surface, or from Earth using orbiting satellites as relay stations."

The DTN architecture is a new communications technology that enables standardized communications similar to the Internet to function over long distances and through time delays associated with on-orbit or deep space spacecraft or robotic systems. The core of the DTN suite is the Bundle Protocol (BP), which is roughly equivalent to the Internet Protocol (IP) that serves as the core of the Internet on Earth. While IP assumes a continuous end-to-end data path exists between the user and a remote space system, DTN accounts for disconnections and errors. In DTN, data move through the network "hop-by-hop." While waiting for the next link to become connected, bundles are temporarily stored and then forwarded to the next node when the link becomes available.

NASA's work on DTN is part of the agency's Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) Program. SCaN coordinates multiple space communications networks and network support functions to regulate, maintain and grow NASA's space communications and navigation capabilities in support of the agency's space missions.

The space station also serves as a platform for research focused on human health and exploration, technology testing for enabling future exploration, research in basic life and physical sciences and Earth and space science.

MARS IN A MINUTE

FROM: NASA
MARS IN A MINUTE

What would it feel like if you could stand on Mars – toasty warm, or downright chilly? Find out more about the temperature on Mars in this 60-second video from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

GULLIES ON MARS

FROM: NASA

Gullies in Southern Winter
Crisp details in a suite of mid-latitude gullies on a crater wall are captured in this Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera view obtained in southern winter on Oct. 12, 2006. During southern winter, shadows are more pronounced and the atmosphere is typically quite clear. These gullies, which may have formed in relatively recent Martian history by erosion caused by flowing, liquid water, are located in a crater on the east rim of Newton Crater near 40.4°S, 155.3°W. Sunlight illuminates the scene from the upper left. The picture covers an area about 3 km (1.9 miles) wide.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

THE ROVER LOOKS TOWARD IT'S DESTINY, MT. SHARP

 

 

FROM: NASA, MARS

Layers at the Base of Mount Sharp

A chapter of the layered geological history of Mars is laid bare in this postcard from NASA's Curiosity rover. The image shows the base of Mount Sharp, the rover's eventual science destination.

This image is a portion of a larger image taken by Curiosity's 100-millimeter Mast Camera on Aug. 23, 2012.

For scale, an annotated version of the figure highlights a dark rock that is approximately the same size as Curiosity. The pointy mound in the center of the image, looming above the rover-sized rock, is about 1,000 feet (300 meters) across and 300 feet (100 meters) high.

JPL manages the Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

THE INTERIOR OF MARS

FROM: NASA
Mars Interior
Artist rendition of the formation of rocky bodies in the solar system - how they form and differentiate and evolve into terrestrial planets.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

MARTIAN SAND DUNES

FROM:  NASA
Flowing Barchan Sand Dunes on Mars
Image Credit: HiRISE, MRO, LPL (U. Arizona), NASA
Explanation: When does Mars act like a liquid? Although liquids freeze and evaporate quickly into the thin atmosphere of Mars, persistent winds may make large sand dunes appear to flow and even drip like a liquid. Visible on the above image right are two flat top mesas in southern Mars when the season was changing from Spring to Summer. A light dome topped hill is also visible on the far left of the image. As winds blow from right to left, flowing sand on and around the hills leaves picturesque streaks. The dark arc-shaped droplets of fine sand are called barchans, and are the interplanetary cousins of similar Earth-based sand forms. Barchans can move intact a downwind and can even appear to pass through each other. When seasons change, winds on Mars can kick up dust and are monitored to see if they escalateinto another of Mars' famous planet-scale sand storms.

LATE AFTERNOON ON MARS

FROM:  NASA

NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity catches its own late-afternoon shadow in this dramatically lit view eastward across Endeavour Crater on Mars. The rover used the panoramic camera (Pancam) between about 4:30 and 5:00 p.m. local Mars time to record images taken through different filters and combined into this mosaic view. Most of the component images were recorded during the 2,888th Martian day, or sol, of Opportunity's work on Mars (March 9, 2012). At that time, Opportunity was spending low-solar-energy weeks of the Martian winter at the Greeley Haven outcrop on the Cape York segment of Endeavour's western rim. In order to give the mosaic a rectangular aspect, some small parts of the edges of the mosaic and sky were filled in with parts of an image acquired earlier as part of a 360-degree panorama from the same location. Opportunity has been studying the western rim of Endeavour Crater since arriving there in August 2011. This crater spans 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter, or about the same area as the city of Seattle. This is more than 20 times wider than Victoria Crater, the largest impact crater that Opportunity had previously examined. The interior basin of Endeavour is in the upper half of this view. The mosaic combines about a dozen images taken through Pancam filters centered on wavelengths of 753 nanometers (near infrared), 535 nanometers (green) and 432 nanometers (violet). The view is presented in false color to make some differences between materials easier to see, such as the dark sandy ripples and dunes on the crater's distant floor. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Univ.

Internet auf Mond, Mars und ISS

Internet auf Mond, Mars und ISS