Snow is the surprising forecast for Mars
Los Angeles Times
“The latest forecast on Mars calls for morning fog and swift-moving clouds — along with light snow.
“The surprising weather report was part of the latest scientific findings from NASA’s Phoenix lander, which has been taking measurements at the Martian north pole since May 25.
“At a press briefing Monday at NASA headquarters in Washington and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, scientists said the discovery of snow on Mars was made by an instrument that shined a laser into clouds about two miles above the ground, revealing the presence of ice crystals.”
NASA Mars Lander Sees Falling Snow, Soil Data Suggest Liquid Past
NASA MISSION UPDATE
29 September 2008
PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander has detected snow falling from Martian clouds. Spacecraft soil experiments also have provided evidence of past interaction between minerals and liquid water, processes that occur on Earth.
Continue reading ‘Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow….’
MARS PHOENIX MISSION UPDATE
The Phoenix Mars Lander’s Surface Stereo Imager took an image of the spacecraft’s crumpled heat shield this week.
The image was taken on Sept. 16, 2008, the 111th Martian day of the mission.
Continue reading ‘Phoenix Spots Heat Shield on Surface’
NASA MISSION UPDATE
This image, taken by NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander’s Surface Stereo Imager, documents the delivery of a soil sample from the “Snow White” trench to the Wet Chemistry Laboratory. A small pile of soil is visible on the lower edge of the second cell from the top.This deck-mounted lab is part of Phoenix’s Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA).
The delivery was made on Sept. 12, 2008, which was Sol 107 (the 107th Martian day) of the mission, which landed on May 25, 2008.
Continue reading ‘More Soil Delivered to Phoenix Lab’
NASA awards $485M Mars project delayed by conflict
The Associate Press
“The price of the probe increased by $10 million, its launch was postponed by two years, and the science-gathering mission will be cut in half to one year, an official said. NASA chose the University of Colorado’s [MAVEN] proposal to study the Martian atmosphere from 20 other ideas to study Mars that were trimmed to just two before a conflict of interest was declared.
“NASA has not disclosed what the conflict of interest was or who it involved, other than to say last year that it was not created by NASA but by one of the two groups. The space agency said last December that a ’serious’ conflict of interest in one of two proposals forced it to disband the board formed to pick the winner, and create a new panel to award the contract.”
NASA MISSION UPDATE
Clouds scoot across the Martian sky in a movie clip consisting of 10 frames taken by the Surface Stereo Imager on NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander.
This clip accelerates the motion. The camera took these 10 frames over a 10-minute period from 2:52 p.m. to 3:02 p.m. local solar time at the Phoenix site during Sol 94 (Aug. 29), the 94th Martian day since landing.
Particles of water-ice make up these clouds, like ice-crystal cirrus clouds on Earth. Ice hazes have been common at the Phoenix site in recent days.
The camera took these images as part of a campaign by the Phoenix team to see clouds and track winds. The view is toward slightly west of due south, so the clouds are moving westward or west-northwestward.
The clouds are a dramatic visualization of the Martian water cycle. The water vapor comes off the north pole during the peak of summer. The northern-Mars summer has just passed its peak water-vapor abundance at the Phoenix site. The atmospheric water is available to form into clouds, fog and frost, such as the lander has been observing recently.
Phoenix inserted the four needles of its thermal and conductivity probe into Martian soil during the 98th Martian day, or sol, of the mission and left it in place until Sol 99 (Sept. 4, 2008).
NASA MISSION UPDATE
A fork-like conductivity probe has sensed humidity rising and falling beside NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander, but when stuck into the ground, its measurements so far indicate soil that is thoroughly and perplexingly dry.
“If you have water vapor in the air, every surface exposed to that air will have water molecules adhere to it that are somewhat mobile, even at temperatures well below freezing,” said Aaron Zent of NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., lead scientist for Phoenix’s thermal and electroconductivity probe.
Continue reading ‘Phoenix Finds Mars Not Unlike Humid East Coast - Only A Lot Drier’
MARS PHOENIX MISSION UPDATE
25 August 2008
The next sample of Martian soil being grabbed for analysis is coming from a trench about three times deeper than any other trench NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander has dug.
On Tuesday, Aug. 26, the spacecraft will finish the 90 Martian days (or “sols”) originally planned as its primary mission and will continue into a mission extension through September, as announced by NASA in July. Phoenix landed on May 25.
“As we near what we originally expected to be the full length of the mission, we are all thrilled with how well the mission is going,” said Phoenix Project Manger Barry Goldstein of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Continue reading ‘Phoenix Digs Deeper As Third Month Nears End’
MARS PHOENIX UPDATE
14 August 2008
NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander has taken the first-ever image of a single particle of Mars’ ubiquitous dust, using its atomic force microscope.
The particle — shown at higher magnification than anything ever seen from another world — is a rounded particle about one micrometer, or one millionth of a meter, across. It is a speck of the dust that cloaks Mars. Such dust particles color the Martian sky pink, feed storms that regularly envelop the planet and produce Mars’ distinctive red soil.
“This is the first picture of a clay-sized particle on Mars, and the size agrees with predictions from the colors seen in sunsets on the Red Planet,” said Phoenix co-investigator Urs Staufer of the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland, who leads a Swiss consortium that made the microscope.
“Taking this image required the highest resolution microscope operated off Earth and a specially designed substrate to hold the Martian dust,” said Tom Pike, Phoenix science team member from Imperial College London. “We always knew it was going to be technically very challenging to image particles this small.”
Continue reading ‘Phoenix Microscope Takes First Image of Martian Dust Particle’
CASSINI MISSION UPDATE
14 August 2008
In a feat of interplanetary sharpshooting, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has pinpointed precisely where the icy jets erupt from the surface of Saturn’s geologically active moon Enceladus.
New carefully targeted pictures reveal exquisite details in the prominent south polar “tiger stripe” fractures from which the jets emanate. The images show the fractures are about 300 meters (980 feet) deep, with V-shaped inner walls. The outer flanks of some of the fractures show extensive deposits of fine material. Finely fractured terrain littered with blocks of ice tens of meters in size and larger (the size of small houses) surround the fractures.
“This is the mother lode for us,” said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. “A place that may ultimately reveal just exactly what kind of environment — habitable or not — we have within this tortured little moon.”
Continue reading ‘Cassini Pinpoints Source of Jets on Saturn’s Moon Enceladus’
NASA MISSION UPDATE
5 August 2008
Phoenix Mars mission scientists spoke today on research in progress concerning an ongoing investigation of perchlorate salts detected in soil analyzed by the wet chemistry laboratory aboard NASA’s Phoenix Lander.
“Finding perchlorates is neither good nor bad for life, but it does make us reassess how we think about life on Mars,” said Michael Hecht of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., lead scientist for the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA), the instrument that includes the wet chemistry laboratory.
If confirmed, the result is exciting, Hecht said, “because different types of perchlorate salts have interesting properties that may bear on the way things work on Mars if — and that’s a big ‘if ‘ — the results from our two teaspoons of soil are representative of all of Mars, or at least a significant portion of the planet.”
Continue reading ‘Phoenix Lander Finds Perchlorates in Soil’
