1 2 3 4 5 6 | Deel 2: http://forum.fok.nl/topic/457865 Deel 3: http://forum.fok.nl/topic/473850 Deel 4: http://forum.fok.nl/topic/491165 Deel 5: http://forum.fok.nl/topic/659004 Deel 6: http://forum.fok.nl/topic/1146648 |
quote:NASA Spacecraft Fine Tunes Course for Mars Landing 04.10.08
This artist's concept shows NASA's Phoenix spacecraft en route to Mars. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Calech/University of Arizona PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA engineers have adjusted the flight path of the Phoenix Mars Lander, setting the spacecraft on course for its May 25 landing on the Red Planet.
"This is our first trajectory maneuver targeting a specific location in the northern polar region of Mars," said Brian Portock, chief of the Phoenix navigation team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The mission's two prior trajectory maneuvers, made last August and October, adjusted the flight path of Phoenix to intersect with Mars.
NASA has conditionally approved a landing site in a broad, flat valley informally called "Green Valley." A final decision will be made after NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter takes additional images of the area this month.
The orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera has taken more than three dozen images of the area. Analysis of those images prompted the Phoenix team to shift the center of the landing target 13 kilometers (8 miles) southeastward, away from slightly rockier patches to the northwest. Navigators used that new center for planning today's maneuver.
The landing area is an ellipse about 62 miles by about 12 miles (100 kilometers by 20 kilometers). Researchers have mapped more than five million rocks in and around that ellipse, each big enough to end the mission if hit by the spacecraft during landing. Knowing where to avoid the rockier areas, the team has selected a scientifically exciting target that also offers the best chances for the spacecraft to set itself down safely onto the Martian surface.
"Our landing area has the largest concentration of ice on Mars outside of the polar caps. If you want to search for a habitable zone in the arctic permafrost, then this is the place to go," said Peter Smith, principal investigator for the mission, at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
Phoenix will dig to an ice-rich layer expected to lie within arm's reach of the surface. It will analyze the water and soil for evidence about climate cycles and investigate whether the environment there has been favorable for microbial life.
"We have never before had so much information about a Mars site prior to landing," said Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis. Arvidson is chairman of the Phoenix landing-site working group and has worked on Mars landings since the first successful Viking landers in 1976.
"The environmental risks at landing -- rocks and slopes -- represent the most significant threat to a successful mission. There's always a chance that we'll roll snake eyes, but we have identified an area that is very flat and relatively free of large boulders," said JPL's David Spencer, Phoenix deputy project manager and co-chair of the landing site working group.
Today's trajectory adjustment began by pivoting Phoenix 145 degrees to orient and then fire spacecraft thrusters for about 35 seconds, then pivoting Phoenix back to point its main antenna toward Earth. The mission has three more planned opportunities for maneuvers before May 25 to further refine the trajectory for a safe landing at the desired location.
In the final seven minutes of its flight on May 25, Phoenix must perform a challenging series of actions to safely decelerate from nearly 21,000 kilometers per hour (13,000 mph). The spacecraft will release a parachute and then use pulse thrusters at approximately 914 meters (3,000 feet) from the surface to slow to about 8 kilometers per hour (5 mph) and land on three legs.
"Landing on Mars is extremely challenging. In fact, not since the 1970s have we had a successful powered landing on this unforgiving planet. There's no guarantee of success, but we are doing everything we can to mitigate the risks," said Doug McCuistion, director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
For more information about Phoenix, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix and http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu .
The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions are provided by the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; the Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute.
Gaat op en neer met dat nieuws over dat wel of geen leven, wel of geen vloeibaar water en wel of geen ijsquote:Is planeet Mars levendiger dan men denkt?
Een onderzoek dat is uitgevoerd door wetenschappers van de Universiteit van Providence heeft uitgewezen dat het klimaat op onze buurplaneet Mars levendiger is dan men aanvankelijk veronderstelde. Er is namelijk bewijs gevonden voor de recente aanwezigheid van dikke, beweeglijke gletsjers op het oppervlak van de rode planeet. De ontdekking vergroot de kans op het vroegere bestaan van leven op diens oppervlak, omdat het vloeibare water een daarvoor een veilige haven kan zijn.
Enkele miljarden jaren geleden zag het onverstoorde oppervlak van Mars er veel anders uit dan nu het geval is. Maar deze rust werd ruw verstoord door een meteorietinslag, welke ervoor zorgde dat het Martiaanse oppervlak droog kwam te liggen. Men vermoedt dat er vanaf dat moment weinig is gebeurd op onze buurplaneet, al lijken nieuwe beelden die gemaakt zijn van de rode planeet te laten zien dat Mars veel levendiger is dan gedacht. Op de opnamen zijn namelijk structuren zichtbaar die erop duiden dat er recentelijk gletsjers te vinden waren rond de evenaar, welke een dikte hadden van één tot drie kilometer.
Nu bevinden deze ijslagen zich daar niet meer, maar de kans is groot dat de gletsjers daar honderd tot tien miljoen jaar geleden wel te vinden waren. Dat is geologisch gezien gisteren. Met het bewijs voor deze activiteit op zak kan men zeggen dat het klimaat op Mars vaak veranderd, iets dat zomaar opnieuw kan gebeuren. De onderzoekers toonden dit aan met behulp van foto's die zijn genomen door NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, welke een laaggelegen ravijn in kaart heeft kunnen brengen dat in het bezit is van stenen die laten zien waar de rand van één van de vroegere gletsjers zich bevond. (Science Daily)
Nou, de phoenix kan het allemaal lekker uitzoeken!quote:Op zaterdag 26 april 2008 13:30 schreef Frutsel het volgende:
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Gaat op en neer met dat nieuws over dat wel of geen leven, wel of geen vloeibaar water en wel of geen ijs
http://archive.salon.com/people/feature/2000/08/17/lovelock/quote:He first conceived the Gaia hypothesis while working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., in the mid-1960s, where he was designing life detection instruments for NASA's Mars Viking probes.
How, Lovelock asked himself, if he were on Mars, could he tell there was life on Earth? By the Earth's atmosphere, which defies all natural expectations. Free oxygen accounts for 20 percent of the atmosphere, when the laws of chemistry say that this highly reactive gas should combine and settle down. How fortunate for life, most of which depends on oxygen for survival.
Lovelock concluded that life -- microbes, plants and animals constantly metabolizing matter into energy, converting sunlight into nutrients, emitting and absorbing gas -- is what causes the Earth's atmosphere to be so, well, lively. By contrast, the Martian atmosphere is essentially dead, settled into a low-energy equilibrium with little or no chemical reactions. So he recommended that NASA save its money and scrub the Viking mission. Carl Sagan, his officemate, did not agree but Sagan's then wife, microbiologist Lynn Margulis, took Gaia to heart.
quote:NASA's Mars-bound Phoenix spacecraft is gearing up for a landmark landing near the martian north pole this month to find out whether the region could have once supported microbial life.
Phoenix is on course for a planned May 25 touchdown in the martian arctic that, if successful, will mark the first powered landing on Mars since NASA's hefty Viking 2 lander set down in 1976. But first, the probe is expected to fire its thrusters several times in the next few weeks to fine-tune its flight path.
"It's scary how smooth it's been," said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "The vehicle has just been behaving beautifully."
The Phoenix lander tweaked its course in early April and is scheduled to fire its thrusters in three successive Saturday maneuvers beginning May 10. The spacecraft has flown so accurately that one of the maneuvers may not be necessary, Goldstein said.
Launched in August 2007, Phoenix is a stationary lander equipped with a trench-digging robotic arm to bite into the martian surface and scoop up samples of nearby soil and water ice. The probe's top-mounted suite of ovens and wet chemistry instruments are designed to help determine whether its arctic plain landing site - a region similar in latitude to central Greenland or northern Alaska on Earth - could have once proven habitable for primitive life.
"We're looking for all the ingredients for life," Phoenix deputy principle investigator Deborah Bass of JPL told SPACE.com.
Phoenix also includes a martian atmosphere-monitoring station designed to provide daily weather updates during the probe's planned three-month mission. Engineers at JPL will oversee the spacecraft's initial Mars descent and landing before transferring operations to a control center at the University of Arizona, Tucson, for the remainder of the $420 million mission.
"This is an area of Mars that I have spent my career studying and I cannot wait to see those first images," Bass said. "To see that ice, what that frozen tundra is going to look like...whatever we see will be amazing because no one's seen it before."
Unlike the most recent probes to land on Mars - NASA's twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity and the lost British lander Beagle 2 - Phoenix will not use airbags to cushion its arrival on the martian surface. Instead, it carries a set of rocket thrusters control its final descent, though its approach will mark the first powered landing attempt since NASA's Mars Polar Lander crashed near the planet's south pole in December 1999.
"I have always trumpeted the fact that we should be very guarded and very humble in our approach with what we're trying to do, because it is so difficult," Goldstein said, adding that engineers have identified and addressed as many of the risks as possible.
Phoenix's science team, led by principle investigator Peter Smith at the University of Arizona, Tucson, has been eagerly preparing for the lander's Mars arrival with a series of training simulations for landing day and mission operations. The most recent simulation, a dress rehearsal for Phoenix's entry and descent through the martian atmosphere, was scheduled for Tuesday.
"At this point, we feel we're in good shape and we want to do it. We're ready," Bass said. "This team is itching to get its hands on this stuff...it's show time."
*In de agenda zetquote:Op vrijdag 18 april 2008 18:33 schreef Quyxz_ het volgende:
Phoenix Lands on Mars in:
37 Days, 07 Hours and 03 Minuts on the 25th of may
Phoenix gaat samples uitgebreid onderzoeken. Hij gaat voornamelijk op zoek naar water of naar voormalig water, maar als er in zo een sample een microscopisch organisme zit, zal die natuurlijk ook wel worden ontdekt.quote:Op woensdag 7 mei 2008 08:10 schreef bigore het volgende:
gaat deze phoenix nou op zoek naar leven op mars?Microscopisch leven that is
Als ze er een budget voor hebben/krijgen....quote:Op woensdag 7 mei 2008 08:26 schreef NorthernStar het volgende:
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*In de agenda zet
Zonder het politiek te willen maken, als al het geld wat besteed is aan de oorlog in Irak nu eens in ruimtevaart was gestoken...
Anyhoe, onvoorstelbaar dat Spirit en Opportunity nog steeds, zij het met enkele kleine gebreken, functioneren. Petje af voor degene die dingen in elkaar hebben gezet.
Volgende stap zou een UAV moeten zijn imo.
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Het Landings gebied wordt netjes schoongemaaktquote:Op maandag 12 mei 2008 00:42 schreef ExperimentalFrentalMental het volgende:
Enorme stofhozen gezien op landingslocatie Phoenix
11-05-2008
[ afbeelding ]
Beide stofhozen bevinden zich daarnaast exact op de geplande landingslocatie van de Phoenix Mars Lander, die op 25 mei zal landen in een ovaalvormig gebied dat Green Valley genoemd wordt....
Het ligt iig wel in de planning. De Phoenix lander is de eerste van een nieuwe lichting "Scout missions".quote:Op woensdag 7 mei 2008 23:12 schreef -CRASH- het volgende:
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Als ze er een budget voor hebben/krijgen....
Het vergt helaas wel nogal wat geduld.quote:NASA remains committed to creating additional "Scout" missions, such as the Phoenix lander, which would be selected from proposals submitted by members of the science community. Such missions might involve airborne vehicles, such as airplanes or balloons, or small landers that serve as investigation platforms. This approach could open up exciting new vistas by increasing the number of martian sites visited.
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/future/futureMissions.htmlquote:The next Mars Scout is planned for launch in 2013.
voor een animatie hoe de missie van Phoenix op Mars gaat verlopen: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7408033.stmquote:Phoenix diary: Mission to Mars
On 25 May (GMT) Nasa's Phoenix lander will begin its descent to the northern plains of Mars. The robotic lab is due to investigate the region's climate and geology as well as determine whether it could support life.
Dr Tom Pike, from Imperial College London, is one of the scientists working on the mission. He will be writing a diary for the BBC News website in the run-up to the landing.
is dat live te volgen?quote:Op donderdag 22 mei 2008 12:56 schreef Quyxz_ het volgende:
Hij landt van de nacht van zondag op maandag om 1.38 's nachts.
Echt balen dat het zo laat is, want ik heb de volgende dag examen.
Dit staat bij schedule van NASA TVquote:Op donderdag 22 mei 2008 12:59 schreef Schunckelstar het volgende:
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is dat live te volgen?
op nasatv bijvoorbeeld?
En dan moet je zelf maar bekijken wat het precies isquote:May 25, Sunday
3 p.m. - Mars Phoenix Lander Briefing - JPL (Public and Media Channels)
6 p.m. - Mars Phoenix Lander Landing Coverage - JPL (Media Channel)
6:30 - 8:45 p.m. - Mars Phoenix Lander Landing Coverage - JPL (Public Channel)
9:30 p.m. - Mars Phoenix Lander Briefing - First Downlink of Data - JPL (Public and Media Channels)
May 26, Monday
6 - 10 a.m. - Mars Phoenix Lander Live Satellite Interviews - JPL (Media Channel)
12 a.m. - Mars Phoenix Lander Post Landing Briefing - JPL (Public and Media Channels)
2 p.m. - Mars Phoenix Lander Update Briefing - JPL (Public and Media Channels)
Plus 6 uur > Dat is 01:53 vannacht onze tijd.quote:NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander will reach Mars this evening with no further adjustments to its flight path. The first possible time for confirmation that Phoenix has landed will be at 7:53 p.m. Eastern Time today.
Ja ik zit ook te kijken... wel raar, bijna live vanaf een andere planeetquote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 00:18 schreef star_gazer het volgende:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
Live coverage van de landing
Die film is echt zo leukquote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 00:58 schreef LordNemephis het volgende:
eerst nog een uurtje animaties en uitleg-voor-dummies dus tijd voor reclame:
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Ja vanaf een paar uur terug is het allemaal automatisch. Toen werd er nog even gekeken of er een koerscorrectie nodig was maar dat hoefde niet.quote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 01:28 schreef RemcoW85 het volgende:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main/
Moeten ze al die dingen op afstand doen of gebeurd dit allemaal automatisch? Ben hier nieuw in dusja, vandaar de vraag.
*remembers polar lander en beagle 2* Ik hoop met je meequote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 01:45 schreef -Beer- het volgende:
Hopen dat het geen enorme anti climax wordt
al dan niet in duizend stukjes is ie er alquote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 01:47 schreef -Beer- het volgende:
Is dit nu live of is de lander eigenlijk al op mars nu?
okquote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 01:48 schreef LordNemephis het volgende:
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al dan niet in duizend stukjes is ie er al
mooi is dat die delay. maakt elke missie des te zenuwslopenderquote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 01:48 schreef star_gazer het volgende:
Hij is er al
32kquote:
En ze moeten een keertje extra denk ikquote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 01:52 schreef LordNemephis het volgende:
Nu houdt iedereen bij NASA die naar de WC moet het op
te vroegquote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 01:54 schreef RemcoW85 het volgende:
Gelukt..
Idd.quote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 01:54 schreef RemcoW85 het volgende:
Dat aftellen was wel ziek..
kunnen we niet ergens live met de stream vanaf Phoenix meekijken? Hij is nu officieel goed gelandquote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 01:55 schreef RemcoW85 het volgende:
En nu wachten op fotos .
Als je een stevige antenne hebt, ja hoor Moet Mars wel 'in beeld' zijn.quote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 01:56 schreef LordNemephis het volgende:
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kunnen we niet ergens live met de stream vanaf Phoenix meekijken? Hij is nu officieel goed geland
de eerste beelden: zie je hoe die heel langzaam omvaltquote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 01:57 schreef -skippybal- het volgende:
En nu? Gewoon aan z'n lot overlaten? Iedereen loopt weg van z'n plaats
Check de posts boven jequote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 01:59 schreef Basson het volgende:
volgens NASA tv is hij net succesvol geland!!
Ja, een live stream als dat ding met 8 kbs upload!quote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 01:56 schreef LordNemephis het volgende:
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kunnen we niet ergens live met de stream vanaf Phoenix meekijken? Hij is nu officieel goed geland
Ja hij was bijna perfect recht bij de landing. Maar een kwart graad scheef.quote:
Inderdaad. Who cares about coole Mars-foto's? Juichende en bellende geeks willen we zien!quote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 02:01 schreef -Beer- het volgende:
Goed, nu kan dit topic weer onder het stof verdwijnen.
Nou je hoeft niet te schelden. Mopperkont.quote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 02:02 schreef Dutch_Nelson het volgende:
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Ja, een live stream als dat ding met 8 kbs upload!
Sukkel
whehe.quote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 02:02 schreef -skippybal- het volgende:
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Inderdaad. Who cares about coole Mars-foto's? Juichende en bellende geeks willen we zien!
Voornamelijk grondonderzoek.quote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 11:17 schreef Doffy het volgende:
Het wordt druk op Mars
Weet iemand wat voor apparatuur het ding aan boord heeft? Welke experimenten gaan er gedaan worden? In hoeverre sluit dit aan op de nogal vage resultaten van de Viking Lander in '76?
Hij zit op 1 plek. Hij kan weliswaar niet bewegen over het oppervlak van mars maar 'beweegt' zich wel door de geschiedenis van mars d.m.v. graven in de grond en dat vervolgens te analyseren.quote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 14:40 schreef bigore het volgende:
Kan phoenix trouwens ook rijden/lopen of in ieder geval voortbewegen, of is ie gevestigd op 1 plek?
Die staat permanent op 1 plek. Het restant aan brandstof laten ze bevriezen.quote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 14:40 schreef bigore het volgende:
Kan phoenix trouwens ook rijden/lopen of in ieder geval voortbewegen, of is ie gevestigd op 1 plek?
quote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 14:00 schreef kurk_droog het volgende:
Hulde! Nu afwachten wanneer en wat Phoenix gaat ontdekken.
Zijn er trouwens al concrete plannen voor het opwarmen van mars?
Ik heb wel een ideequote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 15:39 schreef ATuin-hek het volgende:
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Die staat permanent op 1 plek. Het restant aan brandstof laten ze bevriezen.
Die paar Kg schiet niet echt opquote:
Dat was veel duurder geweest en dan was er minder ruimte en energie voor het onderzoek zelf.quote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 17:28 schreef GasTurbine het volgende:
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Zijn dat blauwachtige steentjes? Lijkt me wel schitterend onderzoeksmateriaal voor mensen!
Maar wat ik dan niet snap: Waarom maken ze geen mobiel onderzoekscentrumpje, ipv zo'n ver-edelde keukentafel? Straks ligt er een karkas van een ongeïndentificeerd beest op 2 meter en 40 cm. Kan mooi dat grijpding niet bij!
Haha.quote:
Dat is de volgende missie. De Mars Science Laboratory. Als alles meezit rijdt die over iets meer dan 2 jaar op Mars.quote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 17:28 schreef GasTurbine het volgende:
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Zijn dat blauwachtige steentjes? Lijkt me wel schitterend onderzoeksmateriaal voor mensen!
Maar wat ik dan niet snap: Waarom maken ze geen mobiel onderzoekscentrumpje, ipv zo'n ver-edelde keukentafel? Straks ligt er een karkas van een ongeïndentificeerd beest op 2 meter en 40 cm. Kan mooi dat grijpding niet bij!
Veel groter dan die rovers van NASA is hij niet.quote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 18:46 schreef kurk_droog het volgende:
Is het trouwens niet interessant om die gigantische spleet te onderzoeken? Miscchien heeft Spirit nog wat energie over om erheen te rijden.
Lijkt mij prachtig als ze het op warmte brengen waardoor een proces in gang gezet kan worden waardoor er uiteindelijk weer planten kunnen groeien en water kan stromen.....
Die Exomars wordt de hummer van mars
Ik had het nog precies goed ook, qua naamquote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 18:36 schreef NorthernStar het volgende:
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Dat is de volgende missie. De Mars Science Laboratory. Als alles meezit rijdt die over iets meer dan 2 jaar op Mars.
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Voor wat de Phoenix gaat onderzoeken is mobiliteit niet nodig. Als er organische stoffen in de grond of het ijs zitten dan zitten ze overal.
Bovendien staat dit ding op de pool. Als het daar winter wordt is er geen zonlicht meer, kan het niet meer opladen en bevriest Phoenix. Een rover wil je niet op de polen hebben waar ie binnen een paar maanden op zeker "dood" is. Phoenix heeft zonder te rijden al nauwelijks genoeg tijd om alle experimenten uit te voeren die op het program staan.
**die foto's ziijn niet kleurecht
Ik denk dat hij de MSL bedoelt.quote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 20:18 schreef -Beer- het volgende:
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Veel groter dan die rovers van NASA is hij niet.
2013 pasquote:
Ik heb net dus 50 minuten pers conferentie gekeken dus ik weet alles.quote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 20:52 schreef kurk_droog het volgende:
Qua grootte misschien niet. Maar het ontwerp ziet er gewoon ontzettend stoer uit van die Exomars. Nu betwijfel ik het of hij er ook echt zo uit komt te zien...
Wanneer worden de eerste resultaten van de Phoenix verwacht?
SPOILEROm spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.'houd je bek is joh, als je zulke grote kk praatjes heb moet je is naar Tiel komen.'
„Je bent ’n keronje! Je mag zelf ’n zoogdier wezen, jy en je zoon, dat zeg ik je!”
Way cool!quote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 21:34 schreef Quyxz_ het volgende:
Deze image vind ik het mooist.
[ afbeelding ]
Gemaakt met de MRO, dat is een satelliet die rondom mars draait.
De foto is gemaakt tijdens de landing van Phoenix. Je ziet de parachute met daaronder Phoenix.
Echt cool!
wowquote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 21:34 schreef Quyxz_ het volgende:
Deze image vind ik het mooist.
[ afbeelding ]
Gemaakt met de MRO, dat is een satelliet die rondom mars draait.
De foto is gemaakt tijdens de landing van Phoenix. Je ziet de parachute met daaronder Phoenix.
Echt cool!
Aardige foto nog. Zo groot is ie niet, of wel?quote:Op dinsdag 27 mei 2008 20:43 schreef Hendrik_ het volgende:
[ afbeelding ]
Phoenix Spotted from Above
05.27.08 -- The butterfly-like object in this picture is NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, as seen from above by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
De MRO die signalen vanaf Phoenix ontvangt en naar de aarde stuurt en andersom had problemen met de radio waarmee hij communiceert met Phoenix.quote:Op dinsdag 27 mei 2008 20:51 schreef kurk_droog het volgende:
Hoorde de helft niet maar wat voor problemen zijn er nou precies?
Ze nemen het zekere voor het onzekere hè. Eerst kijken of alles goed gaat.quote:Op woensdag 28 mei 2008 22:14 schreef kurk_droog het volgende:
uitklappen en laten graven. Zo moeilijk en langzaam hoeft dat toch niet te gaan?
Zit hier met tranen in mijn ogenquote:
Het gebrek aan water op Mars heeft niets met temperatuur te maken. De druk is te laagquote:Op maandag 26 mei 2008 18:46 schreef kurk_droog het volgende:
Is het trouwens niet interessant om die gigantische spleet te onderzoeken? Miscchien heeft Spirit nog wat energie over om erheen te rijden.
Lijkt mij prachtig als ze het op warmte brengen waardoor een proces in gang gezet kan worden waardoor er uiteindelijk weer planten kunnen groeien en water kan stromen.....
Die Exomars wordt de hummer van mars
whehehequote:
Het stuk ijs heet Holy Cow. Er is nog een stuk IJs gevonden met de naam Snow Queen.quote:Op zondag 1 juni 2008 00:05 schreef Quyxz_ het volgende:
Dat witte is dus misschien ijz, maar daar zijn ze niet helemaal zeker van
http://www.astroversum.nl/nieuws/nieuws.html?subaction=showfull&id=1212218199&archive=1212271223&start_from=&ucat=112"e:Update 23.35 uur:
Nader onderzoek heeft uitgewezen dat het inderdaad om ijs gaat. Het stuk ijs heeft van wetenschappers de naam 'Holy Cow' gekregen. Phoenix is bovendien gestuit op nog meer ijs dat tevoorschijn is gekomen tijdens diens landing, en dit stuk wordt 'Snow Queen' genoemd. De lander zal in de komende dagen meer gegevens verzamelen, zo meldt Emily Lakdawalla van Planetary.org.
© Astroversum
Die overigens erg summier is met info. Of ik zit verkeerd te kijken ofzo.quote:Op zondag 1 juni 2008 10:47 schreef Quyxz_ het volgende:
Joa, maar ik houd nasa.gov als bron voor deze missie
quote:Op dinsdag 3 juni 2008 21:25 schreef GasTurbine het volgende:
http://www.nu.nl/news/1594429/122/Leven_op_Mars.html
Leven op Mars
Ik trapte er ook inquote:
Dit is het apparaatquote:Op zondag 8 juni 2008 23:57 schreef kurk_droog het volgende:
hoe moet ik dat plaatje nu zien? Want dat zand wat er nu ligt verdwijnt niet zomaar?
quote:Opportunity finally escaped the Martian sand and backed up onto solid rock inside "Victoria Crater." Driving backward on Martian day, or sol, 1557 (June 10, 2008), the rover successfully moved the last of its six wheels up over a rocky ledge.
The successful maneuver freed Opportunity to follow another route that will bring the rover closer to the cliff known as "Cape Verde." From there, the rover will collect high-resolution, panoramic images of rock layers in the promontory.
Also this week, the rover engineering team had the honor of hosting Houston-area Congressman and Mars exploration enthusiast John Culberson.
The congressman participated in the planning of sols 1557 and 1558 (June 10-11, 2008). Culberson even helped design a science observation of the cobble informally named "Barnes" in honor of Virgil E. Barnes, former emeritus professor of geological sciences at The University of Texas at Austin.
Sol-by-sol summary:
In addition to receiving morning instructions directly from Earth via the rover's high-gain antenna and measuring atmospheric dust with the panoramic camera, Opportunity completed the following activities:
Sol 1551 (June 4, 2008): Opportunity acquired a 5-by-1 mosaic of images for a shadow test to determine how well imaging of Cape Verde can proceed in shadowed conditions.
Sol 1552: In the morning, Opportunity took spot images of the sky for calibration purposes and surveyed the horizon with the panoramic camera. After driving backward, the rover took images of cleat marks made with its wheels using the hazard-avoidance cameras.
Opportunity took post-drive images of the rover mast and a 3-by-1 mosaic of images with the navigation camera. After relaying data to the Odyssey orbiter for transmission to Earth, Opportunity measured argon gas in the Martian atmosphere with the alpha-particle X-ray spectrometer.
Sol 1553: Opportunity completed a morning survey of the horizon and took spot images of the sky with the panoramic camera. The rover acquired a 5-by-1 mosaic of images for the shadow test and surveyed the sky at high Sun with the panoramic camera.
Sol 1554: In the morning, Opportunity acquired a six-frame, time-lapse movie of potential clouds passing overhead with the navigation camera.
The rover acquired another 5-by-1 mosaic of shadow-test images with the panoramic camera. Opportunity then acquired full-color images, using all 13 filters of the panoramic camera, of a cobble dubbed "Agassiz."
The rover completed a sky survey at high Sun with the panoramic camera and, after sending data to Odyssey, measured atmospheric argon with the alpha-particle X-ray spectrometer.
Sol 1555: Opportunity surveyed the horizon and took spot images of the sky with the panoramic camera. The rover acquired a six-frame, time-lapse movie in search of clouds with the navigation camera. After communicating with Odyssey, Opportunity measured atmospheric argon with the alpha-particle X-ray spectrometer.
Sol 1556: In the morning, Opportunity took thumbnail images of the sky with the panoramic camera. After communicating with Odyssey, the rover measured atmospheric argon with the alpha-particle X-ray spectrometer.
Sol 1557 (June 10, 2008): In the morning, Opportunity acquired a six-frame, time-lapse movie in search of clouds with the navigation camera and surveyed surrounding rock clasts with the panoramic camera. The rover acquired full-color images, using all 13 filters of the panoramic camera, of Barnes.
Opportunity then drove backward and acquired post-drive images of surrounding terrain and of the rover mast with the navigation camera as well as images of cleat imprints made by the rover's wheels with the hazard-avoidance cameras. After sending data to Odyssey, Opportunity measured atmospheric argon.
Plans for the following morning called for the rover to monitor dust on the rover mast and take another six-frame movie of potential clouds passing overhead.
Odometry: As of sol 1557 (June 10, 2008), Opportunity's total odometry was 11,691.84 meters (7.26 miles).
McDonaldsquote:Op vrijdag 20 juni 2008 16:06 schreef Dutch_Nelson het volgende:
En nu?
Opname(s) van 4 dagen geleden...quote:
quote:
A new analysis of Martian soil data led by University of California, Berkeley, geoscientists suggests that there was once enough water in the planet's atmosphere for a light drizzle or dew to hit the ground, leaving tell-tale signs of its interaction with the planet's surface.
The study's conclusion breaks from the more dominant view that the liquid water that once existed during the red planet's infancy came mainly in the form of upwelling groundwater rather than rain.
To come up with their conclusions, the UC Berkeley-led researchers used published measurements of soil from Mars that were taken by various NASA missions: Viking 1, Viking 2, Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity. These five missions provided information on soil from widely distant sites surveyed between 1976 and 2006.
"By analyzing the chemistry of the planet's soil, we can derive important information about Mars' climate history," said Ronald Amundson, UC Berkeley professor of ecosystem sciences and the study's lead author.
"The dominant view, put forward by many now working on the Mars missions, is that the chemistry of Mars soils is a mix of dust and rock that has accumulated over the eons, combined with impacts of upwelling groundwater, which is almost the exact opposite of any common process that forms soil on Earth.
In this paper, we try to steer the discussion back by re-evaluating the Mars data using geological and hydrological principles that exist on Earth."
The final version of the study will appear online in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, the journal of the International Geochemical Society, by the end of June, and in a print issue in August.
Martian soil has made headlines in recent weeks as NASA's Phoenix lander began sampling soil from the planet's north pole and analyzing its chemical elements. The goal of the tests is to determine whether Mars was once capable of supporting life, an idea that got a boost on Friday (June 20) when Phoenix scientists announced the discovery of ice underneath the Martian soil.
While the UC Berkeley-led study does not delve directly into evidence of life on Mars, it does suggest what kind of climate that life, if it existed, might have encountered.
The planet is currently too cold for water to exist in a liquid state, but scientists generally agree that during the planet's earliest geological period, known as the Noachian epoch and dating 4.6 billion to 3.5 billion years ago, there were enough atmospheric greenhouse gases to warm the air and support lakes and flowing rivers.
But unlike Earth, Mars does not have plate tectonics to help generate volcanoes and other terrestrial sources of greenhouse gases to sustain heat, explained Amundson.
He said that many scientists believe that by the time the planet moved from the Noachian epoch to the Hesperian epoch, dating from 3.5 billion to 1.8 billion years ago, water on Mars had either frozen or evaporated. (The planet is now in its third geological time period, the Amazonian epoch, which started about 1.8 billion years ago.)
The new study, however, suggests that liquid water existed in the Martian atmosphere into the Hesperian era.
To support this view, the team showed that soil at the Viking, Pathfinder and Spirit landing sites had lost significant fractions of the elements that make up the rock fragments from which the soil was formed, a sign that water once moved downward through the dirt, carrying the elements with it.
Amundson also pointed out that the soil records a long period of drying, as evidenced by surface patterns of the now sulfate-rich land. The distinctive accumulations of sulfate deposits are characteristic of soil in northern Chile's Atacama Desert, where rainfall averages approximately 1 millimeter per year, making it the driest region on Earth.
"The Atacama Desert and the dry valleys of Antarctica are where Earth meets Mars," said Amundson. "I would argue that Mars has more in common geochemically with these climate extremes on Earth than these sites have in common with the rest of our planet."
Amundson noted that sulfate is prevalent in Earth's oceans and atmosphere, and is incorporated in rainwater. However, it's so soluble that it typically washes away from the surface of the ground when it rains. The key for the distinctive accumulation in soil to appear is for there to be enough moisture to move it downward, but not so much that it is washed away entirely.
The researchers also noted that the distribution of the chemical elements in Martian soil, where sulfates accumulate on the surface with layers of chloride salt underneath, suggest atmospheric moisture.
"Sulfates tend to be less soluble in water than chlorides, so if water is moving up through evaporation, we would expect to find chlorides at the surface and sulfates below that," said Amundson.
"But when water is moving downward, there's a complete reversal of that where the chlorides move downward and sulfates stay closer to the surface. There have been weak but long-term atmospheric cycles that not only add dust and salt but periodic liquid water to the soil surface that move the salts downward."
Amundson pointed out that there is still debate among scientists about the degree to which atmospheric and geological conditions on Earth can be used as analogs for the environment on Mars. He said the new study suggests that Martian soil may be a "museum" that records chemical information about the history of water on the planet, and that our own planet holds the key to interpreting the record.
"It seems very logical that a dry, arid planet like Mars with the same bedrock geology as many places on Earth would have some of the same hydrological and geological processes operating that occur in our deserts here on Earth," said Amundson.
"Our study suggests that Mars isn't a planet where things have behaved radically different from Earth, and that we should look to regions like the Atacama Desert for further insight into Martian climate history."
quote:DEN HAAG - De ministeries van Economische Zaken en van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap trekken samen 8 miljoen euro uit voor de Nederlandse bijdrage aan de eerstvolgende ruimtemissie van de Europese ruimtevaartorganisatie ESA naar Mars.
Dat hebben drie Nederlandse organisaties op het gebied van ruimte- en planeetonderzoek maandag laten weten. De bijdrage heeft betrekking op de voorbereiding van drie wetenschappelijke ruimte-instrumenten voor de missie EXOMars, die in 2014 op de rode planeet moet landen.
Met de 8 miljoen kunnen de drie instrumenten in concept worden ontwikkeld tot het moment waarop ESA de ontwerpen beoordeelt. Vooralsnog kan één daarvan met het geld tot vluchtwaardig instrument worden gemaakt.
Boor
Het ruimtevaartuig bij de operatie ExoMars heeft een wagen aan boord met een flinke boor en instrumenten die biologisch en geologisch onderzoek gaan doen. De belangrijkste vraag is of er eens leven op Mars was en hoe het leven hier op aarde heeft kunnen ontstaan.
Nederlandse bedrijven en instituten ontwikkelen hoogwaardige technologie voor drie wetenschappelijke instrumenten voor ExoMars. Een daarvan, RamanLIBS, waarbij TNO betrokken is, moet de opgeboorde stenen van Mars analyseren op chemische samenstelling en mineralen. De bedrijven Dutch Space en Lionix ontwikkelen een zogeheten Life Marker Chip, een biochemisch laboratorium op een chip die biologische materialen uit de Mars-bodem kan herkennen en karakteriseren.
Het Nederlandse onderzoeksinstituut SRON werkt samen met twee bedrijven aan uiterst gevoelige elektronica om bevingen en inslagen van meteorieten op de rode planeet te meten.
quote:lot more Martian rocks were altered by water than scientists originally thought, suggesting that early Mars was a very wet place.
New observations made by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), currently circling the planet, have revealed evidence that vast regions of the southern highlands of Mars were altered by water in a variety of environments billions of years ago.
Water is a key condition for life as we know it. Though there is no firm evidence that Mars has ever harbored life, knowing that the planet was once wet suggests that it was at least habitable in the past.
The key to the finding is the discovery that rocks called phyllosilicates are widespread on at least the planet's southern hemisphere. The water present on Mars from about 4.6 billion to 3.8 billion years ago transformed some rocks into these phyllosilicates, which include clays rich in iron, magnesium or aluminum, mica, and kaolinite (an ingredient in Kaopectate).
"In a phyllosilicate, the atoms are stacked up into layers, and all of the phyllosilicates have some sort of water or hydroxyl [oxygen and hydrogen group] incorporated into the crystal structure," said study team member Scott Murchie of Johns Hopkins University.
Previous data from an instrument called OMEGA - Observatoire pour la Mineralogie, l'Eau, les Glaces et l'Activite on the Mars Express spacecraft had revealed only a few large outcrops of phyllosilicates, suggesting they were a relative rarity on Mars.
"It sort of gave the false impression that rocks that were altered like this were more restricted than they really are," Murchie said.
But the new observations, made with MRO's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) and detailed in the July 17 issue of the journal Nature, reveal "thousands and thousands of outcrops that we can now resolve with the higher resolution of the instrument, and they're scattered all over the planet wherever the older rocks occur," Murchie told SPACE.com.
"What that's suggesting to us is that we're seeing a pervasive subsurface layer that goes back in time — it's been altered by water to clays and related minerals, and it's outcropping all over the place," Murchie added.
The layer of water-altered rocks sits below younger, volcanic rocks and the ubiquitous windblown Martian dust and sand in many places. But in craters and scarps, including Valles Marineris, across the terrain of the southern hemisphere, the ancient clays and other minerals have been exposed.
"It's like going to the bottom rock layer in the Grand Canyon," Murchie said, where ancient layers underlie the whole area, but are only exposed in a few places.
This layering gives scientists a dividing line of about 3.7 to 3.5 billion years ago for a transition in Martian geology: "Before that the rocks were altered into clays, since then they're not," Murchie said.
The variety of clays and other minerals formed also tells scientists that rock was altered by water under a variety of conditions.
"There's a variety of environments that are formed where the rock was lightly altered where you see things like chlorite, to where it was altered with water at really high temperature, where you see mica, to where a lot of water must have flowed through the rock in order to dissolve out the iron and magnesium and you're left with kaolinite," Murchie said.
The alteration of later rocks, such as the sulfates found by the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER), Spirit and Opportunity in the northern hemisphere, on the other hand, formed under much more restricted conditions.
One implication of these findings is that some of the environments that formed the phyllosilicates would not have been antagonistic to any potential life, unlike the conditions that formed the sulfates, which formed in a highly acidic environment similar to battery acid, as Murchie put it.
Whether the MER rovers can get a close-up peek at these phyllosilicates while the robots still roam the Martian surface is uncertain, Murchie said, because so far the rocks haven't been detected near the crafts. But they could be there and simply be obscured in the north from the MRO instruments by dust.
"It doesn't take much to hide something from our optical instrument in orbit," he said, just a few micrometers of dust. "So just brushing away the rock surface could be enough," he added.
Whether or not Spirit and Opportunity get a chance to investigate these intriguing rocks up close, future rover missions, such as the Mars Science Laboratory set to launch 2009, could certainly be aimed at known phyllosilicate-rich sites, Murchie said, shedding more light on the mysteries of early Mars.
quote:Op zaterdag 19 juli 2008 21:54 schreef Tukker87 het volgende:
erg interessant net pas deze thread ontdekt.
quote:NASA scientists said Thursday the agency was extending the Mars mission of its Phoenix lander until the end of September, describing its progress so far as "very successful."
Michael Meyer, chief scientist of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, told reporters at a briefing that the minimum objectives of the lander's mission had been achieved and that "full mission success" was expected.
"It's been very successful and Mars had proven itself to be very interesting, mechanically the spacecraft is operating great, and there's plenty of power margin to carry us beyond the waning summer," Meyer said.
"With that, what I'd like to do is announce that we're going to extend the mission to go till the end of the fiscal year (September 30)."
The lander started digging trenches into Martian soil after touching down near the planet's north pole on May 25, revealing a white substance that scientists confirmed was ice in June.
University of Arizona scientist Peter Smith, Phoenix's principal investigator, said ice scooped up by Phoenix's robotic digging arm was being analyzed to see if conditions on Mars could have supported life.
"We're looking to understand the history of the ice, by trying to figure out if this ice has ever melted, and through melting has created a liquid environment that modifies soil," Smith said.
"We're just getting the data back. Through this we also hope to resolve questions, is this a habitable zone on Mars, meaning that we have periodic liquid water, materials that are the basic ingredients for lifeforms."
Smith said chemical analyses which indicated soil was alkaline had baffled scientists. "This is a mystery ... this is a typically acidic environment, perhaps this had to do with a nearby crater," he said.
Although important nutrients including sodium, potassium and magnesium had been discovered, no organic materials had been found so far, Smith said.
marsdaily.com
bron: UniverseToday, met dank aan Wolter voor de vertaling.quote:Afgelopen vrijdag zorgde een artikel op Aviation Week over een grote ontdekking op Mars voor grote opschudding. In dit artikel werd gesteld dat NASA eerst met het witte huis moest overleggen voordat zij tot publicatie over konden gaan. Hierdoor kwam een geruchtenmachine op gang over mogelijk gevonden leven op Mars.
Hierop heeft het Phoenix team besloten kenbaar te maken dat de ontdekking waar het om gaat de aanwezigheid van perchloraat betreft. Dit is hoogstwaarschijnlijk aangetroffen in 1 van de monsters die m.b.v. van MECA (de natte onderzoekscellen) onderzocht zijn. De ontdekking was nog niet eerder bekend gemaakt omdat de stof niet is aangetroffen tijdens tests met TEGA (de verhitte gasanalyseerders). NASA stelt dan ook dat de aanwezigheid nog niet definitief is en dat publicatie daarom voorbarig is.
Volgens Peter Smith, de hoofdonderzoeker van het Phoenix team, is er niets waar van de beschuldiging van geheimhouding noch van enig overleg met het witte huis. "De Phoenix missie heeft een uitstekende staat van openheid en publieke communicatie van de resultaten en we zijn dan ook zwaar gefrustreerd door deze beschuldigingen". Aldus Peter Smith. "Aanwijzingen voor perchloraat zijn aangetroffen bij een MECA test maar in een daaropvolgende TEGA test werd hiervoor geen verdere ondersteuning gevonden. Het is dan ook nog onderdeel van verder onderzoek"
Perchloraat is een sterk oxiderende en giftige stof. Volgens de onderzoekers betekend dit echter niet dat er geen leven op Mars kan zijn (geweest). Perchloraat kan zelfs een potentiele energiebron voor leven zijn. Ook op aarde komt perchloraat in de natuur voor b.v. in Chili's extreem droge Atacama woestijn. En daar komt leven voor dat verbonden is met deze verbindingen. Voordat duidelijk is wat de gevolgen van eventueel perchloraat op Mars zijn is het wachten op verdere testresultaten.
Maar het is wel een mooi kunstwerkjequote:Op vrijdag 17 oktober 2008 01:13 schreef ExperimentalFrentalMental het volgende:
15-10-2008
Merkwaardige heuvel ontdekt bij noordpool Mars
[ afbeelding ]
Met rood stof bedekte ijsheuvel op noordpool Mars.
Op een recent gemaakte opname van de HiRISE-camera van de Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is een merkwaardige heuvel te zien, die als een puist op een eroderende helling in het noordpoolgebied van Mars ligt.
De bodem ter plaatse is een opeenstapeling van ijsafzettingen, die bij erosie een duidelijk gelaagde structuur laat zien. Op één plek gaat het erosieproces echter minder snel en daar steekt nu een ongeveer 40 meter hoge heuvel boven de omgeving uit.
Volgens Marsonderzoekers van de Universiteit van Arizona is de heuvel mogelijk het restant van een bedolven inslagkrater, die aan de oppervlakte is gekomen. Om nog onbegrepen redenen is het ijs onder de voormalige inslagplek minder gevoelig voor de erosieprocessen.
Als je de heuvel op de foto van dichtbij bekijkt, blijkt deze uit hoekige ijsblokken van een meter of tien te bestaan. Op een andere recente HiRISE-opname is nog een van de schaarse herkenbare kraters op de noordpoolkap te zien.
(allesoversterrenkunde)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_to_Marsquote:Op vrijdag 17 oktober 2008 01:13 schreef ExperimentalFrentalMental het volgende:
15-10-2008
Merkwaardige heuvel ontdekt bij noordpool Mars
Its alive!quote:Mars Spirit Rover Lives!
NASA had not heard from the 5-year-old Martian rover for four days. Just when engineers feared having to give up the ghost, the aptly named robot radioed back to Earth on Thursday that it survived.
Engineers shouted "she's talking," at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif. They were afraid that a dust storm had drained Spirit's solar batteries, triggering it to shut down. Spirit's batteries are low, but working.
Spirit and its twin, Opportunity, are living long past their planned three months on Mars.
http://www.reuters.com/ar(...)J93P20081120?sp=truequote:Huge glaciers detected under rocky debris on Mars
Thu Nov 20, 2008 5:51pm EST
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A radar instrument aboard a NASA spacecraft has detected large glaciers hidden under rocky debris that may be the vestiges of ice sheets that blanketed parts of Mars in a past ice age, scientists said on Thursday.
The glaciers, the biggest known deposits of water on Mars outside of its poles, could prove useful for future manned missions to the red planet as drinking water or rocket fuel, University of Texas planetary geologist John Holt said.
"If we were to, down the road, establish a base there, you'd want to park near a big source of water because you can do anything with it," Holt said.
The glaciers, perhaps 200 million years old, also may entomb genetic fragments of past microbial life on Mars as well as air bubbles that might reveal the composition of the atmosphere as it was long ago, according to geologist James Head of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
A ground-penetrating radar instrument aboard the U.S. space agency's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter collected the data that confirmed the presence of the buried glaciers that extend for dozens of miles (km) from the edges of mountains or cliffs.
These closely resemble glaciers in Antarctica that similarly are covered by rocky debris, Head said.
Scientists previously determined that large deposits of ice exist at the Martian north and south polar regions, but hundreds of these buried glaciers are located at mid-latitudes on the planet.
Head said they can be about half a mile thick. One of them was three times larger than the city of Los Angeles.
The ones described by the researchers in the journal Science were in the Hellas Basin region of the Martian southern hemisphere, but many more are in the northern hemisphere.
Holt said the glaciers may be the vestiges of large ice sheets that once covered parts of Mars in a past ice age. Earth's most recent ice age ended about 12,000 years ago.
"It's dramatic evidence of major climate change on Mars, presumably linked to orbital variations. That's what causes the major glaciations on Earth," Holt said.
The existence of these features -- rounded surfaces sloping gently away from steeper ridges -- has been known for decades but their nature was a matter of dispute. Some scientists had argued they were ice-filled rock piles and not glaciers.
But the radar echoes received by the spacecraft indicated that a thin coating of rocky material at the surface covered thick ice and not rock.
Scientists want to understand the history of water on Mars because water is fundamental to the question of whether the planet has ever harbored microbial or some other life. Liquid water is a necessity for life as we know it. While Mars is now arid and dusty, there is evidence it once was much wetter.
For example, scientists think that long, undulating features seen on the northern plains of Mars may be remnants of shorelines of an ocean that covered a third of the planet's surface at least 2 billion years ago.
The Phoenix Mars Lander, which touched down at the north pole of Mars in May, found definitive proof of water before ending its mission earlier this month.
(Editing by Julie Steenhuysen and Cynthia Osterman)
© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved
Mars Express Observes Aurorae On The Red Planetquote:Researchers have found new evidence that the atmosphere of Mars is being stripped away by solar wind. It's not a gently continuous erosion, but rather a ripping process in which chunks of Martian air detach themselves from the planet and tumble into deep space. This surprising mechanism could help solve a longstanding mystery about the Red Planet.
"It helps explain why Mars has so little air," says David Brain of UC Berkeley, who presented the findings at the 2008 Huntsville Plasma Workshop on October 27th. 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.
So where did the air go? Researchers entertain several possibilities: An asteroid hitting Mars long ago might have blown away a portion of the planet's atmosphere in a single violent upheaval. Or the loss might have been slow and gradual, the result of billions of years of relentless "sand-blasting" by solar wind particles. Or both mechanisms could be at work.
Brain has uncovered a new possibility--a daily ripping process intermediate between the great cataclysm and slow erosion models. The evidence comes from NASA's now-retired Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft.
In 1998, MGS discovered that Mars has a very strange magnetic field. Instead of a global bubble, like Earth's, the Martian field is in the form of magnetic umbrellas that sprout out of the ground and reach beyond the top of Mars' atmosphere. These umbrellas number in the dozens and they cover about 40% of the planet"s surface, mainly in the southern hemisphere.
For years, researchers thought the umbrellas protected the Martian atmosphere, shielding pockets of air beneath them from erosion by the solar wind. Surprisingly, Brain finds that the opposite can be true as well: "The umbrellas are where coherent chunks of air are torn away."
Addressing his colleagues at the Workshop, he described how he made the discovery just a few months ago:
Brain was scrolling through archival data from Global Surveyor's particles and fields sensors. "We have measurements from 25,000 orbits," he says. During one of those orbits, MGS passed through the top of a magnetic umbrella. Brain noticed that the umbrella's magnetic field had linked up with the magnetic field in the solar wind. Physicists call this "magnetic reconnection."
What happened next is not 100% certain, but Global Surveyor's readings are consistent with the following scenario: "The joined fields wrapped themselves around a packet of gas at the top of the Martian atmosphere, forming a magnetic capsule a thousand kilometers wide with ionized air trapped inside," says Brain.
"Solar wind pressure caused the capsule to 'pinch off' and it blew away, taking its cargo of air with it." Brain has since found a dozen more examples. The magnetic capsules or "plasmoids" tend to blow over the south pole of Mars, mainly because most of the umbrellas are located in Mars' southern hemisphere.
Brain isn't ready to declare the mystery solved. "We're still not sure how often the plasmoids form or how much gas each one contains." The problem is, Mars Global Surveyor wasn't designed to study the phenomenon. The spacecraft was only equipped to sense electrons, not the heavier ions which would make up the bulk of any trapped gas.
"Ions and electrons don't always behave the same way," he cautions. Also, MGS sampled the umbrellas at fixed altitudes and at the same local time each day. "We need to sample many altitudes and times of day to truly understand these dynamic events."
In short, he told the audience, "we need more data."
Brain is pinning his hopes on a new NASA mission named MAVEN. Short for "Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution," MAVEN is an upper atmosphere orbiter currently approved for launch to Mars in 2013.
The probe is specifically designed to study atmospheric erosion. MAVEN will be able to detect electrons, ions and neutral atoms; it will be able to measure both magnetic and electric fields; it will travel around Mars in an elliptical orbit, piercing magnetic umbrellas at different altitudes, angles, and times of day; and it will explore regions both near and far from the umbrellas, giving researchers the complete picture they need.
If magnetized chunks of air are truly being torn free, MAVEN will see it happening and measure the atmospheric loss rate. "Personally, I think this mechanism is important," says Brain, "but MAVEN may yet prove me wrong."
Meanwhile, the Mystery of the Missing Martian Air is shaping up to be a ripping good yarn.
quote:Op vrijdag 28 november 2008 09:18 schreef ExperimentalFrentalMental het volgende:
26-11-2008
Europese ruimtevaartministers geven groen licht voor ExoMars
[ afbeelding ]
Illustratie van ExoMars.
Europa gaat over enkele jaren naar Mars. Op de succesvolle tweedaagse ESA-ministersconferentie in Den Haag hebben de ruimtevaartministers van de achttien lidstaten van de European Space Agency een begroting van ongeveer tien miljard euro voor de komende jaren goedgekeurd, en groen licht gegeven voor het ambitieuze ExoMars-project - een Europese Marswagen die begin 2016 gelanceerd moet worden. Daarnaast zijn financiële toezeggingen ontvangen voor programma's voor onder andere aardonderzoek, meteorologie, satelliettechnologie, bemande ruimtevaart, draagraketten, microzwaartekrachtonderzoek en satellietnavigatie.
Voor het ExoMars-project is door de ministersconferentie indertijd een bedrag van maximaal één miljard euro goedgekeurd. Het huidige ontwerp komt een paar honderd miljoen euro duurder uit. ESA wil daarom op zoek naar internationale samenwerking, onder andere met de Verenigde Staten en Rusland. In de loop van 2009 moet daar meer duidelijkheid over komen.
(allesoversterrenkunde)
quote:Mars has slipped far enough behind the sun today that signals from
Mars-orbiting spacecraft are effectively blocked until mid-December.
photo: www.spaceweather.com
This solar conjunction happens every two years.
Mars mission scientists - including the University of Arizona-based team that runs the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, instrument aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter - will resume operations three weeks from now.
But for NASA's UA-led Phoenix Mars Mission, the first university-led mission to Mars, surface science operations are over.
The champion little robot was to have photographed, dug and tested samples in the Martian arctic for 90 days after landing on May 25, 2008. Not only did the Phoenix Mars Lander achieve full mission success in August, it worked for a total 151 Martian days, until Oct. 27, when it was walloped by a dust storm that filled the sky with fine dust that persisted for days.
Drained of battery power because too little sunlight reached its two solar panels, Phoenix successfully sent its last signal to the mission team on Sunday, Nov. 2.
"This has been a great experience in my life, not only for the wonderful science return but for the tremendous team work that we've developed over the years of the mission," Peter Smith of the UA Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, Phoenix principal investigator, said in a Nov. 10 media teleconference that announced Phoenix surface operations had ended.
"It's been a great mission. It's been seven years of my life and definitely a major part of my science career. I'm just thrilled about what we've been able to do."
The UA led the $420 million Phoenix mission and $8 million mission extensions with project management at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif, and development partnership at Lockheed Martin Corp., Denver.
International partners are the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagan and Aarhus in Denmark; the Max Planck Institute in Germany; the Finnish Meteorological Institute; and Imperial College of London.
Running daily surface science operations was a full-time job, and mission scientists had no time to do related laboratory work or analyze their complicated data in depth. They're doing that now, and will report results in science papers to come. But they shared stunning scientific successes with the public as they happened. These include:
Touching water ice on Mars for the first time. "When we landed, we looked around and saw a field of dirt and rock that spread out to the horizon," Smith said.
"We didn't see ice right away. Then we looked under the lander and saw we were standing on it. Studying that ice has kept us busy for the last five months. We've excavated to the ice, we know its depth, we know how it changes over the surface. The mission is all about water, and studying ice is going to keep us busy for some time."
Taking 25,000 pictures, from sweeping panoramic vistas, to close-ups of ice and soil in trenches and in the robotic arm scoop, to microscopic close-ups of soil grains, to even higher-resolution close-ups taken down to the atomic level. Phoenix was the first to use an atomic force microscope on another planet. Compiling a complete weather record that covered every Martian day, or sol, of the mission.
Very sophisticated instruments collected information on clouds, pressure, temperature, winds, and humidity.
"You cannot study a surface and an ice layer without knowing the atmosphere above it, and we have a huge volume of data that describes weather for the entire time we conducted surface operations," Smith said.
"This is one of the major accomplishments of the mission." At the end of the surface mission, Phoenix saw, for the first time, water as snow falling to the surface Mars and frost on the ground. Falling snow was a real surprise.
Finding that soil at the landing site is alkaline and contains carbonates and clays. "On Earth, we would immediately conclude that there was liquid water in this soil," Smith said. "From Mars, we have to be a little more careful to develop the story as we can, as we interpret our data. But definitely, liquid water has been a part of this soil."
Finding that soil at the landing site contain small concentrations of salts and perchlorate. Such soluble salts as potassium, sodium, magnesium and chlorine are nutrients for life. Perchlorate is an energy source for microbes on Earth. Discovering nutrients and energy sources is important to answering the question, is the landing site area a habitable zone?
"Even if this site isn't habitable now," Smith said, "could this be a place where life could exist as the planet's polar spin axis tilts more towards the sun and the climate warms?" The Phoenix team is studying their data in more detail for the answers.
The UA won the 2007 and the 2008 Governor's Innovator of the Year Award in the academia category for leading the Phoenix mission.
The mission also won Popular Mechanics magazine's 2008 Breakthrough Award for Innovation, the 2008 Civil Space Award from the California Space Authority, the 2008 National Space Club Astronautics Engineer Award and Popular Science magazine's 2008 Best of What's New Grand Award in the aviation and space category.
Phoenix Education and Public Outreach To Millions
Phoenix's education and public outreach, or EPO, team ran by far the most successful EPO program in Mars mission history, according to NASA.
For the past 26 months, the Phoenix EPO team has shared science and engineering aspects of mission with millions of schoolchildren and teachers, museum-goers and Internet users, said Phoenix EPO manager Carla Bitter. About 20,000 visited the Science Operations Center in small tour groups led by EPO team members.
By conservative count, somewhere between 50 million and 60 million people followed the Phoenix Mars Mission run from the UA this year, Bitter said.
On landing day alone, May 25, 2008, the UA's Phoenix Web site registered 6 million hits, plus another 1 to 2 million hits that went directly to raw lander image pages.
NASA tracks the statistics for its own, separate Phoenix Web site. The NASA site drew 20 million visitors on Phoenix landing weekend
By conservative estimate, between 6 million and 7 million unique visitors were drawn to UA's Phoenix Mission Web site during the 5-month mission. Numbers on "page hits" or "page views" run about five times higher. UA Phoenix Web pages were viewed about 28 million times between May 19, 2008, and Nov. 6, 2008.
Web traffic on the UA Phoenix site came from more than 224 nations and territories, with most coming from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Japan.
Audiences during a 3-week period in September numbered more than 7 million, which included 3.5 million National Public Radio "Science Friday" listeners, 2.5 million Discovery Channel viewers and 250,000 who downloaded Phoenix podcasts.
Another 400,000 visited UA and NASA Phoenix mission Web sites during a 2-week period in September, 38,000 picked up near-daily Phoenix lander updates from Twitter maintained by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and several thousand others faithfully subscribed to FaceBook.
Bitter said she credits EPO success to "being given a blank check for creativity from my boss (Smith), utilizing the incredible talent of a very young staff and taking advantage of Web-based technologies at a time when more people are accessing data online than ever before."
Imaging specialists who worked to get images from the lander onto Phoenix Web sites as soon as they were returned to Earth were a big reason the mission was so popular, she added.
The Phoenix EPO team is preparing a final report summarizing the numbers of people who followed Phoenix during its exceptional year. Bitter called the numbers "astonishing."
quote:If the Phoenix Lander comes back to life on Mars, Twitter users could be among the first to know.
NASA gave the historic Space Age mission an Internet Age spin by adding a Twitter page, enabling the robotic interplanetary explorer to answer the hot micro-blogging website's trademark query: "What are you doing?"
Twitter rocketed to popularity with technology that lets people use mobile telephones or personal computers to continually keep friends updated on their activities with "tweets," text messages of no more than 140 characters.
When NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory News Services manager Veronica McGregor was tasked with delivering word of the agency's first-ever robotic landing on Mars during a holiday weekend, she turned to the social-networking website.
"Readership and viewership in traditional news media usually goes down over a three-day weekend," said McGregor, a former CNN correspondent.
"The fact that Twitter could send messages right to people's cell phones -- it seemed like a good idea to let people know about the landing."
So McGregor created a plucky persona for the 420-million-dollar robot and planted a flag on a new NASA frontier: Twitter-verse.
"I dig Mars!" was among Lander Tweets. Blog posts after its unprecedented May touch-down included an ice-discovery message ending with "w00t!!! Best day ever!!"
Tweets at twitter.com/MarsPhoenix won numerous Internet awards and garnered nearly 40,000 dedicated followers -- 2,000 of whom joined after NASA lost contact with the Lander in November.
"There was a certain joy and exuberance that came with every day, and every sight it was seeing," McGregor said. "I think people really related to that."
The Lander's writing style helped the blog stand out, according to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.
"It was the way she chose to send out the updates -- in the first person and anthropomorphizing the Lander -- that really made all of the difference," Stone said. "As a result, NASA gets a level of engagement with citizens they didn't have before."
NASA is not the first major organization to get its message out on Twitter. Computer maker Dell began using Twitter in January to publish Internet-only sales bargains. US cable television giant Comcast sent service trouble missives over the service.
Some media organizations have also been using Twitter to gather timely, first-hand accounts from witnesses or to provide news updates to subscribers. CNN regularly presents live responses from Twitter users on the cable network, with footage of the service's feed on a computer screen.
Many businesses have turned to social-networking services MySpace and Facebook to spread messages.
McGregor said she prefers Twitter for its speed. "A lot of people said that the short posts were exactly the right amount of information they wanted to know," McGregor said.
That pithiness, mixed with a little attitude, impressed Wired.com writer Alexis Madrigal.
"In the near-term, NASA has found an absolutely outstanding way to reach large numbers of influential people at a fairly low investment," Madrigal said.
NASA has begun setting up Twitter accounts for other missions in hopes of repeating their success.
"I'm hoping the lesson they'll take from this is that you need freedom to craft a character and a feed that will be appealing to people," Madrigal said.
McGregor said she is giving presentations throughout NASA on her successful experiment while pressing the agency to explore new communications strategies.
As for the Lander, it sent this farewell tweet: "I should stay well-preserved in this cold. I'll be humankind's monument here for centuries, eons, until future explorers come for me."
quote:NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity may still have big achievements ahead as they approach the fifth anniversaries of their memorable landings on Mars.
Of the hundreds of engineers and scientists who cheered at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., on Jan. 3, 2004, when Spirit landed safely, and 21 days later when Opportunity followed suit, none predicted the team would still be operating both rovers in 2009.
"The American taxpayer was told three months for each rover was the prime mission plan," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The twins have worked almost 20 times that long. That's an extraordinary return of investment in these challenging budgetary times."
The rovers have made important discoveries about wet and violent environments on ancient Mars. They also have returned a quarter-million images, driven more than 21 kilometers (13 miles), climbed a mountain, descended into craters, struggled with sand traps and aging hardware, survived dust storms, and relayed more than 36 gigabytes of data via NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. To date, the rovers remain operational for new campaigns the team has planned for them.
"These rovers are incredibly resilient considering the extreme environment the hardware experiences every day," said John Callas, JPL project manager for Spirit and Opportunity. "We realize that a major rover component on either vehicle could fail at any time and end a mission with no advance notice, but on the other hand, we could accomplish the equivalent duration of four more prime missions on each rover in the year ahead."
Occasional cleaning of dust from the rovers' solar panels by Martian wind has provided unanticipated aid to the vehicles' longevity. However, it is unreliable aid. Spirit has not had a good cleaning for more than 18 months. Dust-coated solar panels barely provided enough power for Spirit to survive its third southern-hemisphere winter, which ended in December.
"This last winter was a squeaker for Spirit," Callas said. "We just made it through."
With Spirit's energy rising for spring and summer, the team plans to drive the rover to a pair of destinations about 183 meters (200 yards) south of the site where Spirit spent most of 2008. One is a mound that might yield support for an interpretation that a plateau Spirit has studied since 2006, called Home Plate, is a remnant of a once more-extensive sheet of explosive volcanic material. The other destination is a house-size pit called Goddard.
"Goddard doesn't look like an impact crater," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y. Squyres is principal investigator for the rover science instruments. "We suspect it might be a volcanic explosion crater, and that's something we haven't seen before."
A light-toned ring around the inside of the pit might add information about a nearby patch of bright, silica-rich soil that Squyres counts as Spirit's most important discovery so far. Spirit churned up the silica in mid-2007 with an immobile wheel that the rover has dragged like an anchor since it quit working in 2006. The silica was likely produced in an environment of hot springs or steam vents.
For Opportunity, the next major destination is Endeavour Crater. It is approximately 22 kilometers (14 miles) in diameter, more than 20 times larger than another impact crater, Victoria, where Opportunity spent most of the past two years. Although Endeavour is about 12 kilometers (7 miles) from Victoria, it is considerably farther as the rover drives on a route evading major obstacles.
Since climbing out of Victoria four months ago, Opportunity has driven more than a mile of its route toward Endeavour and stopped to inspect the first of several loose rocks the team plans to examine along the way. High-resolution images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which reached Mars in 2006, are helping the team plot routes around potential sand traps that were not previously discernable from orbit.
"We keep setting the bar higher for what these rovers can do," said Frank Hartman, a JPL rover driver. "Once it seemed like a crazy idea to go to Endeavour, but now we're doing it."
Squyres said, "The journeys have been motivated by science, but have led to something else important. This has turned into humanity's first overland expedition on another planet. When people look back on this period of Mars exploration decades from now, Spirit and Opportunity may be considered most significant not for the science they accomplished, but for the first time we truly went exploring across the surface of Mars."
docu is dus uit 2008, geen idee of dit een herhaling is, om 3 uur 's nachts wordt de documentaire iig. herhaaldquote:21:00 - 22:00 Informatief
Martian robots
Reportageserie. Toen de Mars-Rovers in januari 2004 op Mars landden, dacht men dat ze het niet lang zouden uithouden. Vier jaar later kijken we hoe het gaat.
Oeroude fotoquote:Op vrijdag 16 januari 2009 21:25 schreef kurk_droog het volgende:
Deze foto heb ik hier niet gezien...
hout?
[ afbeelding ]
quote:Op vrijdag 16 januari 2009 22:09 schreef -CRASH- het volgende:
[..]
Oeroude foto
die ooit al in een eerder deel te zien was. En vooral in de TRUTH sector
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