NASA’s Orion Passes Most Complex and Flight-Like Test of Parachute System | French Tribune

Read this exciting new article from the French Tribune. Click on the link below to read about very encouraging tests.

NASA’s Orion Passes Most Complex and Flight-Like Test of Parachute System | French Tribune

Life on Mars Search Continues

I love the report of the Martian Robot explorations that come from NASA in the quest to find life on Mars. This is a new report from the Space Reporter.

NASA’s Opportunity rover is celebrating ten years since it landed on Mars, on January 24, 2004. In the rover’s 24-mile journey from its landing site to the rim of Endeavour Crater, it has uncovered evidence that is helping to elucidate the early history of Mars. The latest findings have been analyzed by a team led by Opportunity Deputy Principal Investigator Ray Arvidson of Washington University.

According to a NASA statement, Opportunity has analyzed rocks older than any others encountered by the rover. The Opportunity team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory employed an instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that is designed to map minerals on the Martian surface. This instrument, the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, began scanning the vicinity of Opportunity in 2010, and detected the signature of a clay mineral called iron-rich smectite at a site on Endeavour’s rim known as Matijevic Hill.

 

The Opportunity team steered the rover in a loop, guided by the orbiter, until it arrived at the promising outcrop. There, Opportunity had the chance to study the smectite in its proper context and determine how its location and position in the Martian geological record relate to those of other minerals and rock layers.

 

Arvidson and team’s analysis of the new data indicates that the warmer, wetter conditions in which the iron-rich smectite formed existed before Endeavour Crater was gouged out approximately 4 billion years ago. This environment also predates acidic and oxidizing conditions represented in rocks previously studied by the rover. The environment would have been suitable for microbial life. The new research has been published in the January 24 issue of the journal Science.

 

Although Opportunity’s twin rover, Spirit, ceased to function in 2010, Opportunity is still working well in conjunction with the larger, newer Curiosity rover half a planet away. Both rovers are guided by data gathered by the Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance orbiters.

 

I can't help wondering if some of the conditions that destroyed Mars might have been around the time when the believed meteorite hit Earth destroying the dinosaurs. Its only a thought, but maybe the solar system had a rain fall of meteorites many billion years ago along a scale more intense then we get at present.

 

Of course I'm no scientist and my dates could be way off and I'm sure NASA scientists have explored such a possibility. I will watch the continuous reports of the Martian exploration robots. Its very exciting stuff and I hope they find some fossil evidence of life, even if its the minutest form of life that once was.

 

 

 

 

 

Nasa Shocked as Mars JPL Rover Comes Upon a Mystery Rock.

 

 

Strange Rock Appeared from Nowhere.

 

 

 

 

From Independent Newspaper

 

A mysterious rock which appeared in front of the Opportunity rover is “like nothing we’ve ever seen before”, according to Mars exploration scientists at Nasa.

Experts said they were “completely confused” by both the origins and makeup of the object, which is currently being investigated by Opportunity’s various measuring instruments.

Astronomers noticed the new rock had “appeared” without any explanation on an outcrop which had been empty just days earlier. The rover has been stuck photographing the same region of Mars for more than a month due to bad weather, with scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California monitoring the images it sends.

Nasa issued a Mars status report entitled “encountering a surprise”, and lead Mars Exploration rover scientist Steve Squyres told a JPL event it seems the planet literally “keeps throwing new things at us”.

He said the images, from 12 Martian days apart, were from no more than a couple of weeks ago. “We saw this rock just sitting here. It looks white around the edge in the middle and there’s a low spot in the centre that’s dark red – it looks like a jelly doughnut.

“And it appeared, just plain appeared at that spot – and we haven’t ever driven over that spot.”

Squyres said his team had two theories on how the rock got there – that there’s “a smoking hole in the ground somewhere nearby” and it was caused by a meteor, or that it was “somehow flicked out of the ground by a wheel” as the rover went by.

“We had driven a metre or two away from here, and I think the idea that somehow we mysteriously flicked it with a wheel is the best explanation,” Squyres said.

Yet the story got even stranger when Opportunity investigated further. Squyres explained: “We are as we speak situated with the rover’s instruments deployed making measurements of this rock.

“We’ve taken pictures of both the doughnut and jelly parts, and the got the first data on the composition of the jelly yesterday.

“It’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” he said. “It’s very high in sulphur, it’s very high in magnesium, it’s got twice as much manganese as we’ve ever seen in anything on Mars.

“I don’t know what any of this means. We’re completely confused, and everyone in the team is arguing and fighting (over what it means).

“That’s the beauty of this mission… what I’ve realised is that we will never be finished. There will always be something tantalising, something wonderful just beyond our reach that we didn’t quite get to – and that’s the nature of exploration.”

Squyres was speaking at an event marking the 10th anniversary of the arrival of Opportunity and Spirit on the surface of Mars.

While Spirit lost contact with Earth and was later declared “dead” in 2010, Opportunity has now roamed the planet far in excess of what was originally planned as a three-month mission. Nasa said that with its maximum speed of just 0.05mph, as of “Sol 3547” (15 January 2014) Opportunity had covered just over 24 miles (38km). NASA: Space in pictures

The Hunt for Past Life on Mars

The news of past life on Mars seems to come and go. One moment it is all in the news and we are hopeful and then it seems to fade away. These latest finds seem to keep the pot simmering for past life on Mars and the hunt for water. Let us hope so.