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Mars Exploration 1: Unmanned Missions (Probes; Rovers; etc.)

jimv1 said:
...a plaintive wail exactly in the middle of the Katona Scale...
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Chavtastic! :lol:
 
That's fantastic! I urge everyone to take a look, it's movie quality. Also slightly scary, but in a good way.
 
The tracks of the rover are visible, from space :D

mars-rover-curiosity-tracks-space.jpg
 
Curiosity Rover Identifies Mysterious Bright Object as Plastic

NASA’s Curiosity rover took time out of its busy scooping and vibrating schedule on Oct. 9 to inspect a mysterious bright object that it spotted in the sand near its wheels the day before. Engineers have identified the bright bit as “shred of plastic material, likely benign.”

“Yeah so last night was crazy. When we spotted the object near the rover, we had to quickly come up with a totally new plan,” tweeted Keri Bean, a meteorologist on the rover team, on Oct. 8.

Curiosity had to take a break in its intended schedule of analyzing the Martian soil in order to make sure that the fallen object was not going to interfere with sampling activities. A close-up photo (below) taken with the probe’s Remote Micro-Imager of the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) showed that the object was probably a piece of plastic, though it has still not been definitively identified. Engineers will take more pictures of the rover’s surroundings over the coming days to make sure there are no other potential contaminants. NASA will probably have further news about the object during a press conference on Oct. 11.

Similar loose screws and bits have been shed by previous rovers, including the Mars Phoenix Lander and the Opportunity rover.
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http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/ ... t-plastic/
 
Plastic trash left by alien tourists, no doubt.
 
It's not very big, is it? Could it be a bit fallen off Rover?
 
Mythopoeika said:
Plastic trash left by alien tourists, no doubt.
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Must be! Because they are not from the Rover:

NASA: We Still Don't Know What Those Shiny Particles On Mars Are, But They're Not From The Rover

NASA confirmed this afternoon that some bright particles found in a hole dug by the Curiosity's scooper are actually from Mars and not debris from the rover. This is the second round of shiny mysterious objects the rover has run into while scooping soil at Glenelg. The first was probably a piece of plastic or tape that fell off of the rover itself.

Adam Mann with WiredScience has more:

After last week’s plastic encounter, Curiosity’s science team worried the new particles might be man-made. Since they turned up in scoop holes, however, the granules must have been buried in the subsurface. They likely came from larger minerals that broke down. They might also represent the product of some geological soil process that generates a bright but unknown mineral.

Curiosity, which is 10 weeks into its two-year mission, has now collected three scoops of Martian soil. The third scoop is currently being analyzed by the rover's Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument to determine what minerals are in it.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/mars-shi ... z29hAY6pyO
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Destination Ross-shire!

Glenelgs on Earth and Mars to be twinned

The small Scottish community of Glenelg will hold a ceremony later to twin itself with its namesake on Mars.
Nasa's roving robotic laboratory, Curiosity, is headed for a geological feature on the Red Planet that has been called Glenelg.

Back on Earth, residents of Glenelg in the west Highlands are preparing to hold celebrations, which include the twinning ceremony and a ceilidh.
Guests include former Nasa astronaut Bonnie Dunbar.

...

Nasa's Mars mission team has been using names taken from Canada's Northwest Territories to label the places the rover is visiting.
The Canadian north-west has some ancient rock formations thought to be of a similar age to those found in Gale Crater, Curiosity's landing site.

The naming system is an attempt to make it easier for scientists and the public to understand what is being discussed when a particular location comes up in conversation.

Glenelg on Mars takes its name from a particular rock found in the Northwest Territories.
However, the placename has its roots in the Scottish Highlands.

...

Glenelg in Maryland, in the US, takes it name directly from the Scottish placename.
In the 1880s, the descendants of the area's first settlers named it Glenelg "after an old estate in Scotland and because it spelled the same from either end". 8)

Home to about 300 people today, Glenelg in Ross-shire has been keen to embrace its Martian namesake.
Emma MacLean, a twinning ceremony organiser, said the link with the Nasa mission and the Red Planet was a good way of keeping the community "healthy and vibrant".
She said: "Small communities such as ours are always looking for ways to promote the wide variety of attractions that our community has.
"The arrival of the Mars rover at Glenelg will be used to showcase to the international astronomy community the quality of the dark skies we have in Glenelg and Arnisdale.
"With so little light pollution the skies above are truly spectacular, especially at the moment with the Northern Lights activity."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-h ... s-19976650

Would be a bit expensive to send town councillors on a visit to Mars, though... ;)
 
Russia and Europe joint Mars bid agreement approved
By Jonathan Amos, Science correspondent, BBC News, Naples

European Space Agency member states have approved the agreement that would see Russia take significant roles in Red Planet missions in 2016 and 2018.
The former is a satellite that will look for methane and other trace gases in the atmosphere; the latter will be a surface rover.
Russian participation fills a void left by the Americans who pulled back from the projects earlier this year.

For a while, it looked as though the ventures, known as ExoMars, might have to be cancelled. But Russian desire to pick up many of the elements dropped by the US means ExoMars is now on a much surer footing.

Esa member states indicated their happiness with the cooperation text on Monday. All that remains is for the documentation to be signed by both parties.
This is likely to happen before the end of the year.

Officials say they want the ExoMars partnership to be the catalyst for further planetary exploration ventures.
"We have other opportunities to consider cooperation - for Jupiter missions, for example," said Frederic Nordlund, the head of international relations at Esa.
"Esa has selected Juice, a large mission for Jupiter, and in Russia there is a plan for a Ganymede lander which is of interest to Europe.
"We are initiating discussions to see how we could co-operate on those missions. But this could extend to lunar robotics where we would like to see if we could join forces as well.
"Russia already has its Luna-Glob and Luna-Resurs missions, which are already being implemented, but we're considering other opportunities for this in other areas."

The planned agreement calls for Russia to provide the Proton rockets to send the two ExoMars missions on their way.
Russia would also get instrument space on the 2016 satellite and the 2018 rover. In addition, its researchers would join the science teams that exploit the missions' data.

One key contribution would be the landing system that places the rover on the surface of the Red Planet. With the exception of some key components, this would be built by Russian industry.

ExoMars was formally initiated in Europe by ministers in 2005, and Esa has so far spent in excess of 400m euros on technology development.
The final budget on the European side is projected to be about 1.2bn euros for the two missions.
So far, 850m of that total has been committed. But officials remain confident of closing the gap.

The 2016 orbiter will try to track down the sources of methane that have been observed at Mars. Its presence in the atmosphere is intriguing and could conceivably indicate biological activity on the planet. A key role for the satellite also will be to provide the communications relay for the 2018 rover.

The six-wheeled vehicle would look for signs of past or present life. It would have the ability to drill 2m into the ground.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20407902
 
The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one they said.
 
November 29th update.
http://nasaupdatecenter.us/press.html

Curiosity found plastic. A type of plastic that only can be made from a type of oil that, as far as we know, only forms from algae and zooplankton.

"The small spheres at Matijevic Hill have different composition and internal structure made completely of plastic. Curiosity's science team is evaluating a range of possibilities for how they formed. The spheres are up to about an eighth of an inch (3 millimeters) in diameter.

Last week Curiosity was able to use its SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) device to confirm the discovery. A robotic arm with a complex system of Spectral Analysis devices was able to vaporize and identify gasses from the sample, concluding that it is in fact plastic. How plastic formed or ended up on the Martian surface is quite an exciting mystery that sparks many questions. The type of plastic sampled as we know so far can only be formed using petrochemicals, meaning not only that there could possibly be a source of oil on the Red Planet, but that somehow it got turned into plastic. Even more interesting is that oil or petrochemicals used to create this type of plastic are only known to come from ancient fossilized organic materials, such as zooplankton and algae, which geochemical processes convert into oil pointing to the earthshaking evidence that there was once life on mars."
 
Sorry, that's bullshite.

It's not from the NASA/JPL site which has .gov and some of the english is poor and doesn't make sense.

ETA Plus the image looks like mardi gras beads were badly edited on.
 
Monstrosa said:
Sorry, that's bullshite.

It's not from the NASA/JPL site which has .gov and some of the english is poor and doesn't make sense.

ETA Plus the image looks like mardi gras beads were badly edited on.
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Thought that was what they looked like... a string of blue and green plastic beads! :lol:
 
It's a hoax, folks!

The server is now down and Slashdot issued an update saying it was a hoax.
 
Nasa's 'Oppy' rover could be rolling on Martian clays
By Jonathan Amos, Science correspondent, BBC News, San Francisco

Nasa's Opportunity rover appears to have reached another milestone in its amazing nine-year mission on Mars.
Scientists report the robot has been trundling over what they believe to be clay-bearing rocks on the edge of a wide bowl known as Endeavour Crater.

Clays are water-altered minerals, but very different to the ones seen by the rover so far on its travels.
Those previous minerals were in contact with acidic water; clays are formed in the presence of neutral water.

"What drives us to investigate the problem of water on Mars is the fact that water is a necessary condition for life; but there's water and there's water," said Prof Steve Squyres, Opportunity's principal investigator from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

"We've been seeing sulphate minerals from day one with this rover. These sulphates form under very acid conditions. And even though water was present, if it's that acid it would be very challenging as a place for life to take hold.
"However, if it's not acid, if it's the kind of water you can drink, it's the kind of water that's going to be more suitable for life; and that's what the clays point to," he told BBC News.

Prof Squyres was speaking here this week at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, the largest annual gathering of Earth and planetary scientists.
He was updating the meeting on the most recent work of the robot which landed on Mars in 2004 to investigate its potential for microbial habitability in the past.
Since August 2011, it has been driving across the western rim of the 22km-wide Endeavour depression.

....

Opportunity continues to exceed all expectations. Its twin, Spirit, which was landed on the other side of Mars, succumbed to the dust and cold of the Red Planet in 2010. But "Oppy" keeps on rolling.

"We voided the warranty on this thing a very long time ago," Prof Squyres told the BBC.
"It was designed for 90 days; it's been almost nine years - this thing could drop dead tomorrow.
"I hope it lasts a long time but nothing's a given this late into the mission.
"We have the equipment that we need [to answer the questions we have about these rocks], I just hope we have the time that we need."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20649462

Fingers crossed! 8)
 
A shameless bump, but at least the anomalies I'm claiming to have found are quite easy to discern, prominently plasced on individual rocks with nothing but sand in the background!
 
Bigfoot73 said:
A shameless bump, but at least the anomalies I'm claiming to have found are quite easy to discern, prominently plasced on individual rocks with nothing but sand in the background!
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Interesting theory - but unfortunately impossible to verify at this stage.
 
Zoom in on the original and have a look at the furthest end of that rock - I'm more inclined to think it's coral now. The detail on some of it is elaborate, stalks with small blobs at the end, stems with heads.
I've since found another pic featuring a rock with a cluster of short tubes on the top. Good resolution too.
 
Bigfoot73 said:
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00079/mcam/0079MR0591006000E1_DXXX.jpg

Look at the top of the rock nearest the camera - the Mastcam : could those be fossilised sea anenomes?
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Looks a lot more like lumps of extruded lava, or slag. Pyro-plastic, rather than organic forms. Thrown out of their source like bombs in the low gravity, full of expanding hot gases in the low atmosphere and cooled fast in the low temperatures.

http://maurice.strahlen.org/minerals/pics/bomb.jpg

http://meteorites.wustl.edu/id/vesicles.htm
 
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