Humans on Mars

Mars lander uncovers signs of ice

The descent engine blew away soil on landing, possibly revealing ice

Nasa's new robotic craft on Mars may be resting on a large patch of ice.

The latest images sent to Earth reveal tantalising glimpses of what looks like frozen water.

Scientists think the Phoenix Mars lander's descent engine may have blown away a layer of dirt, exposing the ice.

The craft's robotic arm reached out and touched the soil for the first time, leaving behind a striking, footprint-like impression, they said on Sunday.

The robotic arm was making a test run, just one week after the landing.

NASA space probe digs for life on Mars

A NASA space probe has started to investigate whether Mars has the conditions necessary to support life.

The Phoenix has been sending back photos from the planet's north pole that show signs of there being ice under the surface. The probe is equipped with a robotic arm, which is designed to dig below the frozen surface for samples of ice and water.

The director of NASA's jet propulsion laboratory, Dr Charles Elachi, has praised the efforts of the scientists behind the mission. "Many people thought that this will not be possible that we will not be able to succeed," he said.

"All of us knew this is very risky mission, but this thing made history and they will be remembered forever that they are the first people to explore the polar region of Mars. "There is no telling what discoveries we'll be seeing over the next 90 days."

NASA's Mars exploration program manager, Fuk Li, has told ABC local radio the first photos show signs of there being ice under the surface. "It's a very, very flat surface. There are small rocks, pebbles lying around," he said.

"It is like a permafrost region of the earth and the area is has polygonal kind of patterns on it, and we can see those with the images that we have obtained so far."

NASA probe lands on Mars

Touch down: An artist's impression of the Phoenix lander on the surface of Mars (NASA)

A probe set to make the first studies of another planet's water has landed on the surface of Mars, NASA officials said this morning.

The spacecraft, known as Phoenix, landed at 9:53am (AEST) after a do-or-die plunge through the planet's thin atmosphere. It marked the first time that a spacecraft had successfully landed at one of the planet's polar regions.

Pulled by Mars' gravity, Phoenix was tearing along at 20,400 kilometres per hour before it entered the atmosphere, which slowed the craft so it could pop out a parachute and fire thruster rockets to gently float to the ground and land on fold-out legs.

"It's down, baby, it's down!" yelled a NASA flight controller, looking at signals from Mars showing that Phoenix had landed.

Avalanche Photographed on Mars

A NASA spacecraft has taken the first-ever image of an avalanche in action near Mars' north pole.

The High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took the photograph Feb. 19. The image, released today, shows tan clouds billowing away from the foot of a towering slope, where ice and dust have just cascaded down.

The camera was tracking seasonal changes on Mars when it inadvertently caught the avalanche on film.

HiRISE mission scientist Ingrid Daubar Spitale of the University of Arizona was the first person to notice the avalanche when sifting through images.

Once habitable Lake Found on Mars

By Jeremy Hsu

A lake that might once have been habitable may have filled a crater for a long time on early Mars, new spacecraft images reveal.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) captured the images that suggest the debris-strewn Holden Crater once held a calm body of water that could have harbored life. There is so far no convincing evidence life does or ever did exist on Mars, however.

The crater debris includes a mix of broken boulders and smaller particles called megabreccia.

"Holden crater has some of the best-exposed lake deposits and ancient megabreccia known on Mars," said Alfred McEwen, principal scientist for MRO's HiRISE camera. "Both contain minerals that formed in the presence of water and mark potentially habitable environments. This would be an excellent place to send a rover or sample-return mission to make major advances in understanding if Mars supported life."

2007 WD5 Mars Collision Effectively Ruled Out As Impact Odds Widen To 1 In 10000

We have received numerous tracking measurements of asteroid 2007 WD5 from four different observatories. These new data have led to a significant reduction in the position uncertainties during the asteroid's close approach to Mars on Jan. 30, 2008. As a result, the impact probability has dropped dramatically, to approximately 0.01% or 1 in 10,000 odds, effectively ruling out the possible collision with Mars.

Our best estimate now is that 2007 WD5 will pass about 26,000 km from the planet's center (about 7 Mars radii from the surface) at around 12:00 UTC (4:00 am PST) on Jan. 30th. With 99.7% confidence, the pass should be no closer than 4000 km from the surface.

The sequence of updates over the last few weeks has been typical of past potential impact scenarios, with the odds of impact initially surging and later plummeting towards zero. Early on, the uncertainty region is very large and the probability of impact is rather low.

As the uncertainty narrows, but still includes the planet, the probability initially increases. But eventually, as in this case, the uncertainty region shrinks to the point that it no longer overlaps the planet, and the probability of impact begins a precipitous decline.

This rise and fall of the computed hazard was most notably seen in Dec. 2004 when asteroid 99942 Apophis briefly reached a 2.7% chance of impact with Earth in April 2029. In every case, the height and the timing of the peak probability - and the subsequent decline - cannot be known until the uncertainty region has shrunk to the point where it no longer intersects the planet.

NASA's Spaceguard Survey continues searching for Near-Earth Asteroids such as 2007 WD5, endeavoring to discover 90% of those larger than 1 km in size, a goal that should be met within the next few years. Each discovered asteroid is continually monitored for the possibility of impact. For 2007 WD5, these analyses show there is no possibility of impact with either Mars or Earth in the next century.

Sunshine to Petrol Project Seeks Fuel from Thin Air

Using concentrated solar energy to reverse combustion, a research team from Sandia National Laboratories is building a prototype device intended to chemically "reenergize" carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide using concentrated solar power. The carbon monoxide could then be used to make hydrogen or serve as a building block to synthesize a liquid combustible fuel, such as methanol or even gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

Miller says that while the first step would be to capture the carbon dioxide from sources where it is concentrated, the ultimate goal would be to snatch it out of the air. A S2P system that includes atmospheric carbon dioxide capture could produce carbon-neutral liquid fuels.

The prototype device, called the Counter Rotating Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator (CR5, for short), will break a carbon-oxygen bond in the carbon dioxide to form carbon monoxide and oxygen in two distinct steps. It is a major piece of an approach to converting carbon dioxide into fuel from sunlight.

The Sandia research team calls this approach "Sunshine to Petrol" (S2P). "Liquid Solar Fuel" is the end product — the methanol, gasoline or other liquid fuel made from water and the carbon monoxide produced using solar energy.

Sandia is a National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) laboratory.

CR5 inventor Rich Diver says the original idea for the device was to break down water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen could then fuel a potential hydrogen economy.

The Sandia researchers came up with the idea to use the CR5 to break down carbon dioxide, just as it would water. Over the past year they have shown proof of concept and are completing a prototype device that will use concentrated solar energy to reenergize carbon dioxide or water, the products of combustion. This will form carbon monoxide, hydrogen, and oxygen, which ultimately could be used to synthesize liquid fuels in an integrated S2P system.

Coresearchers on the project are Jim E. Miller and Nathan Siegel. Project champion is Ellen B. Stechel, manager of Sandia's Fuels and Energy Transitions Department.

Stechel says that researchers have known for a long time that theoretically it might be possible to recycle carbon dioxide, but many thought it could not be made practical, either technically or economically and therefore not much effort has been put toward the research until now.

"Not only did we think it was possible, the team has developed a prototype that they fully anticipate will successfully break down carbon dioxide in a clever and viable two-step process," she says.

Stechel notes that one driver for the invention is the need to reduce greenhouse gases.

"This invention, though probably a good 15 to 20 years away from being on the market, holds a real promise of being able to reduce carbon dioxide emissions while preserving options to keep using fuels we know and love," she says. "Recycling carbon dioxide into fuels provides an attractive alternative to burying it."

Mars Orbiter Examines Lace And Lizard Skin Terrain

Right: This is a perspective view of a scene within Mars' Candor Chasma based on stereo imaging by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It shows how the surface would appear to a person standing on top of one of the many hills in the region and facing southeast. The hills in the foreground are several tens of meters to about 100 meters (tens of yards to about 100 yards) wide and several tens of meters or yards tall. The light-toned layers of rock likely consist of material laid down by the wind or under water.

The dark-toned material is a layer of windblown sand on the surface. The orientations of these layers were measured in three dimensions in order to understand the region's geologic history. The particular patterns in which these rocks are oriented to the surrounding Candor Chasma are most consistent with the idea that the layers formed as basin-filling sediment, analogous to the sedimentary rocks of the Paradox Basin in southeastern Utah. This implies that these sediments are younger than the formation of the chasm, providing important constraints on the maximum age of groundwater (about 3.7 billion years) within the region. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

Scrutiny by NASA's newest Mars orbiter is helping scientists learn the stories of some of the weirdest landscapes on Mars, as well as more familiar-looking parts of the Red Planet.

One type of landscape near Mars' south pole is called "cryptic terrain" because it once defied explanation, but new observations bolster and refine recent interpretations of how springtime outbursts of carbon-dioxide gas there sculpt intricate patterns and paint seasonal splotches.

"A lot of Mars looks like Utah, but this is an area that looks nothing like Planet Earth," said Candice Hansen of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., deputy principal investigator for the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Conference to Discuss Exploration of the two Moons of Mars

The Mars Institute is co-convening this week a unique scientific meeting titled "First International Conference on the Exploration of Phobos and Deimos: The Science, Robotic Reconnaissance, and Human Exploration of the Two Moons of Mars." The conference is being held at NASAÕs Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

The meeting is bringing together scientists, engineers, space exploration professionals, and students from around the world to discuss over three intense days (5-7 Nov 2007) the exploration of Mars's two mysterious satellites and how their exploration relates to that of the Moon, Mars, small bodies, and the solar system beyond.

The conference is being convened at a time of renewed interest in the exploration of Phobos and Deimos, with several international spacecraft missions and concept studies underway. Says Dr. Pascal Lee, chairman of the Mars Institute and a co-convener of the conference: "Phobos and Deimos are two fascinating small worlds that have been somewhat overlooked. We are here to realize their full scientific and human exploration potential".

Meeting participants will examine key scientific questions pertaining to Mars's dark, asteroid-like moons, such as: Are Phobos and Deimos captured asteroids or remnants from the formation of Mars itself?; Are Phobos and Deimos related to each other?; How much resources, in particular H2O, do they contain?

The meeting will be an opportunity to review and coordinate upcoming robotic reconnaissance missions to these moons, and begin discussing how such missions could help pave the way to more ambitious Mars sample return missions in the future.

Old Rover(s) refuses to be put down

NASA's Opportunity rover is showing its age. Problems have forced the agency to suspend work involving the rover's rock grinding tool and its infrared spectrometer while engineers try to work out a fix.

The problems are the latest in a long line of failures that have begun to plague both rovers as they age.

Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, were designed to last just 90 days. But they have been driving around the Red Planet for nearly 4 years, having landed in January 2004.

The rovers' lifetimes were originally expected to be limited by dust accumulating on the panels. If dust reduced harvestable solar power too much, the rovers would have trouble keeping their electronic innards warm enough to survive the cold Martian nights, especially in the winter.

But gusts of wind have cleaned off both rovers' solar panels from time to time, allowing them to weather the coldest nights, says project manager John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US.

Because of these helpful winds, Callas says he thinks the rovers will be limited more by how long their components can last against wear and tear.