Dust storm threatens rovers

A powerful new dust storm is developing on Mars and may threaten the safety of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. The storm is thought to now be several thousand miles in diameter and is some 560 miles (900 KM) east of Opportunity, which is presently working at Meridiani Planum. The fear is that the storm will become global in nature, as last happened in October 2001, when a giant storm blanketed the entire planet in an impenetrable gloom. Ironically, high winds have been the saviour of the rovers before, as dust accumulating on their solar panels appears to have been blown off, restoring power that had been steadily in decline. The storm is not yet big enough to worry mission planners unduly, but a press conference called for Thursday will discuss the possibility that a planned drive by Opportunity into the massive Victoria Crater may be cancelled.

Martian tilt may explain lost ocean

When the Viking spacecraft arrived over Mars in the 1970's they saw what appeared to be the ancient shorelines of a long dead Martian ocean, but this theory was largely discredited bv the later Mars Global Surveyor mission of the 1990's. The far more sensitive Mars Global Surveyor imaged the surface to a resolution of a few hundred metres, and that seemed to prove that the opposite shores of the "ocean" varied in elevation by several kilometres, making for a very unusual ocean indeed, in fact an ocean that simply could not have existed. Until now this is the view that has prevailed, but scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Toronto and the Carnegie Institution in Washington have now re-accessed the data, and their startling conclusion once again puts an ocean on Mars, and a very deep one at that. The scientists have changed their mind because a new theory suggests that Mars has undergone some major upheavals, at the heart of which is an exotic event called true polar wander, a process in which the very poles of the planet shifted, resulting in massive deformation of the surface. If this is the case, then those improbable shorelines may indeed be the edges of an ancient ocean, one that once covered an entire hemisphere of the planet to a depth of several kilometres. If that is the case, then the next question to answer is, where did all the water go? The Independent Newspaper has an excellent indepth article on the new theory.

ESA opts for big Mars mission

In a further sign of the importance national space agencies are assigning to exploration of the red planet, the ESA has moved a step further forward approving a much enhanced vision for the 2013 ExoMars mission. The proposed upgrade would see a 205kg robot lift off on a heavy-lift rocket such as an Ariane 5 or a Proton. The probe would carry a 16.5kg instrument package, including a weather station (or Geophysics/Environment Package - GEP) but a request to include an orbiting communications platform was not approved. This means that ExoMars will be reliant on aging American hardware already in orbit about Mars. The project teams now have the go-ahead to refine the concept over the coming months, though the final design may still be subject be rejection when it comes up for final review in a years time. More information can be found on the BBC website.

ESA air bags demonstrates less bounce

In an important step toward a European mission to Mars, scientists have successfully tested a new kind of air bag landing system that they believe could bring the proposed ExoMars mission to a much speedier and safer stop than previous designs. The American Spirit and Opportunity rovers presently on Mars used airbag technology, but the method employed required the landers survive up to 25 bounces and travel some 200 metres before coming to a standstill. The ESA design, known as a vented, or dead-beat system, uses sensors to deflate the squashable bags on touchdown, reducing the bounce factor and meaning that the payload can be delivered right side up. There is still a lot of testing to be done, but if successful, the bags will also mean a significant weight saving, leaving more room for the science payload. The BBC website has an extensive story.

Storm in a puddle growing on Mars

The prestigious publication New Scientist magazine is reporting on controversial findings that open water was found on the surface of Mars two years ago. Open water should not be possible on Mars due to the harsh surface conditions, (though very strong photographic evidence has been found for occasional small flash floods) so if true, this is a real bombshell. Physicist and Lockheed engineer Ron Levin has looked at images returned several years ago by the Opportunity Rover while it was exploring a crater called Endurance. Creating stereoscopic reconstructions from paired images from the rover's twin cameras, he seems to have found some compelling evidence. The picture shows a one metre square area with a distinctly bluish tint, and indeed it looks just as you would imagine water would look if it were puddling in low depressions in the ground. It is also free of dust and other detritus, suggesting that if it is water or ice, it formed recently. Levin has previously theorised that water might exist briefly on the surface in a regular daily cycle, evaporating away as the day progresses. This however is a very contentious theory, as it would require some very precise circumstances to come about. It is worth mentioning that Levin's father Gilbert Levin was one of the scientists on the old Viking missions to Mars, which found no official evidence for life, though both father and son have been vigorous proponents of the idea that the scientific instruments on Viking did find life, but the results were incorrectly interpreted. I mention this because Levin may well have an axe to grind here, and just as conspiracy theorists are constantly finding signs of an ancient civilisation on Mars, this may be a case of the eye seeing what the mind wants it to see. However, it is equally fair to say that the picture is compelling, so here is hoping that NASA is open minded enough to take a look at this, and have Spirit and Opportunity keep their cameras trained for further examples. As Levin has pointed out, it only requires that they poke the surface with the Rover’s drilling tool to test out his theory. If it’s water, then the drill will make no visible impression. If it’s anything else, it will leave a mark.

ESA Mars rover talks inconclusive

The ExoMars mission to Mars has been the subject of intense discussion over the last few days, as European Space Agency delegates attempt to finalise the design for the ambitious probe. At the heart of the discussion is the proposal by mission scientists to beef up the mission in order to address several worries they have. The most costly change is the request to send a combined orbiter and lander configuration, a proposal driven by several imperatives. For one thing, scientists are concerned that without an orbiter to relay data back to Earth, the ExoMars mission will be relying on American orbiting hardware for the crucial link home, and another failure such as recently befell Mars Global Surveyor would be catastrophic. Equally concerning, a recent change to the launch date from 2011 to December 2013 now means ExoMars would arrive in 2014, at a time of increased dust storm activity. Without an orbiter to wait out the storms, the lander would have to risk a perilous descent in these conditions. These changes mean a far bigger payload requiring a more powerful launch vehicle. That all adds up to substantial cost increases, and that means the member nations of the ESA will have to dig a lot deeper into their pockets to fund it. The worry is that some ESA members may decide to cut and run, threatening the entire project, which is a key plank of highly ambitious European plans to explore and eventually return material from Mars. The discussions to date appear to be veering toward acceptance of the more expensive option, but a final decision has been deferred to a later meeting on June 11th.

Spirit digs up more evidence for water

It was an entirely accidental event, but when a gummed up wheel on the Spirit rover scuffed up some Martian dirt it revealed something that literally had NASA scientists gasping with amazement. Beneath the regular dirty red Martian earth was a layer of intensely bright material, which analysis revealed to be extremely high in silica, so much in fact (90 percent) that it almost certainly required water to produce. One possible origin for the silica may have been volcanic activity, with the silica brought about through the interaction of water, the soil, and acid vapours from the volcano. The material could also have formed in water in a hot spring environment. Either way, it offers yet more compelling evidence for a high water presence on Mars in the past, and that can only increase speculation that Mars may once have enjoyed an environment much closer to Earth than it does today.

Garden from Mars wins at Chelsea

The Chelsea Flower Show is an institution in Britain amongst dedicated gardeners. For one week in May, the cream of the countries garden designers descend on London to show off their skills, but this year something a little odder has landed. "600 Days with Bradstone" is the title of a garden designed by Sarah Eberle for a 600 day stay on Mars, and it's scooped the top Gold award for 2007 and "best in show." Sitting beneath an imaginary dome, the garden is divided into two distinct parts. At one end of the garden is a section designed to draw water from the Martian permafrost; at the other a section designed with the mental well being of the astronauts in mind. The design of the garden has been closely modelled on Mars, and even the plants have been picked for their likely survival properties in the harsh Martian environment. Alas all the tickets are gone, but for more detail on the winning garden, you can visit the website of the Royal British Horticultural Society or take a look at the official 600 days with Bradstone website.

Big bang makes splat on Mars

The Spirit rover, incredibly still working on Mars over 1000 days after its arrival, has made another important discovery, spotting what appears to be a "bomb sag." This may not sound terribly interesting, but to a geologist, this is heady stuff. A bomb sag is a kind of material formed in volcanic explosions on Earth. Rock is ejected up by the explosion and then falls into soft deposits, deforming as it lands. Spirit has snapped just such an object, preserved in layered rocks on the lower slopes of a plateau called Home Plate. Also spotted by Spirit are signs in the surrounding rock of of tiny spherical particles that look like accretionary lapilli. These are coagulated bits of ash that typically rain down after a volcanic explosion, so the evidence suggests that this was a genuine volcanic explosion, rather than the fallout from a meteor strike. What has the scientists interested is that they are seeing lots of evidence from photographs snapped from orbit that this sort of feature is very common, so it looks like Mars had a very violent past. Additional evidence places water at the scene as well. There is for instance a great deal of chlorine evident, which points toward the presence of a briny fluid, and it looks like the bomb sag landed with a splat. The fact that the material it sits on is basalt is also telling. Basalt is not normally associated with explosions, except when it meets water and you then get a steam-driven blast.

Phoenix Mars Lander arrives at Kennedy Space Centre

The August launch of the Phoenix Mars Lander has taken another important step forward with the arrival of the craft at the Kennedy Space Centre, where it will be prepared for a launch on August 3rd. The Phoenix lander is the latest in a series of probes built on the mantra of "follow the water." Equipped with a robotic digging tool, it is hoped the probe will touch down on a Martian ice plain, but at a time of year when the ice will have receded sufficiently so as to have revealed fresh soil. The probe comes equipped with a number of scientific instruments that may solve one of the big mysteries of mars; what happened to all the water scientists think the planet was once blessed with. Amongst the experiments planned, soil will be dissolved to look for salt deposited in ancient floods and an oven will be used to break down samples for chemical analysis. The mission is planned to last 3 months, but on past experience, there is every chance the lander may last longer.

MoonTwins mission paves way to Mars

Aerospace company Astrium is working at the request of the European Space Agency on a two probe mission to the Moon, and is being promoted as a proving flight for technologies required for a Mars sample return mission. The MoonTwins mission (Moon Technological Walk-through and In-situ Network Science) would be launched together on the same rocket, but split up in Earth orbit for independent travel to the Moon. Once in lunar orbit, the probes would first practice linking up (a crucial part of any mission to retrieve material from Mars) and then descend seperately to the surface. One of the probes would likely be targeted for the so called Peak of Eternal Light, close to the rim of Shackleton crater. This is thought of as an excellent potential target for human settlement due to its near continuous exposure to sunlight, important for power generation. More detail on this story can be found at the bbc.

Fond farewell to Mars Global Surveyor

It operated for 4 times longer than expected and returned a stunning array of data, but on November 2nd 2006, the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft made its last call home to Earth. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has now released the preliminary conclusions of a report by an internal review board, and it appears the reason for the failure may have its origins in a computer mistake made 5 months previously. A routine update in September 2005 sent to onboard computers caused inconsistencies in the spacecraft's memory. When engineers tried to fix the problem they compounded the error by sending further incorrect software commands, and then did not catch these new mistakes because the existing procedures to do so were inadequate. The spacecraft continued to function, but on November 2nd, the spacecraft was ordered to perform a routine adjustment of its solar panels which triggered a series of alarms. Though it then reported that the situation had stabilised, the spacecraft re-orientated to an angle that exposed one of two batteries carried on the spacecraft to direct sunlight. This caused the battery to overheat and in turn caused the 2nd battery to degrade. By now the spacecrafts antenna were unaligned with Earth and so the spacecraft could not report its plight to ground controllers, which sealed its fate.

The report points no specific finger of blame as the team followed procedures correctly, (which were themselves flawed), and JPL rightly emphasises the successes of Mars Global Surveyor. The mission was undoubtedly a spectacular success, with the highlight been a series of before and after images of gullies on Mars which appeared to show strong evidence that water had run on the surface in just the last few years. Other discoveries include the identification of the remnants of a magnetic field which would have shielded Mars from deadly cosmic rays and Laser altimeter measurements that produced an incredibly detailed topographic map of the planet.

Aliens smell the coffee

The Grover's Mill Coffee co is looking to purchase 163 Cranbury Road in Grover's Mill in order to turn it into a War Of The Worlds themed Coffeehouse. West Windsor Councilman Franc Gambatese and his wife and business partner Mickey DeFranco were in attendance at Thursday's Zoning Board of Adjustment meeting to seek use variances for the 163 Cranbury Road site. The Grover's Mill Coffee co has cleverly associated itself with the hamlet famous as the landing site for the Martians in the Orson Welles panic radio broadcast of 1938, and even arranged on one occasion for Ann Robinson (star of the 1953 movie) to visit. The Princeton Packet has more information on the meeting (which ended inconclusively) and you can check out the Grover's Mill Coffee co website here. For more on Grover's Mill itself, click here. Best of luck to the Grover's Mill Coffee co on this great idea.

Go to Mars without leaving home

I particularly like that on the list of qualities required of candidates volunteering to spend 500 days on a simulated trip to Mars, under the heading "Requirements for investigators-volunteers" you are requested to list your "bad habits". Is this a call for candour, or are the organisers actually hoping to find some intolerable person to relieve the boredom? It would be fun to think that telling them you snore or seldom wash might actually be as good a qualification as a degree in astrophysics. After all, if astronauts really are to go to Mars and spend 500 days away from Earth in a tiny tin can of a space ship, they are going to have to learn the patience of saints, unless of course this is really a secret reality TV show. In fact, this is a very serious attempt to figure out how people will cope on such an arduous trip. Six candidates will spend at least 520 days (perhaps 700) cooped up on the Mars-500 mission. Communications with the outside world will even be time delayed to simulate the increasing lag as the "ship" travels away from the Earth. So far, over 120 people from 21 countries including Argentina, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Estonia, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Ukraine have applied for the jobs. If you fancy signing up, you can visit the official site here.

Red Star for Red Planet

China is confirmed to supply a micro-satellite for a planned Russian mission to Mars in 2009. The strange sounding Phobos-Grunt mission (the Grunt means soil as the mission is also intended to return a sample from the Martian moon Phobos) is the first Russian mission to Mars since they lost a probe in 1996 to a booster failure. The China-Russia deal was actually first reported last year, but the deal was only formally inked during Chinese President Hu Jintao's current visit to Moscow. If all goes according to plan, after entering Mars' orbit, the Chinese micro-satellite will be detached from the Russian spacecraft, and probe the Martian space environment. The "Phobos Explorer" spacecraft, will also carry some equipment developed by the Hong Kong Polytechnic.

Caves on Mars

Potential openings to large caves have been spotted on the Martian surface. Glen Cushing, from the US Geological Survey (USGS) in Flagstaff, Arizona has reported on the findings, which he spotted in THEMIS (Mars Odyssey's Thermal Emission Imaging System) images of the Arsia Mons region near the equator of Mars. The caves (if caves they are) were given away by what look to be collapsed roofs, with the holes ranging in size from 100 to 252 metres. Several of the dark spots have been probed using thermal infrared imaging which reveals their temperature to be suspiciously consistent at any time of day or night. This suggests the dark spots are not simply pits, which would have sunlit sides and nor do they have the expected telltale rays of ejected dust that would indicate an impact origin. If they are indeed caves, then they may contain water in stable conditions, in which case their existence would be very beneficial to any future long term manned missions to Mars. The caves would make ideal ready-made dwellings for the astronauts, unless of course … they’re already occupied. More at nature.com.

Ice boosts terraforming dream

One of the abiding dreams of science fiction writers and space scientists is the idea of turning Mars into a planet capable of supporting life on an Earth-like scale. This dream now looks a step closer to reality (though we probably couldn’t do it anytime in the next few hundred years) with the confirmation that huge new deposits of ice water have been discovered on Mars. In fact, Mars's southern polar ice cap contains enough water to flood the entire planet approximately 36 feet deep if melted. Radar measurements from the Mars Express orbiter have found ice fields that are up to 2.2 miles (3,500 meters) thick in places. Equally intriguingly, the ice is very pure, with only about 10 percent dust contamination. Yet this still only accounts for a small percentage of the original water volumes thought to once exist on Mars. Either it is still there, locked up beneath the surface in as yet undiscovered places, or it has leaked slowly away into space through the thin Martian atmosphere. But the more water is discovered, the more plausible becomes the idea that we might one day be able to melt it and start the stupendous job of creating a second Earth in the solar system.

Martian Civilisation: Proof at last

Mars is warming up says NASA, and the climate change denial lobby is having a field day, claiming that this proves that a warmer Earth is simply part of a solar system wide process caused by increased radiation levels from the sun. Well I think they are dangerously, disastrously wrong, and we should all be really very worried indeed. We all know of course that the Martian civilisation retreated underground centuries ago, and clearly their War Machine is now cranking up production. Secret underground factories are even now at full capacity, cranking out thousands of Cylinders and Tripods. All that waste heat has to go somewhere, so I would implore NASA to turn their resources to seeking out the thermal vents used by the Martians to dissipate the waste heat. Then we can launch a pre-emptive strike on these hidden factories, before they can deploy their Weapons Of Mass Destruction against us.

Well, if you’ll believe that, you’ll believe anything, but climate change deniers are asking people to swallow an equally outrageous whopper. It is absolutely true that NASA have said “"for three Mars summers in a row, deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near Mars' south pole have shrunk from the previous year's size, suggesting a climate change in progress” but this does not imply that Earth and Mars are suffering the same shared effect.

There are far more differences than similarities between Earth and Mars to start making grand comparisons like this. To begin with, the changes have been observed around the South Polar Cap, and not the entire planet, so this is hardly conclusive evidence of a planet wide effect. We must also consider the impact of the eccentricity of the Martian orbit combined with its obliquity (the angle of its spin axis to the orbital plane), which means that it not only periodically swings closer to the Sun (perihelion), but also wobbles in its orbit. As a result the climate is prone too much greater seasonal swings than we experience on Earth. This effect is also exacerbated by the lack of a large moon to dampen down the wobble. Then there are also things like seasonal dust storms to consider, which are large and long lasting enough to swing temperatures through several degrees of variation.

So there are plenty of alternative reasons for the observed warming on Mars, but please do what I did to write this posting. Go out and research the facts and make up your own mind. The information is out there and pretty easy to find. Here’s a good start at RealClimate.org which does a much better job of summarising the flaws in the Mars climate change argument than I can.

Rosetta Mars flyby

The Rosetta comet rendezvous mission has made a gravity assist manoeuvre around Mars, using a close pass of the planet to boost it toward its destination, Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The probe switched on the camera aboard Rosetta's Philae lander (which will be attempting the first landing on a comet in May 2014) just four minutes before the spacecraft reached closest approach to the Red Planet. It returned some stunning images, including one showing elements of the Rosetta probe itself with the planet 1000 kilometres below, plus some nice images showing traces of the Martian atmosphere taken by the OSIRIS wide-angle camera. In addition, the ROMAP instrument was also switched on, collecting data about the magnetic environment of Mars. The approach gave mission scientists the first chance to switch the Philae lander into fully autonomous mode, completely relying on the power of its own batteries. Full story at the Rosetta site.

Candor Chasma had a watery past

Yet more persuasive evidence has arrived from Mars supporting the theory that the planet had a very wet past indeed. Newly analysed images from Europe's Mars Express orbiter show an area known as Candor Chasma, a small part of the great Martian rift valley Valles Marineris. The Valles Marineris is as long as the United States and in places plunges miles down, but in the Candor Chasma region, scientists have spotted some intriguing geological features. Seen in the images is a hilly landscape composed of alternating bands of light and dark coloured rock. It could have been wind or volcanic forces which forged these features, but water (and water in vast quantities) seems the most likely agent. Further supporting this contention, the striped landscape also boasts a network of cracks, known as joints. These are surrounded by prominent haloes of bleached rock. The same features have been identified here on Earth and what this seems to indicate, say a team from the University of Arizona, is "a clear indication of chemical interactions between fluids circulating within the fracture and the host rock". Most promisingly, these features are millions of years old and have been exposed slowly by the elements. Locked underground at the time the water was present in liquid form, this would have provided a very hospitable place for primitive life to take hold. The BBC has the full story.