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To celebrate Earth Day (April 22) this year, NASA invites everyone to share views of Earth with the world — and to tack up artists' perspectives of our home planet on their walls.
Does a Space Race to Mars Exist? | Opinion
Once it became clear that SpaceX was not going bankrupt any time soon, and kept talking about building a spacecraft system to take cargo and persons to Mars and back, Boeing jumped in and said “we’ll beat you there!” (What they actually said was something like “the first astronaut on Mars will get there on a Boeing rocket.)
Under Obama, NASA had a detailed human-exploration-of-Mars plan, which included the Boeing-led rocket design—that’s the only reason Boeing would attempt a super-heavy-lift booster, if NASA gave them a cost-plus contract to do it. But Trump immediately canceled that plan (can’t admit any goal of the Obama administration might have been good, after all) so the Boeing booster—creatively re-named the Space Launch System, or “SLS”—is still moving slowly forward. Just not pointed at Mars.
Other space agencies have Mars mission plans too, most notably the CNSA (China’s space agency). But they don’t seem to have much Mars-mission traction right now. They are focusing on small space stations and improving their Earth-to-LEO and Earth-to-Moon human spaceflight; once they have got that down pat, I have no doubt they will be ready to join a “race to Mars” if there is one …in the 2040s or later.
A number of NGOs are pushing for humans to go to Mars someday, too. Mars One gets a lot of press, but many doubt their dedication to the goal, and it doesn’t really have any traction or potential traction anyway.
The Mars Society is the most impressive of the NGOs pushing toward Mars. It is certainly dedicated and chock full of brilliant scientists, engineers, and grad students and post-docs doing real research, but the Society itself is not funded well enough to actually build the major hardware.
So, really, the “race to Mars” is Elon Musk vs a “low-probability but extreme-consequence” extinction event. Boeing and Lockheed could compete if they cared to do so, although I think shareholders would freak out at the prospect and mutiny. The Mars Society would compete if it were able to do so, but it simply doesn’t have the financial backing or really the organization to do so: it’s an advocacy and education group that also does creative research & development, not an aerospace firm or a space agency. The ESA, JAXA, NASA, and Roscosmos might compete if a compelling political imperative arose.
But right now, it’s really just lonely Elon and the hardworking tribe of engineers at SpaceX who are actually, slowly but surely, making progress toward Mars.
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TOPIC:Celebrate Earth Day with NASA's Terra Tools and Posters
The agency recently gathered several Earth Day posters on one handy website, allowing people to download artists' impressions of a boat among sea creatures, a person relaxing by a lake and a face artfully made up of plants, among other scenes.
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Scientists working on NASA's next mission to Mars will visit Cal Poly
Scientists and engineers working on NASA's next mission to Mars will visit Cal Poly Saturday as part of the InSight Mission Roadshow.
The mission is led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and will be the first to study Mars' deep interior. InSight's launch could occur as early as May 5 from Vandenberg Air Force Base — the first interplanetary mission to launch from the West Coast.
InSight stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, according to a school news release. It is expected to land on Mars on Nov. 26.
Featured speaker Troy Lee Hudson is scheduled to give a presentation about how the InSight robotic lander will "help scientists make comparisons between seismic activity on Earth and Mars."
ANCIENT LAKES ON MARS DRIED UP BILLIONS OF YEARS AGO, STUDY CONCLUDES
ReplyDeleteA study published Thursday confirmed that the cracks identified on Mars' surface last year by the Curiosity rover are indeed evidence of ancient lakes that likely dried up about 3.5 billion years ago. The new study provides further evidence of what the climate on the Red Planet may have been like in its ancient past.
The study, published online in Geology, proved that cracks on Mars' surface previously photographed by Curiosity are indeed desiccation mudcracks which could have only been formed when wet sediment was exposed to the air. This conclusion was based on an analysis of a single area of rock known as “Old Soaker.”
Researchers used the Curiosity rover and data from its many tools, Researchers used the Curiosity rover and data from its many tools, particularly the Mars Hand Lens Imager, ChemCam Laser Induced Breakdown Spectrometer (LIBS) and the Alpha-Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) to study both the physical appearance and the chemistry of the rock, which is described as no bigger than a coffee table.
Mars once had ancient oceans. A photo of the Valles Marineris on Mars. NASA/Arizona State University via Getty Images
Related: Flowing Water On Mars? Groundbreaking NASA Discovery Was Just Sand And Dust Avalanches
The analysis revealed that cracks on the rocks were formed by exposure to air, rather than heat or the flow of water. In addition, the shape of the cracks suggests the occurrence of a single drying event on the planet, rather than multiple cycles of the planet getting wet and drying over. The position of the cracks, closer to the center of the ancient lake rather than along the edges, also suggests that the lake levels changed often, rising and falling dramatically over time.
"The mudcracks are exciting because they add context to our understanding of this ancient lacustrine system," lead study author Nathaniel Stein, a geologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said in a statement, referring to the ancient lake system on the planet.
Scientists have known of the existence of ancient water on Mars for years. A 2015 NASA study that measured water signatures in Mars’ atmosphere suggested that ancient oceans may once have had more water than our own Arctic Ocean. However, because the planet has less gravity and a thinner atmosphere than Earth, this water evaporated into space over the course of several billion years.
Water still exists on Mars in the form of ice. In 2015, NASA scientists found a slab of ice just beneath Mars' surface that was estimated to be as big as California and Texas combined.
Some have even suggested that there may still be liquid water flowing on Mars. In 2015 NASA announced that dark features that appeared to be running down slopes on Mars were running water. However, more recent research suggests that these darker slopes are just sand.