Items tagged with mars
Some nighttime sky watchers will be privy to seeing a lunar occultation tonight, as the Moon passes in front of Mars. While the viewing of the occultation will be limited, many others will still be able to witness a conjunction or close approach of the pair of celestial objects.
A lunar occultation happens when the...
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Rolls-Royce, a company well known for its luxury vehicles, teased a nuclear reactor on its Twitter account that could power a moonbase, or space travel to Mars and beyond. The company also announced its partnership with the UK Space Agency for a study to look into nuclear power for space exploration.
While the race...
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NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured an image of the Red Planet's surface that resembles that of a bear's face. The image was taken with the High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Since arriving in Mars' orbit in 2006, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has...
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NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will partner on developing a new nuclear thermal rocket engine to be used for space travel. The Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) program, is a non-reimbursable agreement that outlines roles, responsibilities, and processes aimed...
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NASA's Perseverance Mars rover caught the first-ever audio of a Martian dust devil while its weather sensors and left navigation were in operation. The dust devil passed directly over the rover on September 27, 2021.
Capturing a Martian dust devil is no easy feat. In order to do so, rovers like Perseverance and...
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NASA's Mars InSight Lander measured the largest Marsquake yet, with a magnitude of nearly 5 and lasting for almost ten hours. All six of the largest measurements recorded have occurred since the middle of 2021.
On the night of May 4, the Mars InSight Lander seismometer detected a quake on Mars which was at least 5...
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With 2022 coming to a close, sky-watchers will have a few celestial light shows to look forward to. This year will close out with the Full Cold Moon, the Geminid Meteor Shower, and more cosmic events.
On December 7th, the Sun's light will fully light up the Moon for the final time this year. This full Moon is...
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NASA's Perseverance rover recently began exploring an area on Mars with the potential of finding organics and biosignatures. The rover is currently in Yori Pass, an area said to be rich in sandstone.
There has been no shortage of exciting events this year in terms of exploring all that lies beyond our home planet...
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NASA's Mars InSight lander captured the sound from a large meteoroid impact back in December of 2021. The spacecraft recorded the first audio of a meteoroid impacting another planet back in September, 2021.
On December 24, 2021, the Mars InSight lander felt the ground beneath it shake. InSight's team later...
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In order to test for possible micrometeorites impacting a spacecraft, NASA is utilizing a 2-stage light gas gun to simulate potential hazards for future space missions. The test fires a bullet with a speed that is equal to 25 times the velocity of a 44 magnum, or like flying from New York to San Francisco in five...
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ESA's Mars Express captured a rare moment, when Mars' moon Deimos passed in front of Jupiter and its four largest moons. The footage precedes the European Space Agency's upcoming launch of the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer next year.
Since launching in 2003, Mars Express has been able to create the most complete map...
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A dust storm 2,175 miles (3,500 kilometers) in size, has been wreaking a bit of havoc on NASA's InSight Mars lander. The storm was first spotted on September 21, 2022, by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). While the enormous storm did not have an immediate impact on the Mars lander, on October 3 the team noticed...
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NASA's Ingenuity helicopter's navigation camera captured the spacecraft picking up a small piece of foreign object debris (FOD) on one of its landing legs. Moments later, the debris could be seen drifting away.
The foreign debris on the landing leg of the helicopter is not the first that has been spotted on the red...
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NASA's InSight lander has captured the first audio of a meteoroid impacting another planet, and it sounds quite different than one might imagine. The lander's seismometer has been able to pick up vibrations from four separate impacts in the past two years.
InSight first landed on the Red Planet in 2018. Since its...
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NASA's Webb telescope captures first images and spectra of the Red Planet, revealing data beneath the planet's blinding light. The new information will be used along with other data collected by orbiters, rovers, and other telescopes to reveal more about Mars.
While the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is located...
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NASA's Mars Perseverance rover has been busy collecting rock-core samples in an area thought by scientists to be ideal for finding ancient signs of microbial life on Mars. The rover has also been taking some extraordinary pictures along the way.
Perseverance is in its second science campaign, following a...
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NASA's Mars Perseverance rover is preparing to make its way to a site that "enchanted" the space agency's science team when the rover first visited the site back in April of this year. But first, the team will be trying to figure out what two pieces of foreign object debris (FOD) found on one of the rover's coring...
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NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has made it to its 10th anniversary of being on the Red Planet. Despite showing its age with some wear and tear, the spacecraft is about to enter into a new phase of its mission as it prepares to climb a mountain.
It may seem hard to believe that Curiosity has been on Mars for ten years...
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The mystery of how a concentrated chunk of a rare mineral on Mars came to be located in Gale Crater may be solved. Researchers have published a scenario that could explain the 2016 discovery of tridymite by NASA's Curiosity rover.
NASA continues to study the surface of Mars ahead of future manned missions to the...
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Photos from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express spacecraft show two ruptures in the surface of Mars that dwarf that of the Grand Canyon here on Earth. Valles Marineris is almost ten times longer, twenty times wider, and five times deeper than the Grand Canyon.
The images from the James Webb Space...
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An image resembling a bit of leftover space spaghetti won the people's vote for Perseverance's "Image of the Week". The photo raises questions about how missions to the Red Planet could present issues in the future.
NASA's Perseverance rover has captured quite a few interesting images during its mission on the Red...
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NASA has plans to retrieve samples the Perseverance rover has collected from the surface of Mars and bring them back to Earth to be studied. These unsterilized samples have some pandemic weary people worried, however, about exactly what might be brought back.
The Perseverance rover has been busy since landing on...
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