Mars Photos

I know this really isn't an article, but it's worth taking a look at. I got this from the New York Times. It's an interactive site that allows you to look at recent pictures taken by the Reconnaissance Orbiter. Take a look. It allows you to move around the pictures and get a close up view. There is a paper edition of it, but its not as fun. I'll bring it to class on Wednesday, if you guys want to take a look.

Carbon Dioxide Reservoirs

Due to calculations involving the likely amount of water and carbon dioxide once present on Mars' surface, and the amount that could have been stripped away by solar wind, scientists theorize that there should be large water and carbon dioxide reservoirs somewhere on Mars (they're hoping right beneath the surface). This would be a good thing for both colonization and in regards to the CO2, possibly heating up Mars with the release of this greenhouse gas. Of course, if there's water, there might be life. ]

And while finding articles, I came across a The Onion article concerning the Mars rover Spirit. It's actually pretty funny.

NASA Funds Search for Past Life on Mars

http://www.physorg.com/news88356428.html

NASA announced on thursday that it would work with the UCSB to develop and mass spectrometer that would search for remnant life on mars. The spectrometer is expected to by placed on mars in 2013.

The Mars Society and Enterprise Mission Websites

The Mars Society website is very interesting. It is a private, political organization trying to convince congress to send a manned mission to Mars. To have a society entirely devoted to such an endeavor, surprised me. I just wouldn't have thought enough people would be that motivated to do such a thing. The content of the website looks very professional. It is not flashy like Space.com, but it has more information. There are a ton of scholarly articles about Mars that you can access. A lot of them have to do with Martian life and sending a manned mission there, but they are still interesting. The articles by Zubrin on the site are well thought out. They are far from mainstream interests, but they bring up interesting points. All in all, the website provides some useful information about Mars and if you really want to help or just know about the status of a manned Mars mission, this is the place to go.

The Enterprise Mission website on first glance looks, well sketchy. Even the name of the site (a subtle tribute to Star Trek) is a little too outlandish to take seriously. On further reading, my initial impression was not altered. The site is a collection of some truths and a lot of wild ideas about Mars. These people believe we are going to Mars, but what they think we will find is ridiculous. Hoagland's writings are just as bad as the rest of the site. They are full of unsubstantiated conjectures and improbable ideas. If you are a very credible person, you might believe him, but I am not one of those people. Any site that starts talking about a government conspiracy, especially in relation to alien life, just loses all credibility. Hoagland may be a real scientist, but this site he is supporting is not good science.

I would characterize the two sites as two ends of the spectrum of Mars websites. The Mars Society is very cautious, but active in getting new research done so that theories can be proven (or not). The Enterprise Mission spouts tons of theories, but does not seem to be doing anything to prove them. To use a very apt analogy, if the Mars Society is Newsweek, the Enterprise Mission is Weekly World News. The Enterprise Mission may have some valid facts buried on its site, but I just cannot take it seriously. I may visit the Mars Society website again, the same is not true of the Enterprise Mission, if I can help it.

Mars Rover may Have to Dig to Find Life on Mars

NASA has concluded that so far, no life has been found on the surface of Mars. However, there is still hope: digging underground.

Hubble Telescope, NOOO!

NASA reported today that the Hubble telescope's main camera has been shut down, and that they have little plans to repair it anytime soon. Started in March of 2002, the Hubble telescope was expected to last for 5 years (almost made it!) and NASA reports that it plans to install better equipment sometime next year.

Who needs people anyway?

Last week this story was released about new software for Opritunity and Spirit's autonomous driving capabilities. Until now, their ability to pilot themselves was limited to "one or two steps" at a time, but with this new software they can trace out their own paths to destinations up to 50m away! This technological advance will increase the autonomy of the rovers, and reduce the amount of attention their drivers will have to spend piloting.

Relativity and Orbiting Satellites

Einstein's theory of General and Special Relativity will definitely need to be taken into account both traveling to and living on mars. This article discusses the relativistic calculations and considerations taken into account just for orbiting satellites.

A Green Valley for Phoenix

The Phoenix Mars Mission, a collaborative mission between Arizona State University and NASA, is the first of the Mars Scout class landers. It is specially designed to dig under the Martian surface to discover the composition of the hydrogen rich compound that gamma ray imaging showed to be just under the surface at the poles. Everyone is hoping the ice is going to be made up of water, but that's what Phoenix is all about. The first landing site that had been chosen has been shown to be covered in lander-sized boulders, and is now an unsatisfactorily risky landing site. The next most promising site, nick-named the Green Valley, is a very shallow valley near the north pole. The article deals with how they used the images from both the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Mars Global Surveyor to determine the risks involved in the previously selected landing site, and how they're using the data still coming in about the other possible sites to figure out the best place to land.

Mars Rover Get New Software

So this article is probably not of great interest to anyone, but what it signifies for the future is actually important. Giving the rover software that lets it plan out a path, even for a short distance, is the beginning of truly unmanned spacecraft. The software gives the rover a very small bit of intelligence. I would think this would increase the odds of it not doing anything liable to destroy itself. It should also cut down on the cost of such missions, because there would be fewer people who would have to guide the spacecraft so that it didn't kill itself. Maybe NASA could use the extra money to better analyze the data coming from such a craft. Anyway, while the article is pretty surface, it is a promising set for research in outer space.

Heavy-Lift Helicopter Inspires NASA’s New Mars Lander

This article talks about how the Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane heavy-lift helicopter is the inspiration behind the delivery system of the new Mars Lander. The new lander is simply to massive to be delivered to Mars using the airbag landing technique used in the past so NASA had to come up with something new and here are the results.

The Last Place on Earth...

I've found an interesting article in the current popular science that plays on the idea of our first lecture topic, "the last place on earth". All of the unmanned space explorers are first tested on Earth first and there's a new one to add to the list. What makes this one so exciting? You'll have to read the article to find out! Here's the short of it though, this new robot designed to explore underwater caves on the Earth is one of the first fully autonomous robots that is able to cope with decision manking on it's own based on new self-awareness technology. The really interesting part of the article isn't the robot though, but the man who invented it. To find out more have a peek.

New Horizons Gains Speed from Jupiter

While this article has nothing to do with Mars directly, it talks about a method of gaining speed that will most likely be needed in order to send people to Mars. In some way or other, getting to Mars will probably involve using the Moon, either to land on it and relaunch or use its gravity for a speed boost. New Horizon's flyby of Jupiter will give the craft speed while also giving the added benefit of being able to carry out research. In particular, the magnetotail will be studied for the first time, which may reveal some interesting facts about the nature of gravity amongst the planets. It's quite a convenient situation that getting to Pluto requires a close pass of Jupiter along the way.

Phoenix, the Newest Martian Lander

This article gives a nice overview of the new Martian lander, Phoenix, set to launch in August. It does not say that much about the specs, but it points out some interesting details of the landing mechanism, which look very tricky. There's going to be a lot of room for catastrophic error in getting this little guy to the surface in one piece. The article also notes that no landing site has been chosen due to the discovery of rocky terrain in the target area. To me, it seems a little late in the game to be finding out that there's a problem with getting a landing site. After all, it's set to launch in seven months.

Mars Attacked by Solar Wind

http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/8/9/14/1

Here is an article that shows the different effects that the solar wind has on mars as compared to the earth, due to the lack of a magnetic field. The article is a few years old, but it is still pretty interesting. For those of you who have seen the movie "The Core," this article reminded me of that.

The Space Elevator

http://www.space.com/businesstechnoloy/technology/space_elevator_020327-1.html

I heard of this idea in a business magazine as the future commercial ideas dealing with space. Imagine a giant tederball connected to the earth swinging in syncronous orbit somewhere. This is a simple concept of physics that would cut down the energy of sending objects into space dramatically. Sweet! This I think is the most practical, exciting and inevitable thing to happen in the near future.

NASA Selects Proposals for Future Mars Missions

NASA Selected Proposals for Future Mars Missions and Studies two weeks ago, for a mission that will be leaving in 2011 and have a relatively low budget. The proposals all center around either the chemical composition of the atmosphere, including organic compounds, oxidants, and other molecules in the atmosphere or a more general understanding of the processes in the upper atmosphere. Personally, I think that the composition of the atmosphere is at the point more important in being able to develop possible ways to derive a subsistence on Mars. The weather can be more of a concern once the basics of living on Mars are developed to the degree that weather might affect the more delicate processes.

Human Error May Have Doomed Mars Probe

http://www.physorg.com/news87716806.html

Here is an article from about a week ago that talks about some of the problems from the Mars Global Surveyor that broke last year, after being in orbit for 10 years. I dont usually think of the people that are controlling the satelites and the rovers, so its amazing to think that a little human error could permanently break a probe that had been in orbit for so long. The article doesnt say how long the surveyor was expected to work for, so i was wondering how many more years they expected it to work for.

Bernie's Sorry Attempt at Namedroppping

Hi Folks:

This article, "Significant milestone for Columbus flight readiness", is about an upcoming space shuttle flight, set for Ooctober or November of this year.

Although he's not mentioned in the article, one of the astronauts flying this mission is Stanley Love, a friend of mine from my graduate school days. This is his first mission since becoming an astronaunt in 1998(!).

Go Stan!

First Post

This blog will report on Mars and the physical sciences (engineering, astronomy, spaceflight and spacecraft).