Aeroshell

When sending a rover on voyage from Earth to Mars there is definitely room for improvement in EDL technology (Entry, Landing, and Descent). One piece of technology that aids in all three of these components is the Aeroshell. The Aeroshell is… well a shell, that surrounds the Lander, serving as both a shield and a navigating device.
The aeroshell is composed of two cone shaped pieces, the heat shield . When entering into Martian atmosphere the vesicle is exposed to a tremendous amount of heat, it is the flat front shell that protects Lander from burning up. Also the shell acts as a break due to the flat surface of the shell, the craft will slow down when it is exposed to atmospheric pressure. The back shell contains multiple gadgets which all aid in landing and descent, including a parachute, a Litton LN-200 Inertial Measuring unit, and a set of RAD and TIRS rockets.
For more details on the aeroshell visit http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/mission/spacecraft_edl_aeroshell.html.

First Image From Phoenix

This short article provides the first image received from the Mars Phoenix Lander which is now in transit to Mars. The image was taken as part of several tests done on the lander before it touches down on the surface in May of next year. The image, taken using the camera's red LED lamp, is in grayscale but has been artificially colored to give it a true appearance. The image shows the lander's robotic arm which will be used for digging into the Martian surface in order to collect water samples.



http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/rac_image.php

NASA to develop space nuclear power

This week, NASA announced that it developing a project to put space nuclear power to use by 2013. Using nuclear power with launch vehicles would make transit times substantially shorter when traveling through space. Some people, however, are worried that using nuclear power on a spacecraft could turn in to a disaster if something goes wrong with the launch. The main goal behind the program is to make it much easier and more feasible to send probes to far places in our solar system - like the Kuiper belt and to the moons around Jupiter, Neptune, and Saturn. It is thought that moons like Jupiter's Europa or Saturn's Titan could have some form of life on them. Europa is icy and could have life beneath the surface of some kind, while Titan has a surprisingly dense atmosphere. It sounds like we might find out within a few years.

X-ray Pulsars Used for Interplanetary Navigation

This is a cool little link to an article on a new technology for interplanetary navigation. It proposes to use high power high precision x-ray pulsars to mimic a GPS-like system of navigation. It is accurate up to around 1km which is very good in terms of the vastness of space however that could only help you to avoid large objects such as planets and would be unsatisfactory for calculating exact orbits and trajectories to land something on another planet such as MARS! The project is being conducted by a firm called Microcosm and it is being done with funding from NASA. Its official name is X-Ray Pulsar Positioning System (XPPS).

Dawn Spacecraft Finally Begins 8-Year Journey

An article yesterday from space.com discussed the launch of Dawn (seen above), a spacecraft which will discover secrets of planetary formation from asteroids Vesta and Ceres. The principal investigator for Dawn, Chris Russell, has been working on this project since 1992, when he envisioned the mission using its efficient ion drive. 15 years later, Dawn has survived pretty much every delay possible. From solar array dings to weather delays to rocket booster and launch tracking issues, the mission's current cost is about $357.5 million.


Dawn will held for a February 2009 flyby of Mars before it reaches its first target, the rocket asteroid Vesta, in August 2011. The probe's Xenon ion propulsion system (as seen above) will guide it into orbit around Vesta for about a year, before sending it to the icy dwarf planet Ceres (the largest space rock in the asteroid belt, seen below) in February 2015. "The spacecraft is safe, it is healthy and there's not a single [major] issue aboard," said Keyur Patel, the project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, after the successful launch. By Friday morning, Dawn is expected to have passed the orbit of the moon as it continues to fly toward the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. "Every time we launch a spacecraft, they all have their own personalities," Patel said, "And what we're about to discover is what kind of personality Dawn has; whether it's going to be a well-behaved child, or someone that's slightly naughty."

Opportunity Reaches Victoria Crater

Late Tuesday, NASA scientists learned that the Mars Rover Opportunity (MRO) has reached its first destination, the Victoria Crater which is 800 meters wide. The crater, reached after the 1305^th martian day of the mission, was meant to be reached after only 90, however dust storms and difficult terrain have hindered progress. The position reached Tuesday came after several successful drives, usually around 2.5 meters each, over terrain sometimes reaching 25 degrees in angle. Scientists are pleased however, because the MRO overcame this, averaging only about 10% slippage. The article is here:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070926173553.htm

Space Doctor?

SRI international, a research and development company has recently begun testing their teleoperated surgery robot in zero G. The setup has already been tested underwater and works just fine, but now SRI is making the push to space. The company has developed software that compensates for changes in gravity as well as under moments of turbulence. The final step is to have to similar surgical procedures in simulated weightlessness, aboard the NASA C-9 aircraft; one of these to be performed on board and one to be performed tele-(whatever).

If it weren't for the lag time in signals while being very far away from the earth this would seem like the perfect solution for a manned trip to mars. We could just send them up with one of these and if there are any surgical procedure that need to be done they could be performed by experts on earth. However, this lag makes that possibility null and void. Still, it doesn't mean that this technology won't be useful on mars. If there is ever a steady population on and orbiting mars, it's going to be hard to ensure peoples safety.

Scenario: There are only enough supplies to keep 2 crew members on the surface of mars at any given time. The rest are orbiting the planet in a station or something. One of the two on the surface gets appendicitis, and needs and operation. There are two ways to plan for this eventuality: 1. You always make the doctor the second person. 2. You have a remote surgical device. I know which I would choose.

Check out the article at: "First Zero-Gravity Surgical Robot Demonstration"

MSL

Mars Science Laboratory is the next big NASA flagship mission to Mars, and in light of Phoenix and the energizer-bunny MER craft, MSL does not receive much press. This is probably for the best since it doesn't actually do anything yet, but I thought it would be worth presenting here.
MSL will launch on an Atlas V (largest American rocket) sometime in mid-late 2009 and will land in mid 2010. It is significantly larger than the MER and Phoenix, and it is expected to live for at least a full Martian year and travel up to 12 miles. The size of MSL is a huge factor in the mission plans for obvious reasons: it will be able to travel over large boulders and small obstacles will not be an issue as they have been in the past, but it has to be launched in an Atlas V which will drive up the cost significantly, and it can't land in the bouncy-ball method used for MER. Current plans for landing are similar to that of Phoenix, except a rocket-propelled crane with lower MSL to the ground before flying off to crash elsewhere on the surface.
The actual science MSL plans to do is what you might expect: study the geological properties, study the atmosphere, search for evidence that life existed or find if microbial life does exist, and prepare for an eventual manned mission.
Some news on MSL can be found on the JPL website at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/tl_launch.html
There are some nice pictures of when the press was there and JPL did a driving demonstration. You can tell that this rover is meant for some more serious driving than the MER craft. Construction and testing of the rover itself will begin early 2008; it will be interesting to see how the success (or failure) of Phoenix affects the MSL development.

Problems with High Resolution Camera Solved

The High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) located on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has already produced one of the largest data sets ever collected of Mars by sending back images of the surface, resolving objects as small as a desk. Earlier in the year, concerns were raised as image quality was declining and pixels were being lost. Recent testing has indicated that while some unexpected complications in the electronics will cause the images to be less than perfect, most of the problems can be ironed out, primarily by pre-warming certain components of the detector array prior to each image. Thus, scientists are confident that HiRISE will continue to send back high quality images for years to come.

The article is here: http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/Recon_Orbiter_Camera_Issue_Resolved_As_3000th_Image_Comes_
Down_From_Mars_999.html

Closing the Loop

Closing the Loop refers to a system where all waist is recycled and put back into the system to be used again. This is something that space travel is always trying to accomplish because of the lack of... well... anything in space. One huge sorce of waste is heat. Especially when we're talking about the human body, we just ooze energy warming our body. But researchers at the University of Utah. Have found a way to convert heat into electricity.

Well maybe it's not that direct, but it's only one step of. They turn heat into sound into energy, through a process of heating a special highsurface area metal/fiber which then creates a specific pitch of sound. This sound is pumped into piezoelectric device which converts the pressure from the sound waves into electricity. This has great potential for helping astronauts dissipate heat in space while fueling all electronic equipment. There is one drawback to this in space. It requires air. Without air there isn't sound that that is something that probes and other unmanned orbiter don't bother to take with them.

In any case this article is a intersting and exciteing, quick read.
"New Device Turns Waste Heat into Electricity"

Sweet Job: Driving the Mars Rover

PC World interviewed the rover driver team about driving the mars rover in their top tech jobs section. I admit, it would be a pretty nice job to sit at your computer and explore Mars remotely with a rover. Unfortunately, it isn't quite that simple. The issue is the delay for transmissions. It takes the instructions between 4 and 20 minutes to travel the 36-250 million miles to Mars. Then another 4 to 20 minutes again to get back the response from the rover.

When it is night on Mars, the rover goes to sleep to conserve power. This is when the team does most of it's work. They analyze the data and photographs from the previous day and formulate a plan for the next Martian day. Then they plug their plan into a 3D simulator to check that it will work. Once the simulation for the next day's mission plan is fully functional, they send it up to the rover and go home for the day. Then they come back the next Martian night and go over data they just received and form another mission plan. "If something does go wrong, we're not going to know until the next day."

One rover driver says "It's like driving a broken grocery cart by remote control from 100 million miles away, so it has its challenges."

Manned Mars Mission May Take Back Burner

(Image Credit: NASA)
There has recently been increased talk of developing space based solar power SBSP, an idea that has been studied for many years. Essentially, giant solar panels would be put into orbit that would "beam" power back to Earth. It is thought that at least 10% of the United States' energy could be supplied by space based solar power within about 40 years, maybe less. The U.S. Department of Defense is showing interest in the plan. With Earth's population growing, energy supplies shrinking, and fear of a climate change crisis on hand, having a sustainable and self-reliant source of energy is critical.

It looks like a prototype might be tested in as few as 5 years - a trial could be done relatively easily from the International Space Station. But what does this have to do with Mars? With new technology proposals like the Photonic Laser Thruster that could send humans to Mars within a week, it is easy to get excited about the possibility of a manned mission in the foreseeable future. But the cost would be so high and the average person would see little or no return for the cost. Energy is a big deal right now, and if we already have most or all of the technology to put solar panels in space, why not? For practicality purposes, it looks like space based solar panels are probably going to take priority over sending humans to Mars.

It makes sense though. Space columnist Al Globus gives an excellent argument for the development of the SBSP:

"To get there, however, will cost hundreds of billions of dollars in R&D and infrastructure development - just what America is good at. And you know something, we're spending that kind of money, not to mention blood, on America's Persian Gulf military presence today, and gas went over $3/gallon anyway. In addition, we may end up spending even more to deal with global warming, at least in the worst-case scenarios. Expensive as it is, [solar satellite power] may be the best bargain we've ever had."

Mars Orbiter in Safe Mode After Glitch

One problem with Mars being so far away is that glitches and problems that arise have to work themselves out. There are so many unexpected things that can happen and fixing them is not always an easy option. Mars Odyssey experienced a glitch that caused its system to reboot. The Mars Odyssey is responsible for receiving transmissions from two rovers on Mars. While it is expected that everything will be fine, Mars Odyssey is six years old.

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/070918_mo_glitch.html

Nuclear Power for Space ships

A new design for a Nuclear space ship has recently been released by General Atomic. It will use a mini-mag system, which uses a magnetic field to produce a smaller nuclear explosion that will be able to propel the spaceship. The magnetic design will allow spaceships that use this design to be smaller and lighter, thus further reducing costs. They believe with this system they will be able to reach speeds up to 10% of the of the speed of light. Although the actual construction of the vehicle is a long time in the making scientist still believe this to be a great step towards helping explore the solar system.

Martian Atmosphere Could Be Artificially Warmed

According to the American Geophysical Union, the atmosphere of Mars might be able to be artificially warmed using gases that are present in the surface of the planet. Humans would have to travel to Mars to extract the gases and inject them in to the atmosphere, which would be easier and much more feasible than transporting the enormous quantities from Earth.

Specifically, the article explains that "they found that a compound known as octafluoropropane, whose chemical formula is C3F8, produced the greatest warming, while its combination with several similar gases enhanced the warming even further". The greenhouse effect would probably take hundreds of years to complete, but the surface temperature would eventually be warmed to hospitable, earthlike conditions. It is also predicted that any dormant life that might exist could become active and evolve into new forms of life (over a long period of time).

This article is a couple of years old, but still is pretty interesting. It looks like human colonies on Mars are more feasible than a lot of people might think,although the author considers this particularly interesting for the study of evolution.

News Mars Flyover Video

A new 3D flyover of Mars has been created using the latest data from the orbiter. In this video a crater is visible with light-toned material that hasn't been seen in a flyover before.

The 3D simulation technology has clearly improved in recent years. Being able to see different tones and textures of the Martian surface in a video simulation is relatively new capability.



The imagery and stereo information for this video come from images taken on Dec. 12, 2006, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera and the Context Camera (CTX) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Radiation Shield

The limited Martian atmosphere poses a number of problems for the would-be human Mars explorer. While dust storms and clouds may do enough to deprive the MER solar panels of solar radiation, the overall atmospheric coverage (of things we can and cannot see) compared to that of the earth is barely noticeable at best.
A human on the surface of Mars (let alone in space for the duration of the trip to Mars) would be exposed to a significant amount of radiation which becomes a problem after more than a few hours exposure and would certainly be fatal in the months or years spent on the planet. The Apollo astronauts who spent hours or over a day on the moon were "lucky" in that there was little solar activity at the time of their missions, and their relatively short stay on the surface meant that there was little risk.
The sun continuously radiates in varying amounts across the EM spectrum, and in the case of a solar flare there is significantly more radiation which can be dangerous to anyone outside of the earth's protective atmosphere which filters out most of the dangerous radiation.
An article posted at http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/lunarshield_techwed_050112.html
explains some of the ideas for radiation protection on a moon base. The theory is that if electric fields are created around the perimeter of the base, they will effectively create a sort of force field to block out radiation from the sun. There are a few problems with this, such as the effect of the field on the base itself, the optimal hight of the field generator towers, what energies would be filtered, etc., but this is so far one of the most developed theories they have for addressing the issue of radiation.
The article itself talks about using this field generator on the moon, but the same idea could be applied to a base on Mars.

Odyssey Orbiter Reboots into Safe Mode

A computer glitch on Friday caused the Mars orbiter Odyssey to reboot. On Monday engineers discovered the Odyssey is currently in "safe mode." This happens when the orbiter detects some problem that is serious enough to cause it to cease normal operations and work in a state of low activity until it receives further instructions from Earth. Engineers are currently working to correct the problem and the Mission manager expects Odyssey to be fully operational by the middle of the week.

The Odyssey orbiter is normally used to relay data from the rovers on the surface of Mars back to Earth. However, since the problem occurred the rovers have been using their "high-gain" antennas to speak directly with Earth. Consequently, we will be receiving less data from the rovers until the Odyssey is fully operational.

Mars 'Pregnancy Test' Orbits Earth

There is a new experiment designed to search for signs of life on Mars that works similar to a pregnancy test and is now exposed to the vacuum of space above Earth. This postage-stamp-size experiment was conducted by the European Space Agency (ESA). It is called the “Life Marker Chip” (LMC) and was launched last week aboard a Russian rocket launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. It was strapped to the ESA’s large Foton-M3 capsule. This tiny experiment harbors more than 2,000 life-detecting samples that glow if they encounter life-critical compounds, such as proteins or DNA.

Scientists and engineers hope that this small life-sensing chip can remain viable in the harsh radiation, temperatures, and vacuum of space during the long trip to Mars. Andrew Steele, a molecular biologist at the Carnegie Institution in Washington D.C. states that, “This will be the first time that these types of materials will have flown unprotected in space in a manner similar to a flight to Mars.”

The Life Marker Chip Experiment works just like a pregnancy test, which uses color-changing chemicals to pick up traces of hormones found in greater numbers after conception. Once the Foton-M3 mission returns to Earth on Sept. 25 near the Russia-Kazakhstan border, Scientists will examine the LMC’s samples.

The experiment’s managers hope to strap their fully tested device aboard the ESA’s “ExoMars” robotic rover mission that is planned for launch in 2013. It would serve as a tiny “lab-on-a-chip” to detect traces of past or present martian life. Mark Sims, an LMC mission Manager is very exited about the experiment and believes “this mission will be a stepping stone in our ultimate goal of putting a LMC experiment on the surface of Mars and using it to search for evidence of life.”The LMC experiment is just one of nine other found in the cylindrical “BIOPAN-6” compartment bolted to the outside of the Foton-M3 capsule. On Friday when the satellite reached a stable orbit, BIOPAN-6 opened its hatch to being exposing the 10 experiments to space for 12 days.

Archive Of EVERY Martian Image Transmitted By Spirit and Opportunity

After working for outrageously longer than the initial planned mission periods of 90 days Spirit and Opportunity have driven a combined total of 10.4 miles and between the two of them transmitted back to Earth over 161,200 images. This link will take you to where you can access all of these images so you can do some catch-up and know what everyone is talking about when they say "Yea man that outcropping in Sol 1304 (2 img) from the front Hazcam is SO SICK MAN!!! I cant wait to look at some more raw images!!"

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/

New Software Testing To Give Spirit and Opportunity Important New Capabilities

On the eve of the fourth year on the job for Mars' rovers mission control will begin testing several new software upgrades that give the rovers much more capabilities to tackle the hostile Martian planet. One such capability gives the rovers the ability to think up to 3 or 4 steps ahead of itself in terms of navigating through often densly populated rock fields. Previously the rovers could only think in one step increments where if they encountered an obsticle they would try another direction until sometimes unsucessfully it found an unobstructed path. Now, if sucessfull, the rovers will be able to navigate through a maze. Another new technology is the capability of "visual target tracking" where it can recognize an object and remember it is that same object even when viewing it at different angles. Other significant advancements that will be tested include dust devil and cloud recognition, and a "go and touch" feature.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2006-152

Dust Storms threaten Mars Rovers

Two Martian Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, are trying to ride out the dust storms that are occurring on Mars. They continue to successfully weather these storms that are threatening to cut power to their solar panels. It is a day-to-day battle for survival.

The pervasive dust in the martian atmosphere and the settling of dust onto the machinery impedes the ability of the rovers’ solar panels to convert sunlight into enough electricity to supply their needs. One of the vital needs is to protect each rover’s “vital organs” of internal computer electronics, heaters and batteries from becoming so cold that something may snap.
Both rovers are in position to pounce on science targets. Spirit is ready to gather evidence for long-past explosive volcanic activity in an area dubbed Home Plate. While Opportunity is a mere 130 feet from the point where it will enter Victoria Crater.
These two rovers landed on the planet in January of 2004 and have wheeled across Mars for longer than their original 90-day warranties.

John Callas, project manager for the Mars Exploration Rovers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California explains, “There is some suggestion that the storm may be breaking up. But that's on a global scale. What really counts is what is the weather doing over each of the rover sites ... and it's still troublesome.”

They are being careful about how much power they consume, so they are not doing any driving as of now. They are making daily science observations and feel Spirit is in good health. However Opportunity is suffering more than Spirit. Atmospheric opacity is still very high and solar array power available to the robot remains low (between 130-140 watt hours) at Opportunity’s locale. Opportunity is currently performing on bare-bones survival activities. The two concerns with Opportunity are: the need to keep the vehicle “power positive” (make sure that it generates more power than it consumes) and the need for the rover to keep its electronic innards warm enough.

If things get too tough for Opportunity, the vehicle will go invoke its onboard fault protection” capabilities. The vehicle will go into safe-mode and will not send data at all. It will use the power it has to stay warm and sleep all day only waking up for a short period each day to listen for commands from Earth.

Jim Bell, the NASA Mars Exploration Rover Project’s Panoramic Camera Payload Element Lead at Cornell University, calls it “a frustrating waiting game.” But he is “optimistic that the rovers will ride out this storm and then get back 'on the road' to do great science.”

For the whole article visit the link: http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/070808_tw_rovers_update.html

Wobbling Ice Ages.

(preface: I would have posted this in a geology blog if there was one. But it seemed out of the ones that we have that this one is just as fitting as any other.)

So it turns out that Mars has more than it's fair share of ice ages. 40 significant ones in the past 5 million years. Which doesn't seem like that much untill you compare this with the earths yeild: 3 in the past billion. (I'm aware that this may be slightly skewed as these are two different sources and their criteria for "significant" might be a little different).

This frequent freezing seems to have something to do with the extreme wobbles in Mars' rotational axis. As the different portions of the planet are bombarded by larger or small percentages of the suns rays due to these wobble it makes for exremem shifts in the amount of ice under or near the surface of the planet. The earth doesn't have this effect because the gravitational pull of the moon keeps our axis relatively wobble free.

There are a few things that make this interesting:

1. The fact that water/ice is having cycles means that there might be more ice in areas less close to the pole. This means that we don't have to be as exact in our mars landings.

2. It also gives ome insight into how Mars, which was originally very similar to earth, might have made the detour in to the frozen dirt ball that is now (I mean no offence to Mars, but in comparison to earth? It's what it is.)

The rest of the article, "Wobbles of Mars Produced 40 Ice Ages" it's a quick interesting read.

Computing on Mars

Hello STS 361 ( and the world... ) ! My name is Steve Canfield, and I'm a Computer Science major at the University of Puget Sound. This semester I am going to explore the issue of computing on the red planet. Much of computing as we know it relies on our relatively safe planet to work, and here on Earth "mission critical" systems are built with redundancy and can be inspected when things fail. In going to Mars, redundancy is limited and if one wishes to inspect the onboard software it must do so through that software.
So far I have found information on the computing systems on "Spirit" and "Opportunity". Each rover sports a RAD6000 microprocessor running at 33MHz, about 1/7 of today's average PC speeds. The RAD6000 is radiation shielded because radiation is a huge problem in space; even on Earth we occasionally see bits randomly flip themselves. The operating system running this whole show is called VxWorks, a "real-time" OS manufactured in Alameda, CA. A Real time operating system is one that completes each task in a known amount of time. This means that the running time of various procedures is bounded. Many home routers actually use the same VxWorks OS, and in my experience it's a little buggy. No wonder we lost Spirit for 16 days back when it landed on the planet. The Mars rovers each have 128 MB of memory, based on the theory that they will be chugging through lots of data.
Check in soon and we'll discuss the amazing computational facilities of the Phoenix lander and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

In-flight instrument checks and bio-barrier

There are a number of press releases coming out as Phoenix performs its in-flight checks on its way to Mars. The two articles I looked at can be found on the JPL or NASA websites (here is one: http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/20070904a.html ).
During its flight, Phoenix is turning on its instruments one at a time and performing the necessary checks to make sure everything is alive and well; you can see an image of the scoop on the robotic arm as taken by the arm's camera under a red LED. Other tests have been done on the high frequency X-band (the X-band is simply a narrow band of radio wavelengths which can penetrate our atmosphere) radio transmitter, which will monitor Phoenix after separation about the Martian atmosphere. All tests so far have been successful.
An interesting thing to note is that significant effort is being put into maintaining biological stability. The spacecraft itself is encased in a "bio-barrier" and has not been removed since construction and testing were finished in the clean-room at JPL. A special instrument on board even removes water vapor over the course of the trip so that there is as little contamination as possible from Earth. Both articles focus on the testing of the instruments and the steps taken to ensure that there is no contamination. You can tell that this is a big waiting game for everyone on the Phoenix mission, so it is the time when we get to hear about the interesting details and factors in the mission before the science takes over the media.

Mars Rover Opportunity to enter Victoria Crater

NASA Engineers sent commands to Opportunity, one of the rovers that survived a Martian dust bowl, to commence its risky trip into Victoria Crater. It will still be several hours until engineers will know the success of the trip.

In an article released early Tuesday, The San Jose Mercury News reported that Opportunity will first be commanded to "toe dip" into the crater. A "toe dip" is when the rover rolls its six wheels below the rim of the crater and immediately back out to gauge its footing. "We expect to have good driving," said John Callas, the rover project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, CA.

This long-awaited descent into the crater has been on hold since July due to a series of sun-blotting dust storms that raged in the southern hemisphere where Opportunity and the other rover, Spirit, were exploring opposite ends of the planet. To conserve energy and risk damage, the two rovers went into sleep mode.

These two incredible machines have been exploring Mars for over 3 1/2 years--far exceeding their original, three-month mission.

There is also an extended article about this risky mission on the NASA Mars Exploration Rover Mission Website

Space suits getting a dearly needed upgrade.

The article "Slimming Down Future Spacesuits" addresses something that is surprising that it has taken this long to change: Space suits are ridiculously bulky and ungainly. The problems with this are things which make a huge difference when it comes to space travel/exploration/living.

1. With a big suit you're carrying more weight. We can't even afford to bring up food with water in it... but we're still hauling hulking masses of suits in the limited space we have?

2. Your mobility is decreased. Which is something that makes all external repairs to ships even more deadly than they already are if you have to not only fight with one of the most harsh environments in... well... the universe, but you must also contend with the fact that simple movements are nearly impossible.

3. These look sweet. The old ones don't have nearly the marketability.




























(4. On a side note the new suits are also interesting in that they could have resistance built into them because of their mechanical design. Which could help with ever present issue of how to astronauts exorcise and fight muscle atrophy?)

In any case it's good to see that the suits that we've been seeing in Science fiction for our whole lives are finally finding their way into action.

Mars Rovers Survive Dust Storms

United Press International reported today in an article that NASA has determined that the twin Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity have survived some severe dust storms on the surface. These storms delayed Opportunity's planned descent into Mars' Victoria Crater. NASA has stated that the exploration might start this week if everything goes as planned. The rovers are currently 43 months into missions originally planned to last three months. Last Wednesday, Spirit arrived at its long-term destination, "Home Plate". Home Plate is a plateau of bedrock that holds possible clues to a mixture of lava and water. Alan Stern, the associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate said, "These rovers are tough. They faced dusty winds, power starvation and other challenges -- and survived. Now they are back to doing groundbreaking field work on Mars. These spacecrafts are amazing".
Victoria Crater is an important destination for scientists because it contains an exposed layer of bright rocks that might hold evidence of an interaction between the surface and Martian atmosphere from millions of years ago. The skies have been clearing gradually since early August and scientists predict this will continue.

New Technology Could Allow for 7-Day Trip to Mars

The Bae Institute of California is working on development of a Photonic Laser Thruster (PLT) that may allow for, among other things, reducing the flight to Mars from 6-8 months to a week or less. According to Bae, the thruster would be able to propel a shuttle beyond 100 kilometers per second. NASA, JPL, and the Air Force have all requested more information on Bae's research.

If this technology does eventually reach production, its impact on a trip to Mars would certainly be interesting. The social and psychological problems with prolonged space travel would largely be alleviated. The reduced transit time seems like it would also increase the window of possible departures to Mars, or even open the possibility of tourist travel in the future.

The article isn't very technical and its worth exploring even further at The Bae Institute's website.

Traveling Through a City at Near the Speed of Light

It is impossible for matter to travel at the speed of light. However, a computer can simulate what it would look like. Traveling close to the speed of light warps your perspective of space and time. In order to put this spacial warp in perspective an exhibit was made at the Einstein Year 2005. In this exhibit people could ride a bike to adjust their speed. As they approached the speed of light a screen in front of them would show how their perspective changed. Keep in mind this computer simulation just shows the spacial warp and doesn't actually simulate the fast speed, otherwise the biker would fly through the town in nanoseconds.

Here is a video of the computer simulation. For more information, check out the explanation about the video at its original location.