It’s been three months since NASA’s Curiosity rover set foot wheels down on Martian terrain, and now the space agency has divulged what it’s learned about radiation on Mars. Marking the first time radiation has been measured from the surface of another planet, preliminary data collected using the rover’s Radiation Assessment Detector (or RAD for short) revealed that levels on the ground are similar to what astronauts encounter on the International Space Station. What’s that mean for space travel? “The astronauts can live in this environment,” Don Hassler, principal investigator on Curiosity’s RAD hardware, said in a press conference. However, humans would still experience higher levels of radiation on the way to and from the red planet than on its surface. The results are encouraging, but they’re just one of many developments left before Homo sapiens set foot on Mars. For more details on the RAD’s findings, look below for the press release.
Peter Molyneux’s first creation since Lionhead, is now live on the App Store, presenting gamers with a humungous cube composed of billions of tiny cubelets. Curiosity’s virtual block needs to be stripped down layer by layer through collective effort, to reach the center and reveal “something life-challengingly amazing”. There’s no sign of the expected tear-inducing paid DLC; instead, you pay for power-ups using coins earned by tapping away at the game. 100 of those coins will let you see the stats screen, while 3 billion will reward you with the Diamond Chisel — the ultimate tool for block-whacking. Based on our brief time at the grindstone, it’s safe to say the game’s impact won’t be as profound as that of the other Curiosity, but its social aspects have some interesting potential — not least using Facebook to locate friends who are playing and compare each other’s progress. The game is available free at the App Store if you’d like to leave your mark.
Sifting through soil on Mars, NASA’s rover Curiosity paused to take a picture – and exposed its own bad behaviour. The shot included a bright object lying in the Martian dirt, and a closer look suggests that the rover is guilty of littering: it appears the object is a piece of plastic wrapper that has fallen from the robot. More »
NASA‘s Curiosity robot, which has been rolling hither and yon on Mars in search of microbial life, has revealed some aspects of a rock that surprise scientists. The rock, named Jack Matijevic in honor of a NASA engineer who passed away shortly after Curiosity landed, contains a varied composition profile that was unexpected based on past missions. These newly discovered compositions give scientists a greater insight into the Martian planet’s environment and processes.
The “Jake rock,” as it is called, has a composition that is similar to that of igneous rocks found in volcanic areas on earth. It is the only rock they have discovered with this composition, for the time being, at least. The Jake rock is the first rock analyzed by Curiosity’s Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer, which is arm-mounted. Watch the video below to see Curiosity poke and prod at Jake.
Rocks with the composition of Jake are typically the result of crystallization of pressurized, water-rich magma. According to an APXS investigator, the Jake rock is particularly interesting because it is high in mineral feldspare-consistent elements, yet low in both iron and magnesium. The unique compositions were found at 14 different points on the rock.
Next up for Curiosity is a 100 yard trek eastwards, where a rock will be selected and used as the first subject to be drilled. Rock and soil samples are collected by the robot, and are utilized by researches to help analyze the environment. Over the next two years, a total of ten instruments on Curiosity will be used to try to determine whether the particular area has ever provided conditions for microbial life.
NASA‘s Curiosity Mars rover scooped up its first sampling of soil from the Red Planet on Sunday, and it plans to sift through the soil vigorously in order to find out more information about the planet. The rover’s gathering and testing of the soil on Mars is an important part of its two-year mission to learn whether life ever existed or even currently exists on Mars.
However, while the rover was able to dig up some dirt, the exhaustive sampling and testing sessions had to be put on hold. The rover’s camera ended up spotting a small shiny object on the ground near the rover itself. NASA officials are saying it might just be a piece of plastic that fell off of the rover, but are not sure what it is exactly.
A closer look reveals that the object is merely just a very tiny piece of plastic wrap from the rover’s exterior — possibly a part of the outer insulation. However, NASA has confirmed that it’s pausing its dirt-scooping experiments until they figure out exactly what the small object might be.
The Curiosity Mars rover landed on the Red Planet on August 5 and is on a two-year, $2.5 billion mission to study whether microbial life could have existed on Mars in the past, or whether or not some kind of life currently exists on the planet. In two years’ time, we’ll hopefully have answers to those questions.
While grabbing its first scoop of Martian soil, the Mars Curiosity Rover team noticed a weird thing, something that was not supposed to be there: a bright object on the ground. What is it? NASA’s scientists don’t know yet. More »
Mars explorer Curiosity is about to grab itself a scoopful of soil, the first time the sample gathering system has been used while the robotic rover has been on the red planet, but just what is the NASA ‘bot hoping to find? According to NASA, the mission – which will see Curiosity flex its incredibly slow claw – is both a test of the rover’s hardware and of the Martian surface itself, an important double-hit to help show whether Curiosity is made out for exploration, and whether Mars was once hospitable to life.
“We now have reached an important phase that will get the first solid samples into the analytical instruments in about two weeks,” Mission Manager Michael Watkins of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California said of the new trials. In the meantime, Curiosity will do some cleaning of its sample collecting kit: the first two scoopfuls of dirt, exposed by scuffing the surface of the planet with one of its wheels, will be shaken up and then discarded, so as to remove any particulates that have been brought with the rover from Earth.
“It is standard to run a split of your sample through first and dump it out, to clean out any residue from a previous sample. We want to be sure the first sample we analyze is unambiguously Martian, so we take these steps to remove any residual material from Earth that might be on the walls of our sample handling system” Joel Hurowitz, JPL team
The scoop itself has a small capacity – it can dig down to 1.4-inches, and is just 1.8-inches wide and 2.8-inches long – and moves particularly slowly; in the video below, filmed during tests pre-launch back on Earth, the footage is in fact being played at four-times normal speed.
Scooping process:
The third sample collected will be put under the microscope, of sorts, with Curiosity’s mast cameras, though a small amount will be loaded into the Chemistry and Mineralogy X-ray powder diffraction and fluorescence instrument (CheMin). This instrument, designed and developed by NASA scientists, uses X-rays to identify different crystalline structures, using the fact that they refract such rays at predictable angles to figure out the composition.
A fourth scoopful will repeat that CheMin testing, but also be provided to the Sample analysis at Mars (SAM) system. This instrument – a combination of multiple tests and the collaborative work of NASA scientists and counterparts from around the world – includes a Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer, a gas chromatograph and a tunable laser spectrometer, and will primarily be used to identify oxygen and carbon isotope ratios in carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4).
Such testing will help Curiosity to figure out whether those atmospheric gases were created geochemically or biologically, and an important step in understanding what the atmosphere of the planet was like in the past.
Curiosity’s appetite for filth won’t be sated by a couple of scoopfuls in the next few weeks, however. Assuming all goes to plan, the rover will travel roughly 100 yards to the east, and then pick out a rock which will be the first subject for its drill. That can carve a hole 1.6cm wide and up to 5cm deep, and then collect more samples for further testing.
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