Hasta La Gadget!

The Mars Curiosity Rover has been busy snapping photos (selfies too) of Mars and found something… strange. A small, shiny, metal-looking “protuberance” sticking out from the red planet. Is it some secret lever to open up a world where Martians exist? Or some random space junk? We don’t know. More »

NASA’s Curiosity rover, which is currently putzing its way around Mars, has just drilled its way into Martian soil for the first time, making a perfectly cylindrical hole on the surface of the Red Planet. The hole is approximately 0.8-inches deep and about 0.6-inches across. From the photo below, the hole looks much bigger, but it seems NASA only need just a slight sample of the planet’s dirt.

The operation, which NASA calls the “mini drill test,” is just the prequel to a full drilling that NASA will conduct sometime soon. If the drill shavings around the fresh hole pass visual evaluation by the rover’s testing mechanisms, the rover team plans to proceed with the first full drilling in a couple of days.

The mini drill test was performed on a patch of flat rock called “John Klein,” which is the same patch of land that other tests were run, including percussion-only testing and planned sample-collection drilling. The rover team plans to use Curiosity’s laboratory instruments to analyze soil samples and learn about the environmental history, including whether or not life was present at any point in time.

Curiosity has been sitting in an area named Yellowknife Bay for a few weeks now, where it has also discovered that rocks in the area were at one time repeatedly flooded by water sometime in the past. NASA is being extremely careful and going very slowly with their experiments, and they say that full-drilling operations will be the most complex sequence the rover has yet to perform on Mars. Good luck, padawan!

Curiosity rover bores into Mars for the first time is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Earlier today, NASA announced that the Mars Curiosity rover has started a new rock drilling mission on its hunt for evidence of water in Mars’ past. Using a bit on a robot arm, the rover bores its way into Martian rock, then acquires the powdered rock samples into the Mars Science Laboratory to be analyzed.

The rover is working its way to its destination spot – the John Klein rock – after more than a month of going through the region. There’s no word on when the rover will arrive at its final destination and begin drilling. If the project goes as planned, NASA will use the collected specimen to aid in figuring out if the Gale Crater location was able to have microbial life in the planet’s past.

Daniel Limonadi, part of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, had this to say. “We are proceeding with caution in the approach to Curiosity’s first drilling. This is challenging. It will be the first time any robot has drilled into a rock to collect a sample on Mars.” When it does take place, scientists expect that positive evidence will result.

Back on December 11, we reported that the rover’s electronics could be severely damaged when drilling by a long-known flaw. If a drilling mechanism bond breaks, the entire electrical system could fry. The flaw is said to be minor and that it probably won’t be an issue. It looks like we’re going to see firsthand what kind of luck the device has in the near future, whether it will survive its first drilling session.

[via The Space Reporter]

NASA announces Mars Curiosity rover is drilling for water evidence is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

As far as NASA‘s Mars rovers go, Curiosity has been getting the lion’s share of the attention lately. Curiosity isn’t alone on the red planet, however, with Opportunity beginning its 10th year on the surface of Mars this week. Opportunity touched down on Mars on January 24, 2004, with the original goal of finding out if the water had ever been present on the surface.

That mission was only supposed to last for three months, but fast forward to today and Opportunity has been up and running 36 times longer than originally planned. In the time since landing, Opportunity has driven 22.03 miles, a far cry from the 2,000 feet it was intended to cover. Those first three months were filled with excitement for NASA scientists, though, as Opportunity was able to provide evidence that at one point in the past, water flowed over the surface of Mars.

These days, Opportunity occupies its time heading from crater to crater, trying to get a closer look at deeper layers of the Martian ground. At the moment, NASA says it is examining veined rocks that have been discovered on the rim of the Endeavor crater. The area Opportunity is examining has been dubbed “Matijevic Hill,” and the rover has taken a panoramic shot of the area to ring in the beginning of its 10th year, which you can see above.

While Opportunity is still going strong, the same can’t be said for its twin, Spirit. Both landed on the surface at the same time, but Spirit shut down in 2010. There’s no word on how much longer Opportunity will continue crawling along the surface of Mars, but you bet that NASA will continue to squeeze as much as possible out of its investment. Stay tuned.

[via NASA JPL]

Opportunity rover begins 10th year on surface of Mars is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

In 2012, the European Space Agency discovered a huge 1,500 kilometer river in the upper Reull Vallis region of Mars. The agency’s Mars Express took a picture of the area using a high-stereo camera, which gave an impressive look at the landscape. Now it has released the 3D image taken of the river, which shows a large area of the Reull Vallis complete with one tributary and mountains off to the right.

According to scientists, the river was likely formed by water in the Hesperian period between 1.8 and 3.5 million years ago. Although only one is visible in the image, multiple tributaries meet the river, with the one pictured branching off in the main valley and re-merging upstream. The part of the river pictured is nearly 300 meters deep and 7 kilometers wide.

Visible to the right of the river and tributary are the Promethei Terra Highlands, which include the almost putty-like mountain ranges that appear hyper-smooth and rounded. The mountains are about 2,500 meters above the land’s surface, and are surrounded by impact craters, one of which has a diameter nearly are large as the mountain it is near.

The scientists note that the river contains elements reminiscent of what you would find on Earth, with “step-like structures” in the craters indicating high water. Likewise, the morphology indicates that the area experienced glacial activity in its past, and provide the researchers with a relatively detailed look at events in the Red Planet’s past that helped shape it.

You can download high-resolution images of the river from the link below.

[via European Space Agency]

Scientists uncover massive river on Mars is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.