Scientists on NASA’s Perseverance mission made a surprising discovery about the composition of rock in Jezero Crater, one that will help them get a better idea of when water existed on Mars, and ultimately, help them understand if the red planet was ever habitable to microbial life.
The subsurface of Mars records important historical information on the formation and evolution of Mars. As an ionized medium, the Martian ionosphere plays a special role in radio wave propagation and is directly related to the local communication on Mars and the communication between Mars and Earth.
Researchers have devised a plasma-based way to produce and separate oxygen within the Martian environment. It's a complementary approach to NASA's Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment and may deliver high rates of molecule production per kilogram of instrumentation sent to space. In the Journal of Applied Physics, the team presents the method for harnessing and processing local resources to generate products on Mars.
KINGSTON, R.I. – Aug. 10, 2022 – Over the next three years, three University of Rhode Island researchers are hoping to broaden the scientific understanding of methane emission dynamics in ultramafic rock systems – work that one day may help answer the mystery of the existence of past or present microbial life on Mars.Dawn Cardace and Soni Pradhanang, associate professors of geosciences, and Serena Moseman-Valtierra, an associate professor of biological sciences, have been awarded a $735,000 grant by the NASA Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research to study methane gas emissions at a site in northern California that has a rock system comparable to known sites on Mars.
West Virginia University scientists have developed a way for extraplanetary rovers to use nonvisual information to maneuver over treacherous terrain. This will help to prevent future losses of expensive equipment like that of the Martian exploration rover Spirit, which ceased communications after its wheels became trapped in invisibly shifting sands in 2010.
Astronomy postdoc Valerie Payré is on an international team that discovered the origin of the martian meteorite known as Black Beauty, one of the most-studied meteorites in the world. It may hold clues to the development of Earth and other terrestrial planets and help explain why Earth sustains life when its closest neighbor does not.
A new study of an old meteorite contradicts current thinking about how rocky planets like the Earth and Mars acquire volatile elements such as hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and noble gases as they form. The work is published June 16 in Science.
After more than a year of recording on the surface, the team reduced the data to a Martian playlist that features about five hours of sounds.
No other planet in our solar system has sparked the human imagination more than Mars.
The first analysis of the Glen Torridon region in the Gale crater on Mars shows that bedrock in the area was changed by groundwater in the planet’s early history, which has important implications for understanding past habitability and the possibility of finding past life on Mars.
In collaboration with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), a team of researchers from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has developed a sustainable method for making bricks out of Martian soil, using bacteria and urea.
A team of computational scientists made a model for a hypothetical ocean in the northern lowlands of Mars that is connected, or “recharged”, by a groundwater aquifer across the whole southern highlands of the Red Planet.
The Curiosity Rover ChemCam Engineering Team was awarded the Citation of Merit by the Explorers Club, a society that promotes exploration and scientific field study.
The NASA Perseverance rover, which has been exploring the Jezero Crater on Mars since February 2021, has recorded the acoustic environment of the red planet for the first time.
After two years of work, a four-function robotic rover developed for use on Mars by a 21-person Space Hardware Club (SHC) team at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of the University of Alabama System, will be in summer competition at the University Rover Challenge (URC) finals.
Today, Thursday 24 March, the University of Adelaide launched its new Exterres Laboratory. The lab, which is the first of its kind in Australia, is an off-Earth surface testing environment for space technology such as rovers, which are destined for the furthest reaches of the universe.
Planetary scientist Christopher Edwards and his team will use renewed NASA funding for Mars Science Lab Curiosity Rover project to continue exploring the rock record on the Red Planet.
KINGSTON, R.I. – Feb. 7, 2022 – Thirteen University of Rhode Island mechanical engineering students are working with NASA and other prestigious universities on a project that could cut in half the travel time for a human mission to Mars. The project involves nuclear thermal propulsion, which scientists and engineers say can get astronauts to Mars more quickly and safely than they can with current chemical propulsion and technology.
A few specialist microbes survive conditions analogous to those of Mars’ early history, reports a new publication in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Science—and this may be thanks to a broad range of adaptations.
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