Mars 2020 rover gets HD eyes

Posted on May 31, 2019 by rburnham

PIA23266-16One of the first operations the Mars 2020 rover will perform after touching down on the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021, will be to raise its remote sensing mast (RSM), which carries important optics and instrumentation.

In this picture – taken on May 23, 2019, in the Spacecraft Assembly Facility’s High Bay 1 clean room at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California – engineers re-install the cover to the RSM head after integration of two Mastcam-Z high-definition cameras. Visible below the red lens cover is the left Mastcam-Z camera (with the “Remove Before Flight” labels); support equipment blocks the right Mastcam-Z from view. The RSM and its twin cameras will be installed on the rover’s deck the week of June 3, 2019.

Mastcam-Z is a multispectral, stereoscopic imaging instrument that will enhance the Mars 2020 rover’s driving and core-sampling capabilities. It will also enable science team members to observe textural, mineralogical, structural and morphologic details in rocks and sediment at any location within the rover’s field of view, helping them piece together the planet’s geologic history.

“Mastcam-Z will be the first Mars color camera that can zoom, enabling 3D images at unprecedented resolution,” said Mastcam-Z Principal Investigator Jim Bell of Arizona State University in Tempe. “With a resolution of three-hundredths of an inch [0.8 millimeters] in front of the rover and less than one-and-a-half inches [38 millimeters] from over 330 feet [100 meters] away – Mastcam-Z images will play a key role in selecting the best possible samples to return from Jezero Crater.”

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ESA: Mars on Earth — what next?

Posted on May 31, 2019 by rburnham

A Mars Sample Return campaign would bring samples of the Red Planet back to Earth for examination in the best terrestrial laboratories – but choosing the samples and storing them on Mars for later return is only one part of the extensive campaign being planned by the mission designers and scientists.

A series of missions currently being planned will set a new bar for humankind’s technological achievements as NASA and ESA aim to bring back samples from the Martian surface.

The campaign foresees three launches from Earth and one from Mars, two martian rovers and an autonomous rendezvous and docking in Mars orbit – over 50 million km away from ground control.

The Mars Sample Return campaign is aiming to bring martian material back from Jezero crater that once held a lake and contains an ancient preserved river delta. The rocks in the area will have preserved information about Mars’ long and diverse geologic history.

Sampling Mars will allow humankind to dramatically expand our knowledge of our neighbouring planet, its geology and climate history.

With engineers in Europe and the USA up for the challenge, scientists are eager to receive the first samples from another planet and have already started investigating and preparing how they will analyse the precious, rocks, dust and gas once the samples are returned to Earth… [More at link]

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ESA prepares for ExoMars rover operations

Posted on May 31, 2019 by rburnham

20190530_Moving_off_the_landing_platform_f840[From Emily Lakdawalla’s blog at the Planetary Society]

Preparations for the ExoMars rover mission are in their final stages. ESA made two announcements today: ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter is shifting orbit, and they officially opened a new Rover Operations Control Centre (ROCC) in Turin, Italy. ROCC will support the Rosalind Franklin rover’s deployment from the Kazachok lander and surface operations after that. Along with the announcements they posted some cool images. The mission is proceeding toward a July 2020 launch and March 2021 landing.

ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter has had a productive science mission so far (finding no methane, which is a puzzle). If the rover lands successfully, the orbiter is going to take on a second job: rover data relay. To prepare for that work, ExoMars TGO will make a subtle change to its orbit on 15 June that will place it on course to be in the right place at the right time to relay the arriving rover’s telemetry to Earth. In the meantime, ExoMars TGO is performing regular tests of rover relay with Curiosity, giving ESA controllers valuable experience, and NASA scientists more data return. NASA provided its Electra relay radio packages to ESA to make all this as seamless as possible… [More at link]

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THEMIS: Renaudot Crater’s dunes in false color

Posted on May 31, 2019 by rburnham

Renaudot Crater in false color (THEMIS_IOTD_20190531)THEMIS Image of the Day, May 31, 2019. Today’s image shows part of the floor of Renaudot Crater, located on the margin between Terra Sabaea and Utopia Planitia.

The small dark blue features at the top right corner of the image are sand dunes. Dark blue is this false color combination indicates that these dunes are comprised of basaltic sands.

The lower part of the image shows terain that may be mantled in an ice-dust mixture.

The THEMIS VIS camera contains 5 filters. The data from different filters can be combined in multiple ways to create a false color image. These false color images may reveal subtle variations of the surface not easily identified in a single band image.

Explore more THEMIS Images of the Day by geological subject.

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ExoMars orbiter preps orbit for ExoMars rover

Posted on May 30, 2019 by rburnham

ExoMars_Trace_Gas_OrbiterOn 15 June, the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) will follow a different path. An ‘Inclination Change Manoeuvre’ will put the spacecraft in an altered orbit, enabling it to pick up crucial status signals from the ExoMars rover, Rosalind Franklin, due to land on the Red Planet in 2021.

After completing a complex series of manoeuvres during 2017, ExoMars TGO is now orbiting the Red Planet every two hours, collecting scientific data from NASA’s surface-bound rover and lander, and relaying it back to Earth. At the same time, the orbiter is gathering its own data on the planet’s atmosphere, water abundance and alien surface.

More than a year before Rosalind even lifts off from Earth’s surface, flight dynamics experts at ESA’s ESOC mission control centre have formulated a long-term plan to ensure ExoMars TGO can communicate with the new ESA rover and surface platform, contained in the entry, descent and landing module.

Slight changes to a spacecraft’s orbit have a large effect over time, so while the upcoming manoeuvres will only slightly alter TGO’s speed, it will be in the right position to communicate with the then-incoming rover by 2021…. [More at link]

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HiRISE: An interesting layered deposit

Posted on May 30, 2019 by rburnham

ESP_054905_2200An interesting layered deposit. The objective of this observation is to examine layers in an impact crater, located in Galaxias Fossae. Pictures like this will help us put together a geological history of the region. Note the indentation on the right side of the crater.

HiRISE Picture of the Day archive. [More at links]

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Latest weather at Gale Crater and Elysium Planitia

Posted on May 30, 2019 by rburnham

Daily Elysium charts and data (temperature, wind speed, atmospheric pressure) here.

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THEMIS: Terra Sabaea landscape in false color

Posted on May 30, 2019 by rburnham

Terra Sabaea in false color (THEMIS_IOTD_20190530)THEMIS Image of the Day, May 30, 2019. Today’s false color image shows plains and unnamed craters in Terra Sabaea.

The THEMIS VIS camera contains 5 filters. The data from different filters can be combined in multiple ways to create a false color image. These false color images may reveal subtle variations of the surface not easily identified in a single band image.

Explore more THEMIS Images of the Day by geological subject.

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Would Mars life be shaped like fettuccine?

Posted on May 29, 2019 by rburnham

Spring System at Yellowstone. Photo by Bruce Fouke.A rover scanning the surface of Mars for evidence of life might want to check for rocks that look like pasta, researchers report in the journal Astrobiology.

The bacterium that controls the formation of such rocks on Earth is ancient and thrives in harsh environments that are similar to conditions on Mars, said University of Illinois geology professor Bruce Fouke, who led the new, NASA-funded study.

“It has an unusual name, Sulfurihydrogenibium yellowstonense,” he said. “We just call it ‘Sulfuri.’”

The bacterium belongs to a lineage that evolved prior to the oxygenation of Earth roughly 2.35 billion years ago, Fouke said. It can survive in extremely hot, fast-flowing water bubbling up from underground hot springs. It can withstand exposure to ultraviolet light and survives only in environments with extremely low oxygen levels, using sulfur and carbon dioxide as energy sources.

“Taken together, these traits make it a prime candidate for colonizing Mars and other planets,” Fouke said. And because it catalyzes the formation of crystalline rock formations that look like layers of pasta, it would be a relatively easy life form to detect on other planets, he said. (…)

“If we see the deposition of this kind of extensive filamentous rock on other planets, we would know it’s a fingerprint of life,” Fouke said. “It’s big and it’s unique. No other rocks look like this. It would be definitive evidence of the presences of alien microbes.” [More at links]

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Curiosity catches clouds, and a cache of clay

Posted on May 29, 2019 by rburnham

PIA23240_hiresPIA23242NASA’s Curiosity rover has confirmed that the region on Mars it’s exploring, called the “clay-bearing unit,” is well deserving of its name. Two samples the rover recently drilled at rock targets called “Aberlady” and “Kilmarie” have revealed the highest amounts of clay minerals ever found during the mission. Both drill targets appear in a new selfie taken by the rover on May 12, 2019, the 2,405th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.

This clay-enriched region, located on the side of lower Mount Sharp, stood out to NASA orbiters before Curiosity landed in 2012. Clay often forms in water, which is essential for life; Curiosity is exploring Mount Sharp to see if it had the conditions to support life billions of years ago. The rover’s mineralogy instrument, called CheMin (Chemistry and Mineralogy), provided the first analyses of rock samples drilled in the clay-bearing unit. CheMin also found very little hematite, an iron oxide mineral that was abundant just to the north, on Vera Rubin Ridge. (…)

Amid this new drilling and analyzing, Curiosity took a break to watch some clouds – all in the name of science. The rover used its black-and-white Navigation Cameras (Navcams) to snap images of drifting clouds on May 7 and May 12, 2019, sols 2400 and 2405. They’re likely water-ice clouds about 19 miles (31 kilometers) above the surface… [More at link]

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