Well, the big day is finally here, the one we have planned for for so long. We’ve got an intact active, changing comet about to swing close by Mars! …From our side, we expect to be hearing more and more over the next few days, starting mid-Sunday night, about what happened at Mars, as the various spacecraft download their data and it gets calibrated, validated, and distributed on Earth. Stay tuned!
More: Comet Campaign blogs here.
An excellent view of Mars and Comet Siding Spring comprising several separate images captured by Scott Ferguson, Florida, USA, this morning around 01:00 UTC (03:00CEST). [More at link]
Sol 782-784, October 17, 2014, update from USGS Scientist Ken Herkenhoff: “The experience I gained planning the MARDI drive “video” for Sol 780 helped me prepare for another MARDI video during the Sol 782 drive…. But concerns were raised about the safety of Sol 783 ChemCam observations of Comet Siding Spring… [More at link]
Science plans for NASA’s Mars spacecraft for the Mars encounter with Comet Siding Spring on Sunday, October 19, are tabulated above. Some links to keep you up to date as information comes back:
• NASA: http://mars.nasa.gov/comets/sidingspring
• CometCampaign.org: http://cometcampaign.org
• European Space Agency’s Mars Express blog: http://blogs.esa.int/mex
Sol 781, October 16, 2014, update from USGS Scientist Ken Herkenhoff: “The 22-meter Sol 780 drive completed as planned, placing the rover near “Book Cliffs” (visible at the right side of this image [right]). Sol 781 planning was interrupted this morning by the Great Shakeout earthquake drill, but the tactical team recovered and stayed on schedule the rest of the day…” [More at link]
THEMIS Image of the Day, October 17, 2014. This VIS image shows lava flows near Arsia Mons.
More THEMIS Images of the Day by geological topic.
The latest fieldwork site for NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, which has been examining a series of Martian craters since 2004, is on the slope of a prominent hill jutting out of the rim of a large crater and bearing its own much smaller crater. It’s called Wdowiak Ridge.
“Wdowiak Ridge sticks out like a sore thumb. We want to understand why this ridge is located off the primary rim of Endeavour Crater and how it fits into the geologic story of this region,” said Opportunity science-team member Jim Rice of the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona… [More at link]
Commissioning activities have gone extremely well over the few weeks since MAVEN entered Mars orbit on September 21. Since then, we have successfully completed four engine burns to lower MAVEN’s orbit. MAVEN now orbits Mars every 4.6 hours with a periapsis (closest distance from the Mars surface) of 175 kilometers. All instruments are activated, and we are seeing data that represents exciting first science from the Mars upper atmosphere. On Oct. 14, 2014, the science team held a conference call with the media to discuss early results. Over the past week we successfully completed five deployments of MAVEN instrument systems needed for six of the eight… [More at link]
Sol 3812, October 14, 2014. Shades Valley is the rock target in the center foreground with a light-tone upper surface. All around lie smaller rocks, most or all of them being ejected debris from the Ulysses Crater impact. Several may have been cracked, rolled over, or pushed into the dirt by the rover’s wheels (note the tracks). False-color image by Holger Isenberg using filtered Pancam frames.
Opportunity raw images, its latest mission status, and a location map.
In 2012, the “Mars One” project, led by a Dutch nonprofit, announced plans to establish the first human colony on the Red Planet by 2025. The mission would initially send four astronauts on a one-way trip to Mars, where they would spend the rest of their lives building the first permanent human settlement…. But engineers at MIT say the project may have to take a step back, at least to reconsider the mission’s technical feasibility. The MIT researchers developed a detailed settlement-analysis tool to assess the feasibility of the Mars One mission, and found that new technologies will be needed to keep humans alive… [More at link]
Edit: Technical paper available here.
