In 1970, scientists detected amino acids in a meteorite. Fifty years later, a variety of chemical ingredients for life have been found in other space rocks.
Category: space – Page 602
Look: China’s new Mars rover returns latest batch of stunning images
Shortly thereafter, China National Space Agency (CNSA) shared the first images taken by the Tianwen-1 lander.
By May 22, the Zhurong rover descended from its lander and drove on the Martian surface for the first time. Since then, the rover has spent 63 Earth days conducting science operations on the surface of Mars and has traveled over 450 meters (1475 feet).
On Friday, July 9, and again on July 15, the CNSA released new images of the Red Planet that were taken by the rover as it made its way across the surface.
NASA’s Mars helicopter nailed its 10th flight — double what engineers had hoped Ingenuity would do
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Before Saturday, Ingenuity had already flown nearly one mile in total, so its 10th flight helped it hit that threshold.
The flight should have lasted about 2 minutes, 45 seconds. During that time, Ingenuity is expected to have visited 10 distinct waypoints, snapping photos along the way.
Flight 10 is a significant milestone, since Ingenuity has now flown twice as many times as NASA engineers originally planned. NASA expected Ingenuity to crash on its fourth or fifth flight as it tested the limits of its speed and stamina.
See 7 Jaw-Dropping New Photos Of Jupiter Taken This Week
The now iconic spacecraft’s 35th three-hour flyby of Jupiter comes close to the 10th anniversary of its launch. Here are the best and newest phots from its JunoCam imager.
Perseverance Rover left this in Mars rock trying to get first sample on Red Planet
On July 20th, 2021 NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover transmitted new images from Red Planet trying to collect first sample. Rover currently studying geological features of “Crater Floor Fractured Rough” area. While the rocks located in this geologic unit are not great time capsules for organics, NASA’s scientists believe they have been around since the formation of Jezero Crater and incredibly valuable to fill gaps in our geologic understanding of this region – things we’ll desperately need to know if we find life once existed on Mars. Photo of tube located in Mars rock was taken by Perseverance Rover on Sol 148.
Credit: nasa.gov, NASA/JPL-Caltech, NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
Source for NASA’s Perseverance Mars mission: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/
#mars #perseverance #rover
Perseverance’s hunt for ancient life reveals 2 Red Planet discoveries
The search for life beyond Earth is on.
NASA’s newest Mars rover is getting ready to collect its first rock sample from the surface of Mars and stow it away for a future return mission to Earth, where NASA will test it for signs of ancient microbial life.
Perseverance’s science campaign has just begun, and the rover has already stumbled upon interesting rocks and sedimentary layers that tell a part of Mars’ larger history.
The Perseverance rover landed on Mars on February 18 and has been on a Martian road trip ever since to scour its landing site, Jezero Crater. Jezero is a 28-mile wide, 1600-foot deep crater located in a basin slightly north of the Martian equator. It once housed an ancient lake estimated to have dried out 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago.
Dawn of a new era: the revolutionary ion engine that took spacecraft to Ceres
Circa 2015
It’s no TIE fighter, but the Dawn probe is driven by the future of spacecraft propulsion: ion engines.
Asteroid 3 times the size of Taj Mahal to fly past Earth on Saturday
(NEXSTAR) — An asteroid about the size of a stadium — or three times the size of the Taj Mahal — is set to speed past Earth on Saturday.
The asteroid, called “2008Go20,” is hurtling towards Earth at 18000 mph, according to NASA. Nevertheless, the agency says there’s no reason to worry.
Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io is emitting strange radio waves and NASA’s Juno probe is listening
NASA’s Juno spacecraft is “listening” in on radio emissions from Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io, allowing researchers to discover what triggers the strange radio waves.
Of all the planets in our solar system, Jupiter has the largest and most powerful magnetic field, which extends so far that some of the planet’s moons orbit within it. Because Io is closest to the planet, the moon is “caught in a gravitational tug-of-war” between Jupiter and two other large moons, according to NASA. These opposing pulls cause massive internal heat, which has led to hundreds of volcanic eruptions across the moon’s surface.