Tag archives for mars
Posted by After shaking off the daze induced by family, bubbly, and the vast amounts of tamales that accompany my winter holidays, I have washed up on the shores of Long Beach, California, where almost 2,500 astronomers are gathered for the 213th meeting of the American Astronomical Society. The biggest astro-nerd fest of the year is even…
Today folks using the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter announced the discovery of a mineral called magnesium carbonate on Mars. —Image courtesy NASA/JPL/JHUAPL/MSSS/Brown University At first blush this seems like a pretty dry finding [pardon the pun]. What is a carbonate, and why should I care, you might ask. When I tell you that it’s a mineral…
I’ve been a baaaad blogger. Headed out to San Francisco for the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, I had grand ambitions of doing it all: writing stories, editing copy, meeting scientists, hobnobbing with other writers, and of course live blogging from the meeting. Life, it seems, had other plans. But never fear. Now…
The holiday season has officially descended upon us, and many a child is eagerly waiting for that jolly red roundness with a snowy white cap to appear in the sky. Meanwhile, anyone whose day job requires listening for and deciphering radio signals from Mars is probably only too glad that white-capped red ball has hidden…
The fevered race to pick a landing site and a new name for the Mars Science Lab seems to have come to a screeching halt today, as NASA announced that the mission will have to wait until fall 2011 to launch. —Image courtesy NASA/JPL Citing technical issues and a too-tight testing schedule, NASA officials told…
Earth isn’t the only planet that puts on a flashy light show. Last week Saturn was the exhibitionist, showing off a vibrant blue aurora around its northern polar hexagon. And Jupiter made the crowds cheer in 2007 with a shot of its “hyper-auroras” lighting up both poles. —Photo by Bruce Dale/NGS Not to be outdone,…
After what sounded like some pretty exhilarating deliberations back in September, JPL announced today the final four candidate sites for landing the Mars Science Lab, NASA’s next big rover bound for the red planet. Sayonara, Miyamoto. Farewell, Nili Fossae. And so long South Meridiani. These three of the seven under consideration were voted off the…
Whew! Egypt = amazing. I can’t even begin to describe the wonder and awe of standing inside a pyramid or walking the Avenue of the Sphinxes or sailing in a felucca on the Nile. It really is something everyone should do at some point in their lives. The best part is that it seems I…
Late last night the Mars Phoenix Lander put itself to sleep after experiencing a malfunction brought on by its deteriorating power supply. The craft also unexpectedly switched over to its backup electronics and shut off one of its batteries. The news was surely a disappointment, but not entirely a surprise, for NASA engineers, who had…
Sometimes it seems like being large, distant, and gassy is a major turn-off for space engineers—unless you’ve got great eyes or lots of jewelry. Of the eight recognized planets in our solar system, the terrestrial worlds are by far the in-crowd as far as scientific orbiters are concerned, with Mars and Earth as the obvious…
There’s always a twinkle in a science writer’s eye when real life imitates art. In 2005 we had a snapshot of gases and dust around a star that seemed to be auditioning for the next Lord of the Rings film. Then in 2007 there came the news that the universe could be packed with double-sunned…
Even as sharp new pictures continue to flow in from the recent MESSENGER flyby past Mercury, the folks over at the Cassini-Hyugens program are conducing their own close encounter with Saturn‘s icy moon Enceladus. —Image courtesy NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute This afternoon the Cassini spacecraft made its closest approach yet to the wrinkly-faced moon—a trip that…
Move over, Mars, you’re not the only act in town that can show folks some extreme weather. The orbiting Cassini spacecraft took this image, released today by NASA, of Saturn’s northern latitudes, including an edge of the planet’s famed atmospheric hexagon that swirls around its north pole. —Image courtesy NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute The tight, high-resolution…
NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander has seen snow falling on the red planet! One of the probe’s atmospheric instruments detected ice crystals coming from clouds about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers ) above, although the flakes seem to have vaporized before they reached the ground. —Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Canadian Space Agency This probably isn’t a huge…
If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, should we space-loving chicks be annoyed that the red planet gets so much more money and attention than its “feminine” counterpart? Yeah, Mars is cool and all, what with its tantalizing geologic features and strong potential as a relatively recent host for liquid water. By…
