Copernical Team
Tianwen 1 enters Mars' polar orbit
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China's Tianwen 1 robotic probe entered orbit above Mars' polar regions on Monday, moving closer to the red planet, the China National Space Administration said.
The spacecraft activated its 3,000-Newton-thrust orbital-control engine at 5 pm to conduct an orbital plane change maneuver to enter polar orbit with a perigee of about 265 kilometers above the red planet, the administration said Perseverance rover lands on Mars this week
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After a seven-month journey, NASA's Perseverance rover prepares to touch down on Mars on Thursday after first negotiating a risky landing procedure that will mark the start of its multi-year search for signs of ancient microbial life.
The Mars 2020 mission, which set off late from Florida in late July, includes the largest ever vehicle to be dispatched to the Red Planet.
Built at NASA's Tuning in for a precision landing on Mars on Feb 18
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On 18 February 2021, NASA will initiate the most precise landing ever attempted on the Red Planet. A spacecraft with the Perseverance rover on board will enter the Martian atmosphere at around 21:38 (CET) at just under 19,500 kilometres per hour. Within seven crucial minutes, the spacecraft will decelerate to zero using its heat shield, parachute and braking thrusters to set the rover - suspende Melting dusty ice may have carved Martian gullies
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By analyzing the occurrences of exposed dusty ice on Mars using data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, ASU planetary scientists Aditya Khuller and Philip Christensen have found the lowest latitude detection of dusty water ice on Mars.
The melting of this dusty water ice could have led to the formation of gullies that have eroded into rock and ice at these locations and may provide p NASA wants to fly a helicopter on Mars for the first time
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More than a century after the first powered flight on Earth, NASA intends to prove it's possible to replicate the feat on another world.
Transported aboard the Mars 2020 spacecraft that arrives at the Red Planet on Thursday, the small Ingenuity helicopter will have several challenges to overcome - the biggest being the rarefied Martian atmosphere, which is just one percent the density of Ea The comet that killed the dinosaurs
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It was tens of miles wide and forever changed history when it crashed into Earth about 66 million years ago.
The Chicxulub impactor, as it's known, left behind a crater off the coast of Mexico that spans 93 miles and goes 12 miles deep. Its devastating impact brought the reign of the dinosaurs to an abrupt and calamitous end by triggering their sudden mass extinction, along with the end of ISS Progress 77 Sets Off From Baikonur Cosmodrome
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Progress 77 is expected to remain docked to the Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS) until July 2021. Last year, Russia sent two Progress MS resupply spacecraft to the ISS, in April and in July.
The ISS Progress 77 cargo ship is setting off to the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday, carried by Russia's Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket. The spacecraft is taking off fro SpaceX launches Starlink satellites, loses booster in sea
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Elon Musk's SpaceX successfully launched another Falcon 9 rocket carrying dozens of Starlink satellites into space on Monday after delaying liftoff for nearly 24 hours due to weather.
The rocket launched at 10:59 p.m. EST from Cape Canaveral Space Force Base Station Launch Complex 40 in Florida, carrying 60 Starlink satellites into orbit.
On returning to Earth, the rocket's first-sta Biotech fit for the Red Planet: New method for growing cyanobacteria under Mars-like conditions
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NASA, in collaboration with other leading space agencies, aims to send its first human missions to Mars in the early 2030s, while companies like SpaceX may do so even earlier. Astronauts on Mars will need oxygen, water, food, and other consumables. These will need to be sourced from Mars, because importing them from Earth would be impractical in the long term. In Frontiers in Microbiology, scientists show for the first time that Anabaena cyanobacteria can be grown with only local gases, water, and other nutrients and at low pressure. This makes it much easier to develop sustainable biological life support systems.
"Here we show that cyanobacteria can use gases available in the Martian atmosphere, at a low total pressure, as their source of carbon and nitrogen.
Image: At the rim of a crater
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This image features the southeast wall of a small crater located a few hundred kilometers to the north of the giant Hellas impact basin on Mars. The complete crater itself is about 12 km in diameter; this image shows a 5 x 10 km area.
The Color and Stereo Surface Imaging System (CaSSIS) onboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter took the image on 19 October 2020.
When viewed with CaSSIS' color filters, the image shows exceptional diversity in color. This diversity is related to the presence of various minerals that reflect light differently at different wavelengths. The light-toned deposits highlight the bedrock exposures of the area, which probably contain ancient clay-rich minerals that would have formed in the presence of water. Also visible are wind-blown sandy deposits that form ripples on the floor of the crater. Their distinctive tan color implies that they contain iron-oxide minerals.
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