laboratoryequipment:

Every Detail Must Be Planned for Marsonauts’ Survival

When humans eventually travel to the Red Planet, the voyage will be long and difficult. The simulated Mars500 mission showed that every detail must be planned, including diet and sleep. The findings will also benefit those of us who stay behind.

Mars500 locked six “marsonauts” in a simulated spaceship near Moscow, Russia for 520 days, the time it would take to fly to Mars and back plus 30 days spent exploring its surface. During their simulated mission, the crew lived in isolation without fresh food, sunlight or fresh air.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/01/every-detail-must-be-planned-marsonauts-survival

ikenbot:

Mars Rover Curiosity Featured in MAD Magazine

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity is exploring some new terrain — the pages of MAD magazine.

The year-end issue of MAD, out Dec. 18, spotlights Curiosity in its fold-in, a feature that shifts from an obvious image to a hidden one when the page is folded. The rover shares space with the so-called “Tan Mom,” an American woman who gained notoriety earlier this year for her sun-scorched features (and for allegedly taking her five-year-old daughter to a tanning salon).

“The main picture is a picture of the Mars rover, and somehow it magically turns into Tan Mom,” said artist Al Jaffee, who has drawn every MAD fold-in since the venerable humor magazine introduced the back-page feature in 1964 — more than 400 in all.

(via kenobi-wan-obi)

ikenbot:

Mars Mountains Look Frosty in New Images

A European spacecraft orbiting Mars has snapped wintry-looking pictures of a mountain range on the Red Planet’s southern highlands, where ridges and crater floors are dusted with carbon dioxide frost.

The pictures were captured by the high-resolution stereo camera on the European Space Agency’s (ESA)Mars Express. They show part of Charitum Montes, a large group of rugged mountains stretching over nearly 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) near the southernmost rim of the Argyre impact basin. The brighter features represent a seasonal layer of carbon dioxide frost.

The images, which were obtained on June 18, show that the mountainous region is pockmarked with many large craters, which have been largely filled in with thick sedimentary deposits.

we-are-star-stuff:

China prepares to grow vegetables on Mars

Chinese astronauts are preparing to grow fresh vegetables on Mars and the moon after researchers successfully completed a preliminary test in Beijing, state media reported.

Four kinds of vegetables were grown in an “ecological life support system”, a 300 cubic metre cabin which will allow astronauts to develop their own stocks of air, water and food while on space missions, Xinhua news agency said Monday.

The system, which relies on plants and algae, is “expected to be used in extra-terrestrial bases on the moon or Mars”, the report said.

Participants in the experiment could “harvest fresh vegetables for meals”, Xinhua quoted Deng Yibing, a researcher at Beijing’s Chinese Astronaut Research and Training Centre, as saying.

“Chinese astronauts may get fresh vegetables and oxygen supplies by gardening in extra-terrestrial bases in the future,” the report said, adding that the experiment was the first of its kind in China.

China has said it will land an exploratory craft on the moon for the first time next year, as part of an ambitious space programme that includes a long-term plan for a manned moon landing.

The Asian superpower has been ramping up its manned space activities as the United States, long the leader in the field, has scaled back some of its programmes, such as retiring its iconic space shuttle fleet.

In its last white paper on space, China said it was working towards landing a man on the moon — a feat so far only achieved by the United States, most recently in 1972 — although it did not give a time frame.

China’s first astronaut Yang Liwei said last month that Chinese astronauts may start a branch of China’s ruling Communist Party in space, state media reported.

“If we establish a party branch in space, it would also be the ‘highest’ of its kind in the world,” Xinhua quoted Yang as saying.

The astronaut was launched into space and orbited the earth aboard the Shenzhou 5 spacecraft in 2003.

(via kenobi-wan-obi)

ikenbot:

Mars Curiosity & James Cameron: Largest Earth Science Meeting Set to Begin

Thousands of Earth scientists are descending on San Francisco this week for the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, the largest geosciences meeting of the year, where new findings on topics ranging from Mars to volcanoes to global warming will be presented.

Advance press releases for the 2012 AGU meeting, held at the Moscone Center, have touted findings in numerous areas, including climate change and Martian geology, and include briefings from some big-name scientists like Mars rover principal investigator, Steve Squyres, and Jane Lubchenco, the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Another big name that will be present at the meeting is James Cameron, who will be talking about his deep-sea dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest spot on Earth, last year, and what he saw while he was down there.A briefing on the latest results from the Mars Curiosity rover mission that will be conducted at the meeting has been the subject of rampant speculation in the press, and NASA has tried to manage expectations, saying that the findings aren’t earth shattering.

Scientists will be presenting findings in hundreds of talks and posters throughing the duration of the meeting, which runs from Monday, Dec. 3, through Friday, Dec. 7. Press conferences from the meeting will be webcast live — you can see a full schedule and watch them here. You can also follow along with news from the meeting by checking out the hashtag #AGU12.

(via kenobi-wan-obi)

sagansense:

Inside Elon Musk’s Mars Math

“I do in fact know that this sounds crazy,” Elon Musk tweeted this week. “But if humanity wishes to become a multi-planet species, then we must figure out how to move millions of people to Mars.”

Like any big, bold idea, Musk’s plan for colonizing Mars strikes you at first glance as indeed crazy, and it also probably makes your head spin a bit. How on earth, you are probably wondering, could we possibly do that? But let’s suspend disbelief for a moment and assume Musk is able to build a reusable rocket that can efficiently shuttle colonists to the Red Planet. The question is: what then?

Musk, who told Bloomberg “I want to die on Mars,” is concerned with the question of how to make a Mars colony self-sustaining. That would require 80,000 volunteers, Musk said in a recent speech to the Royal Aeronautical Society. Then Musk qualified that number on Twitter. We will need 80,000 volunteer colonists per year, he argued, in order to eventually reach a population in the millions.

What’s the Big Idea?
Musk is throwing out a bunch of numbers here, but they are not as random as they may seem. In order for his project to be economically feasible, the cost of space travel will have to be drastically reduced. So here’s what needs to happen. An initial group of 10 colonists will need to pay $500,000 a pop for the one-way trip to Mars. As the colony becomes increasingly self-sustainable — and fewer resources need to be transported from Earth — that will free up more space for additional human cargo. Transporting more and more paying customers, and relying on a “rapid and reusable” rocket, is key to Musk’s price improvement strategy.

Of course, there are many unknowns about the human capacity to live, and flourish, in space, so the question of how to create a stable population on Mars is enormously complex. For instance, will fertility and mortality rates be similar to what they are on Earth?

We need to answer these questions before we can truly determine whether Musk’s model is ultimately sustainable. After all, what does it take for a colony to succeed?

One useful analogy we can look to is the growth of colonial America. The most dramatic jump in population occurred between 1630 — when Puritan emigration from England began — and 1650. During that period the population rose from 4,600 to 50,400. The decades that followed produced fairly steady growth, with the population eventually breaking the one million threshold somewhere around 1750.

In other words, it took over one hundred years for the colonial population to reach the same target that Musk hopes to hit in 12.5 years.

What’s the Significance?
In case you still think this is all just crazy talk, it is important to realize that Musk — an enormously successful entrepreneur who has created four of the most innovative companies in America — is simply following the mission statement of one of his companies, SpaceX, which is to make humans a multi-planetary species.

As Musk tells Big Think, is analytically minded, first and foremost:

I think it is important to apply critical thinking…and in my critical thinking I’m interested in considering whether you have the right axioms, and the axioms are necessarily related to the conclusions that really follow. It’s not too complicated, but most people don’t actually do that.

And then I also try to reason from first principles, which is a good framework that is used in physics where you try to reason outward from things that are considered fundamental truths. And to vet any theory or idea you have against those fundamental truths to make sure you’re not violating them. These are, I think quite elementary things, but yet, very few people do them. I think it’s a good idea to use those mental constructs.

ikenbot:

mothernaturenetwork:

Mars rover Curiosity celebrates its first birthday
On Nov. 26, 2011, the rover began an 8-month journey to Mars that ended on Aug. 5, 2012.

You go Curiosity!

(via kenobi-wan-obi)

thescienceofreality:

First X-ray Vision of Martian Soil.

“This graphic shows results of the first analysis of Martian soil by the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) experiment on NASA’s Curiosity rover. The image reveals the presence of crystalline feldspar, pyroxenes and olivine mixed with some amorphous (non-crystalline) material. The soil sample, taken from a wind-blown deposit within Gale Crater, where the rover landed, is similar to volcanic soils in Hawaii.”

Continue…

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ikenbot:

Dark Sand Cascades on Mars

They might look like trees on Mars, but they’re not. Groups of dark brown streaks have been photographed by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on melting pinkish sand dunes covered with light frost.

Image Credit: HiRISE, MRO, LPL (U. Arizona), NASA

The above image was taken in 2008 April near the North Pole of Mars. At that time, dark sand on the interior of Martian sand dunes became more and more visible as the spring Sun melted the lighter carbon dioxide ice.

When occurring near the top of a dune, dark sand may cascade down the dune leaving dark surface streaks — streaks that might appear at first to be trees standing in front of the lighter regions, but cast no shadows.

Objects about 25 centimeters across are resolved on this image spanning about one kilometer. Close ups of some parts of this image show billowing plumes indicating that the sand slides were occurring even when the image was being taken.

Huge Mars Colony Eyed by SpaceX Founder Elon Musk

Elon Musk, the billionaire founder and CEO of the private spaceflight company SpaceX, wants to help establish a Mars colony of up to 80,000 people by ferrying explorers to the Red Planet for perhaps $500,000 a trip.

Image: This still from a SpaceX mission concept video shows a Dragon space capsule landing on the surface of Mars. SpaceX’s Dragon is a privately built space capsule to carry unmanned payloads, and eventually astronauts, into space. Credit: SpaceX

In Musk’s vision, the ambitious Mars settlement program would start with a pioneering group of fewer than 10 people, who would journey to the Red Planet aboard a huge reusable rocket powered by liquid oxygen and methane.

“At Mars, you can start a self-sustaining civilization and grow it into something really big,” Musk told an audience at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London on Friday (Nov. 16). Musk was there to talk about his business plans, and to receive the Society’s gold medal for his contribution to the commercialization of space.

Mars pioneers

Accompanying the founders of the new Mars colony would be large amounts of equipment, including machines to produce fertilizer, methane and oxygen from Mars’ atmospheric nitrogen and carbon dioxide and the planet’s subsurface water ice.

The Red Planet pioneers would also take construction materials to build transparent domes, which when pressurized with Mars’ atmospheric CO2 could grow Earth crops in Martian soil. As the Mars colony became more self sufficient, the big rocket would start to transport more people and fewer supplies and equipment.

Musk’s architecture for this human Mars exploration effort does not employ cyclers, reusable spacecraft that would travel back and forth constantly between the Red Planet and Earth — at least not at first

“Probably not a Mars cycler; the thing with the cyclers is, you need a lot of them,” Musk told SPACE.com. “You have to have propellant to keep things aligned as [Mars and Earth’s] orbits aren’t [always] in the same plane. In the beginning you won’t have cyclers.”

Continue..

Water on Mars and Earth Had Similar Origins

The Earth’s oceans and the water that once flowed on Mars likely came from a similar source: meteorites that landed on the planets when they were first forming, new research suggests.

Scientists analyzed the makeup of two rare Mars rocks that crashed into Earth as meteorites, and found that Martian water probably came from planetary building blocks similar to those that formed Earth. The two planets likely formed in parallel ways, but then took divergent evolutionary paths.

This finding goes against the common idea that the water in terrestrial planets like Earth and Mars came from comets. Instead, scientists think it originated in chondritic meteorites, which contain small, granular minerals that become integrated into the planets they land on.

‘These meteorites contain trapped basaltic liquids, not unlike the basalts that erupt on Hawaii,” John Jones, an experimental petrologist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, said in a statement. “They are pristine samples that have sampled various Martian volatile element environments.”

Jones was a co-author on a paper detailing the findings published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. The research was led by Tomohiro Usui, a former postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.

The two Martian meteorites studied represent two very different sources of ancient water from the Red Planet, the researchers found.

One space rock came from a middle layer of Mars called the mantle, with traces of water from the deep interior of the planet and about the same amount of a special type of hydrogen found on Earth. The other meteorite is enriched with material from the shallow Martian crust and atmosphere.

The meteorite from the mantle suggests Mars’ interior is dry. Meanwhile, the enriched meteorite has 10 times more water, indicating the surface of Mars might have been very wet at one time.

“There are competing theories that account for the diverse compositions of Martian meteorites,” Usui said. “Until this study there was no direct evidence that primitive Martian lavas contained material from the surface of Mars.”

Mars Cave-Exploration Mission Entices Scientists

NASA is mapping out a strategy to return bits of rock and soil from the Martian surface to Earth, but the most intriguing Red Planet samples lie in underground caverns, some scientists say.

Image: NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took this photo of a cave skylight on the southeastern flank of Pavonis Mons, a large volcano in Mars’ Tharsis Region. The pit is about 180 meters wide. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

The space agency’s next steps at Mars are geared toward mounting a sample-return mission, which is widely viewed as the best way to look for signs of Red Planet life. Such signs are perhaps more likely to be found in material pulled from the subsurface, so some researchers hope NASA’s first Martian sample-return effort won’t be its last.

“While I’m very much interested in a surface sample-return to get us over this hump of doing it, of course I immediately want to go on and start sampling more cryptic materials in lava-tube caves,” said astrobiologist and cave scientist Penny Boston, of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro. “I would love that.”

The Martian underground

Subterranean formations are quite common on Mars, Boston said. Orbiting spacecraft have spotted many snaking lava tubes, for example, which were created by long-ago Red Planet volcanism.

“I could probably scrape up a few hundred examples on Mars, and I think that the numbers are only going to increase as the interest in these structures increases,” Boston told SPACE.com.

Such caverns may preserve a bounty of information about Martian history and evolution, including its past and current potential to host life.

“Something like the lava tubes could be wonderful traps for material from past climate regimes, particles from previous epochs on Mars,” Boston said, noting that liquid water is known to have flowed across the Martian surface long ago.

Lava-tube caves on Earth commonly trap volatile materials such as water, she added.

“We suspect that there may be examples of that on Mars,” Boston said. “The ability to tap into frozen volatiles would be fabulous. And maybe bug bodies — maybe frozen little bodies. You never know.”

The frigid, dry and radiation-bombed Martian surface is unlikely to host life as we know it today, many researchers say. But organisms might be able to survive in a Red Planet lava tube or other underground habitat, where conditions could be far more benign.