Zitat Perseverance rover finds organic matter ‘treasure’ on Mars By Ashley Strickland, CNN Updated 2:35 AM EDT, Fri September 16, 2022
Investigating the site of an ancient river delta, the Perseverance rover has collected some of the most important samples yet on its mission to determine if life ever existed on Mars, according to NASA scientists.
A few of the recently collected samples include organic matter, indicating that Jezero Crater, which likely once held a lake and the delta that emptied into it, had potentially habitable environments 3.5 billion years ago.
“The rocks that we have been investigating on the delta have the highest concentration of organic matter that we have yet found on the mission,” said Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. ... The rover investigated the crater floor and found evidence of igneous, or volcanic, rock. During its second campaign to study the delta over the past five months, Perseverance has found rich sedimentary rock layers that add more to the story of Mars’ ancient climate and environment.
The mission team nicknamed one of the rocks that Perseverance sampled as Wildcat Ridge. The rock likely formed when mud and sand settled in a saltwater lake as it evaporated billions of years ago. The rover scraped away at the surface of the rock and analyzed it with an instrument known as the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals, or SHERLOC.
This rock-zapping laser functions as a fancy black light to uncover chemicals, minerals and organic matter, said Sunanda Sharma, SHERLOC scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
The instrument’s analysis revealed that the organic minerals are likely aromatics, or stable molecules of carbon and hydrogen, which are connected to sulfates. Sulfate minerals, often found sandwiched within the layers of sedimentary rocks, preserve information about the watery environments they formed in.
Organic molecules are of interest on Mars because they represent the building blocks of life, such as carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, as well as nitrogen, phosphorous and sulfur. Not all organic molecules require life to form because some can be created through chemical processes.
“While the detection of this class of organics alone does not mean that life was definitively there, this set of observations does start to look like some things that we’ve seen here on Earth,” Sharma said. “To put it simply, if this is a treasure hunt for potential signs of life on another planet, organic matter is a clue. And we’re getting stronger and stronger clues as we’re moving through our delta campaign.”
Zitat von January 9, 2023China’s Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter and rover appear to be in trouble
HELSINKI — The two spacecraft making up China’s first interplanetary mission are both suffering issues, with the rover potentially lost on the surface after winter hibernation.
The Zhurong Mars rover has been hibernating on the Martian surface since May 18 last year and was expected to resume activity in December, around the time of the Spring equinox in the northern hemisphere.
However no announcement of establishing contact with the rover has been made. The South China Morning Post reported Jan. 7, citing sources that do not wish to be named, that teams on Earth have yet to receive a signal from Zhurong.
The Zhurong rover landed in Mars’s Utopia Planitia region in May 2021 but entered a period of hibernation to ride out winter, when both temperatures and solar radiation levels are too low for the solar-powered rover to operate.
The rover was expected to autonomously resume activities once it can generate sufficient energy from solar power and when temperatures reach around minus 15 degrees Celsius.
Zhurong entered hibernation when local temperatures were around minus 20 degrees, according to the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, after the autumn equinox in late February. Conditions should already by more favorable following the Spring equinox on Dec. 26. Mars has an axial tilt of around 25 degrees, meaning it has has similar seasonal variations to Earth during its orbit around the sun.
While there has so far been no official comment, the rover may have been impacted by sand storms in the area, which could reduce the levels of energy generation. The Tianwen-1 orbiter noted storms around the landing area in March and April 2021. ... Meanwhile the Tianwen-1 orbiter has been tasked with assessing the area and attempting to contact the rover. Teams are however also having trouble receiving data from the orbiter, according to SCMP.
Radio amateurs have also noted issues with attempts for ground stations to lock onto the orbiter.
Zitat Dr. Phil Metzger@DrPhiltill A few years ago the joke was that scientists keep rediscovering water on Mars every 2 years. But this one is different and is a big discovery. 4:23 PM · Aug 13, 2024
Zitat Prof. Abel Méndez 🔭 🔬@ProfAbelMendez Scientists find oceans of water on Mars. It's just too deep to tap. - Berkeley News https://news.berkeley.edu/2024/08/12/sci
Zitat Scientists find oceans of water on Mars. It’s just too deep to tap. Seismic data from NASA's Insight lander indicate deep, porous rock filled with liquid water
Using seismic activity to probe the interior of Mars, geophysicists have found evidence for a large underground reservoir of liquid water — enough to fill oceans on the planet’s surface.
The data from NASA’s Insight lander allowed the scientists to estimate that the amount of groundwater could cover the entire planet to a depth of between 1 and 2 kilometers, or about a mile.
While that’s good news for those tracking the fate of water on the planet after its oceans disappeared more than 3 billion years ago, the reservoir won’t be of much use to anyone trying to tap into it to supply a future Mars colony. It’s located in tiny cracks and pores in rock in the middle of the Martian crust, between 11.5 and 20 kilometers (7 to 13 miles) below the surface. Even on Earth, drilling that deep would be a challenge.
Wright, alongside colleagues Michael Manga of UC Berkeley and Matthias Morzfeld of Scripps Oceanography, detailed their analysis in a paper that will appear this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The scientists employed a mathematical model of rock physics, identical to models used on Earth to map underground aquifers and oil fields, to conclude that the seismic data from Insight are best explained by a deep layer of fractured igneous rock saturated with liquid water. Igneous rocks are cooled hot magma, like the granite of the Sierra Nevada.
“Establishing that there is a big reservoir of liquid water provides some window into what the climate was like or could be like,” said Manga, a UC Berkeley professor of earth and planetary science. “And water is necessary for life as we know it. I don’t see why [the underground reservoir] is not a habitable environment. It’s certainly true on Earth — deep, deep mines host life, the bottom of the ocean hosts life. We haven’t found any evidence for life on Mars, but at least we have identified a place that should, in principle, be able to sustain life.”
Manga noted that lots of evidence — river channels, deltas and lake deposits, as well as water-altered rock — supports the hypothesis that water once flowed on the planet’s surface. But that wet period ended more than 3 billion years ago, after Mars lost its atmosphere. Planetary scientists on Earth have sent many probes and landers to the planet to find out what happened to that water — the water frozen in Mars’ polar ice caps can’t account for it all — as well as when it happened, and whether life exists or used to exist on the planet.
The new findings are an indication that much of the water did not escape into space but filtered down into the crust.
Zitat Blue Origin@blueorigin #NewGlenn’s inaugural mission aims to send @NASA’s ESCAPADE to Mars, with a launch date no earlier than October 13. 10:24 PM · Aug 23, 2024
Die beiden Satelliten sind von Rocket Lab gebaut worden, die dieses Mal nicht die Startrakete stellen.
Zitat ESCAPADE features two identical smallsats, called Blue and Gold, that will go into orbit around Mars. The spacecraft carry instruments to study the planet’s magnetosphere and its interaction with the solar wind.
The spacecraft, built by Rocket Lab, are almost ready for launch. The Blue spacecraft has completed environmental testing while Gold is going through final vibration testing. “It’s been really exciting to see these two probes finally come together after working on them for so many years,” he said.
The launch of ESCAPADE has arguably attracted more attention that the mission itself. The spacecraft are scheduled to launch on the first flight of New Glenn under a NASA task order awarded in February 2023 valued at $20 million.
If ESCAPADE launches this fall, the spacecraft will arrive at Mars 48 hours apart in September 2025 and begin their one-year prime science mission in April 2026. Lillis said he hoped that the spacecraft could work in conjunction with several other Mars orbiters from NASA and other agencies to open a “golden era” of studies of the Martian magnetosphere.
Zitat Scott Manley@DJSnM The first air crash investigation on another world has concluded that the crash of the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars was caused by the inability of the navigation system to track the relatively featureless terrain. This resulted in a touchdown with too much lateral velocity, applying a hard banding moment to the rotor blades causing them to snap. You can watch the full presentation from @theAGU https://youtube.com/watch?v=p45y3e
Zitat Eleven months after the Ingenuity helicopter made its final flight on Mars, engineers and scientists at NASA and a private company that helped build the flying vehicle said they have identified what probably caused it to crash on the surface of Mars.
In short, the helicopter's on-board navigation sensors were unable to discern enough features in the relatively smooth surface of Mars to determine its position, so when it touched down, it did so moving horizontally. This caused the vehicle to tumble, snapping off all four of the helicopter's blades.
It is not easy to conduct a forensic analysis like this on Mars, which is typically about 100 million miles from Earth. Ingenuity carried no black box on board, so investigators have had to piece together their findings from limited data and imagery.
"While multiple scenarios are viable with the available data, we have one we believe is most likely: Lack of surface texture gave the navigation system too little information to work with," said Ingenuity’s first pilot, Håvard Grip of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a news release.
A team from NASA and a company that specializes in unmanned aerial vehicles, AeroVironment, started by looking at the terrain where Ingenuity was operating over during its 72nd flight, on January 18 of this year. The helicopter’s navigation system tracked visual features on the surface using a downward-looking camera. During its initial flights, Ingenuity was able to discern pebbles and other features to determine its position. But nearly three years later, Ingenuity was flying in a region of Jezero Crater filled with steep, relatively featureless sand ripples.
The navigation system uses these visual cues to help determine the vehicle's velocity and ensure that it returns to the surface with almost no lateral or vertical motion, to make a soft touchdown. About 20 seconds into the final flight, according to data from the vehicle, the navigation system was unable to lock on to features for sufficient positioning and velocity data.
As a result, when Ingenuity touched down, it had a horizontal velocity that caused it to make a hard impact and pitch and roll. One of the blades was ripped wholly off—instead of being sheared part way up the blade—draining the vehicle's power and leading to a loss of communications.
Amazingly, the vehicle was able to recharge somewhat with its solar panels and is continuing to communicate about once a week with the Perseverance rover that brought it to Mars in February 2021. This will last a little while longer before the rover and helicopter lose line-of-sight communications.
Alle Jahre wieder. Aber diesmal wird wirklich etwas entschieden. Großes Indianerehrenwort.
Zitat One of the biggest decision points for the space community, how to redesign the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, may be weeks away from an inflection point, according to outgoing NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
During a roundtable discussion with reporters on Dec. 18 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Nelson said the agency will announce the path forward on the U.S.-led initiative to return samples from the Red Planet “in the first part of January, before I leave.”
A consensus inside NASA and in the broader scientific community was that the timeline for MSR and its cost was untenable. The report of the Independent Review Board, published in September 2023, suggested a mission cost of $11 billion and a return date of 2040.
Nelson said that was “way too expensive.” He also noted that NASA intended to have astronauts on Mars by the 2040s and NASA wants to be able to have those samples to study before crews start arriving.
“And so, I pulled the plug on it. And lo and behold what’s coming out and we’ll give you the results in probably the first week in January,” Nelson said.
Der Zeitplan war bis zum Beginn der Mission: Probenrückholung 2028. Dann 2030, dann 2035, jetzt 2040 oder noch später. Erinnert schwer an die Deutsche Bahn, die bis 2060 wieder pünktlich fahren soll, oder die BW, die in 100 Jahren wieder Einsatzbereitschaft herstellt.
"Les hommes seront toujours fous; et ceux qui croient les guérir sont les plus fous de la bande." - Voltaire
Zitat NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EST, Tuesday, Jan. 7, to provide an update on the status of the agency’s Mars Sample Return Program.
The briefing will include NASA’s efforts to complete its goals of returning scientifically selected samples from Mars to Earth while lowering cost, risk, and mission complexity.
Bei Rocket Lab haben sie heute schon mal aufgezeigt und mit dem Finger geschnippt.
Zitat Rocket Lab@RocketLab We can wait another year, or we can get started now.
Our Mars Sample Return architecture will put Martian samples in the hands of scientists faster and more affordably. Less than $4 billion, with samples returned as early as 2031.
This is not our first encounter with the Red Planet. The orbiters, rovers, landers, and helicopters of Mars all bear Rocket Lab’s fingerprints. We can deliver MSR mission success too. 7:26 AM · Jan 8, 2025
Zitat The Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission represents one of the most ambitious and scientifically valuable endeavors in NASA’s history. For the mission to be successful, NASA requires innovative and reliable industry partners. Our MSR mission is designed to put Mars samples in the hands of scientists faster and more affordably. Rocket Lab is ready to enable this mission. Here's our mission concept.
1 Mars Telecommunications Orbiter The Mars Telecommunications Orbiter (MTO) launches first to provide support for arrival of the Earth Return Orbiter and entry of the Sample Return Lander at Mars. The MTO will also serve an upgraded telecommunication relay asset for MSR surface operations and future missions.
2 Multi-Launch from Earth Three dedicated launches to provide orbital and surface assets to Mars.
3 Entry and Descent System The Entry and Descent System will deliver Sample Retrieval Lander and Mars Ascent Vehicle to the surface of Mars.
4 Mars Lander Vehicle + Mars Ascent Vehicle The Mars Lander Vehicle houses the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) which will land on the surface of Mars and serve as the launch pad for the MAV. The MAV includes the Orbiting Sample (OS) container which will house the carefully selected Martian samples. Once launched, the MAV will rendezvous with the Earth Return Orbiter to capture the OS.
5 Earth Return Orbiter The Earth Return Orbiter (ERO) rendezvous with and captures the OS, sterilizing and then containing it inside the Earth Entry System (EES) before returning to Earth.
6 Earth Entry System Housed within the ERO, the Earth Entry System (EES) will safely and precisely deliver the Martian samples to Earth.
7 Earth re-entry capsule. The EES ballistically enters and impacts in the Utah desert
This is not our first encounter with the Red Planet. The very rover already on Mars that has collected the samples for MSR carries our technology. Our solar panels provided power for NASA’s Perseverance Rover’s cruise stage spacecraft and again on the Mars Ingenuity Helicopter. We’ve designed, built, and tested two Mars bound spacecraft in just under 3.5 years – at cost and on time. The orbiters, rovers, landers, and helicopters of Mars all bear Rocket Lab’s fingerprints.
Hintergrund ist dies, was gestern auf der PK der NASA mitgeteilt wurde.
Zitat NASA won't decide on Mars Sample Return plan until mid-2026
The agency is considering two possible MSR strategies but won't pick a winner for another 18 months or so.
NASA is considering two ways to get its precious Mars samples back to Earth, but the agency won't pick a winner for another 18 months or so. Analysis of those samples, which are being collected by NASA's Perseverance rover, could reveal a wealth of data about Mars and its history — including, perhaps, whether the Red Planet has ever hosted life.
NASA is therefore eager to get the Mars material — about 30 cigar-sized, sealed tubes containing rock cores and sediment — home, and then on to laboratories around the world. But doing so has proven to be more difficult, and far more expensive, than originally envisioned. Back in July 2020, for example, the maximum total cost of the Mars sample return (MSR) campaign — a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) — was estimated to be around $3 billion. But just three years later, the expected price tag had risen to $8 billion to $11 billion. And even with that expenditure, the samples likely wouldn't arrive on Earth before 2040.
NASA recently deemed this situation unacceptable. In April 2024, agency chief Bill Nelson announced that an overhaul of the MSR strategy is in the works, saying that NASA will seek innovative new ideas from its research centers, private industry and academia. A few months later, the agency selected 11 MSR proposals from academic and industry groups for further development. Eight of the private groups got up to $1.5 million apiece to keep working on their ideas for the next 90 days. Such work has led to another milestone, which NASA announced during a press conference this afternoon (Jan. 7): The agency is now focusing on two potential MSR architectures, which differ in the way they would put hardware down on Mars.
The first option would employ a rocket-powered "sky crane," the system that successfully landed NASA's Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on Mars in August 2012 and February 2021, respectively. The second would rely on private industry to provide the landing system. Going with the sky crane would result in an MSR cost of $6.6 billion to $7.7 billion, Nelson said today. The commercial option — which NASA didn't discuss in detail, citing concerns about proprietary technologies and designs — would be a bit cheaper, at $5.8 billion to $7.1 billion. "Either of these two options are creating a much more simplified, faster and less expensive version than the original plan," Nelson said. He added that, with the newly announced revamp, the samples could land on Earth as early as 2035, provided that Congress allocates sufficient funding. About $300 million would likely be required for MSR research and development this fiscal year and each additional year going forward, Nelson said.
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