The White House is Briefed: Phoenix About to Announce "Potential For Life" on Mars | Universe Today. Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter The surface zones where samples have been excavated by Phoenix (NASA) It would appear that the US President has been briefed by Phoenix scientists about the discovery of something more “provocative” than the discovery of water existing on the Martian surface. This news comes just as the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA) confirmed experimental evidence for the existence of water in the Mars regolith on Thursday. Whilst NASA scientists are not claiming that life once existed on the Red Planet’s surface, new data appears to indicate the “potential for life” more conclusively than the TEGA water results.
Apparently these new results are being kept under wraps until further, more detailed analysis can be carried out, but we are assured that this announcement will be huge… So why is there all this secrecy? So what will this compelling discovery be? Source: Aviation Week About Ian O'Neill Hello! Martian landscapes. Martian Vistas. Recently Opportunity has come across a fascinating outcrop on the Cape York feature on the rim of Endeavour crater. As she used her IDD (arm) to analyse a target known as 'Kirkwood' the surrounding outcrops were imaged in this pancam mosaic. Oppy then drove to the large flatish rock in the upper left of this image ('Whitewater Lake') to examine that. Differing parts of this image were taken under very different lighting conditions making a perfect match impossible.
Full Resolution (10288 x 4144) ( 10MB )Half Resolution (5144 x 2072) ( 2MB )Quarter Resolution (2572 x 1036) ( 741kB )Eighth Resolution (1286 x 518) ( 190kB ) Mars exploration: Phoenix: a race against time. Red (Planet) Alert: Massive Subsurface Glaciers Discovered on Mars: Scientific American. The more we learn about Mars, it seems, the icier the Red Planet appears to be. The recently departed Phoenix lander dug up water ice and even spotted falling snow from its position in the northern polar plains. And now data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter point to vast glaciers buried beneath thin layers of crustal debris, much closer to the equator. The findings, published today in Science, come from the spacecraft's shallow radar, or SHARAD, which is able to penetrate the surface and examine what lies beneath. In this case, SHARAD indicated that two long-visible mid-latitude features, one of which is roughly three times the size of Los Angeles, are almost completely composed of water ice.
(The suspect glaciers are covered by debris that obscures them but also insulates the ice from sublimating into water vapor, much as street grit forms an opaque, protective blanket over roadside snowbanks.) Those stores, Baker says, would be key to potential human exploration of Mars. Frozen Death Looms for Phoenix Mars Lander. After more than four months on the arctic plains of the red planet, NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's days are finally numbered.As the sun begins to set for the frigid Martian winter, the spacecraft will lose its energy supply, freeze and eventually fall into a mechanical coma from which it will likely never wake up.
Phoenix's mission has been to dig up samples of Martian dirt and the subsurface layer of rock-hard water ice at its landing site in Mars' Vastitas Borealis plains. The lander has been scanning the samples for signs of the region? S past potential for habitability. Phoenix landed on Mars on May 25, late spring in the Martian northern hemisphere. But whether or not Phoenix will survive that long is uncertain and depends on how the spacecraft's systems handle its ever-dwindling energy supply and the harsh conditions of the Martian winter. "We're at the mercy of Mars," said Phoenix project manger Barry Goldstein, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Winter sets in. Phoenix News. This panorama mosaic of images was taken by the Surface Stereo Imager on board NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander.
This mosaic documents the midnight sun during several days of the mission. The foreground and sky images were taken on Sol 54, or the 54th Martian day of the mission (July 20, 2008). The solar images were taken between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., local solar time, during the nights of sols 46 to 56. During this period of 11 sols, the sun's path got slightly lower over the northern horizon, causing the lack of smoothness to the curve. This pan captures the polar nature of the Phoenix mission in its similarity to time lapse pictures taken above the Arctic Circle on Earth.
The Phoenix Mission is led by the University of Arizona, Tucson, on behalf of NASA. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University. The Software Behind the Mars Phoenix Lander | O'Reilly News. The Mars Phoenix Lander Mission is a short-term mission to Mars to search for signs of water and a potential habitable site for an eventual manned mission to the Red Planet.
This mission is a collaboration between NASA and the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. Sending hundreds of pounds of equipment millions of miles through space to land and operate independently from direct control presents several interesting software development challenges. O'Reilly News recently discussed the project and its technology with NASA's Peter Gluck. Peter, can you give me a brief background for yourself?
I'm the project software engineer for the Phoenix Lander Mission. It might be easier just to say what you haven't worked on! Well, I don't know how far back you want to go. You're the project software engineer. Yeah. By payload software, do you mean software that runs the experiments and reports things back? That's correct. RAD 6000. That's correct. Yes, it is for the most part. Yeah. Yes. [PDF] AFRL’s RAD6000 Computer. Martian Skies. Yesterday's announcement by NASA of the discovery of water ice on Mars by its Phoenix Lander probe made big news everywhere. The discovery involved the observation of water ice sublimating into the air - that is, the water went from solid to vapor state without reaching the liquid stage. The Martian atmosphere has perfect conditions for sublimation - extremely thin, dry and cold.
How cold? Well, you can check the Live Martian Weather Report, with data from a station on board the Phoenix Lander. Today will see a high temperature of a toasty -26 degrees F. What more do we know about Mars' atmosphere? High, wispy clouds cover a large portion of Mars, seen in this, the first true-colour image of Mars generated with the OSIRIS orange (red), green and blue color filters. Phoenix. Postcards from Mars | Jim Bell.