Mission of the Year: Best of Curiosity Rover's Incredible Journey | Wired Science. Mars-mönkijä haukkasi ensimmäisen näytekauhallisen. Mars rover Curiosity makes "earthshaking" find: No one is talking but everyone is speculating. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems (rover) & Shutterstock (alien) OK, everyone, can we all take a sec and just breathe? I’m getting emails, and seeing Facebook updates, blog posts, and tweets—and I bet if I look hard enough, even smoke signals—about scientists saying they’ve found something “for the history books” on Mars.
This was first reported by NPR in an interesting but nearly meatless article. All we know is that the scientists who are running an instrument on the Curiosity rover called SAM—for Sample Analysis on Mars, an apparatus that can analyze material scooped up from the surface—are very excited about some preliminary results. Very excited. And that’s all we know. I’m seeing tons of speculation, though, and I will happily be the party pooper: don’t let your imagination run away from you. This has happened before.
And here we go again, again. And I won’t guess. ?ref=http%3A%2F%2Ft. Mars Rover Curiosity Discovery Hype a Big Misunderstanding. SAN FRANCISCO — The chief scientist for NASA's Mars rover Curiosity was just excited about the mission, and thrilled that one of the six-wheeled robot's key instruments was acing its first Red Planet tests. That's all he meant to convey. But when an NPR story last month quoted John Grotzinger as saying that data recently gathered by Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, or SAM, were destined "for the history books," the world imposed its own interpretation. Rumors begin flying around the Internet that SAM had perhaps detected complex organic compounds — the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it — on the Red Planet.
What Curiosity found SAM's actual findings, which were revealed Monday (Dec. 3) in a press conference here at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, are intriguing but fall a bit short of the fevered speculation. He was surprised by the way his words rocketed around the Internet. "We're doing science at the speed of science. Curiosity Spots Mystery Mars 'Flower' Like the ‘mystery’ shiny thing Curiosity spotted in October 2012 — that turned out to be a piece of robot litter — the Mars rover has discovered another oddity lodged in a rock that mission scientists haven’t yet explained. PHOTOS: Curiosity Flips Powerful Camera’s Dust Cap While using its robotic arm-mounted Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera to take some close up photos of the surface of a rocky outcrop at a location dubbed “Yellowknife Bay” on Dec. 19 (sol 132 of the mission), a bright object could be seen in one of the raw images uploaded to the mission’s website.
Its discovery has caused quite a stir on AboveTopSecret.com where it was first reported. Alerted to the mystery feature, MSNBC’s Alan Boyle assumed it was just another piece of litter accidentally dropped from the rover. However, this isn’t the case. On putting the question to NASA spokesman Guy Webster, it appears initial analysis has confirmed it is part of the rock and not something dropped on top. So what could it be? Curiosity Rover Finds Shiny 'Doorknob' Rock on Mars. NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has photographed a shiny, metallic-looking object that bears a passing resemblance to a door handle or a hood ornament. The Curiosity rover has not stumbled onto evidence of an ancient civilization that took the family van to Olympus Mons for vacation, however.
The object is simply a rock that the wind has sculpted into an interesting shape, scientists said. "The shiny surface suggests that this rock has a fine grain and is relatively hard," Curiosity scientists wrote Monday (Feb. 11) in an explainer blurb accompanying the image, which was taken on Jan. 30. "Hard, fine-grained rocks can be polished by the wind to form very smooth surfaces. " A close-up of a shiny, wind-sculpted rock photographed by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Jan. 30, 2013.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems Similar "ventifacted" (wind-eroded) rocks can be found here on Earth, notably on the dry, gusty plains of Antarctica, they added. 0 of 10 questions complete.
Nasa lähettää toisenkin mönkijän Marsiin. Saharasta löytynyt Mars-kivi hämmästyttää: Enemmän vettä. Tutkijat kuhisevat Saharan autiomaahan laskeutuneesta Mars-meteoriitin kappaleesta. Vuoden kestäneissä analyyseissä on selvinnyt, että hiilenvärinen kivi on erilainen kuin muut tähän mennessä tiedetyt Mars-kivet: se on paitsi vanhempi kuin useimmat, siinä on myös enemmän vettä. Pesäpallon kokoisen kivenmurikan arvellaan olevan kahden miljardin vuoden ikäinen. Se on kuitenkin hyvin samantyylinen kuin Nasan Spirit- ja Opportunity-mönkijät ovat tutkineet Marsin maaperällä. Tutkimuksen tuloksista kerrottiin torstain Science-lehdessä. Valtaosa Maahan saakka päätyvistä meteoriiteista on peräisin asteroidivyöhykkeeltä, mutta osa niistä voidaan sijoittaa Kuuhun tai Marsiin. Tutkijoiden mukaan Mars-meteoriitit saavat alkunsa, kun suuret asteroidikappaleet osuvat Marsiin ja lennättävät kappaleita ilmaan. Joskus osa niistä päätyy Maahan saakka.
Maasta on tähän mennessä löytynyt noin 65 Mars-kiveä. Musta Kaunotar. New Mars Meteorite Contains 10 Times More Water Than Previous Finds | Wired Science. Scientists have identified a never-before-seen type of meteorite from Mars that has 10 times more water and far more oxygen in it than any previous Martian sample. The meteorite was found in the Sahara Desert in 2011 and has the official name of Northwest Africa 7034. It is a small basaltic rock — nicknamed “Black Beauty” – which means it formed from rapidly cooling lava. The meteorite is about 2.1 billion years old, from a period known as the Martian Amazonian epoch, and provides scientists with their first hands-on glimpse of this era.
Around 110 Martian meteorites have been found on Earth. Most were probably blown off the Red Planet during a large asteroid impact and subsequently crashed on our own world. Almost all other Mars rocks on Earth fall into a category known as the SNC group (Shergottites, nakhlites, and chassignites). Scientists analyzed the rock through several methods. Image: NASA. Mars Crater Held Ancient Lake & Possibly Life, NASA Photos Suggest. By: Charles Q. Choi Published: 01/20/2013 04:23 PM EST on SPACE.com New photos of a huge crater on Mars suggest water may lurk in crevices under the planet's surface, hinting that life might have once lived there, and raising the possibility that it may live there still, researchers say.
Future research looking into the chances of life on Mars could shed light on the origins of life on Earth, scientists added. The discovery came from a study of images by NASA's powerful Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that revealed new evidence of a wet underground environment on the Red Planet. The images focused on the giant McLaughlin Crater, which is about 57 miles (92 kilometers) wide and so deep that underground water appears to have flowed into the crater at some point in the distant past. Today, the crater is bone-dry but harbors clay minerals and other evidence that liquid water filled the area in the ancient past. A wet Mars underground Subterranean Mars An ancient groundwater lake. Cool Things to Find (Parody of "Dumb Ways to Die")