Tag: mars

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Nasa spacecraft has Mars landing ‘InSight’ – an annotated infographic

E&T magazine

Nasa’s robotic Mars lander, InSight, will study the interior structure of the Red Planet to answer questions about the early formation of the inner planets – Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars – 4.5 billion years ago. InSight (aka Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) is the first mission ever dedicated to the Red Planet’s deep interior and will use its trio of instruments to enable scientists to understand how different its crust, mantle and core are from their counterparts on Earth. InSight’s Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment, RISE, uses the same technology that a smartphone uses to … Continue reading Nasa spacecraft has Mars landing ‘InSight’ – an annotated infographic

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InSight spacecraft to study interior of Mars – an annotated infographic

E&T magazine

Nasa’s robotic Mars lander, InSight, will study the interior structure of the Red Planet to answer questions about the early formation of the inner planets – Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars – 4.5 billion years ago. InSight -short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport – is scheduled to launch atop an Atlas V-401 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. InSight is due to land at Mars’ Elysium Planitia on November 4. The mission’s launch period is from May 5 through to June 8 2018. InSight is the first mission ever dedicated to the Red … Continue reading InSight spacecraft to study interior of Mars – an annotated infographic

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Good news if #TheMartian gets thirsty – Nasa discovers water flowing on Mars – an annotated infographic

E&T magazine

Intriguing images from Nasa’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) suggest that water may still run across the surface of Mars from time to time. MRO instruments have detected hydrated perchlorate salts, with water molecules bound to the crystal structure of salt. Microbes on Earth use perchlorates as an energy source. OK, it’s hardly the Martian Evian bottling plant, but it’s intriguing news nonetheless. We here at E&T Towers eagerly await the discovery over the next crater of the Martian Log Flume and Super Happy Fun Water Slides. Click on the graphic for an expanded view. Continue reading Good news if #TheMartian gets thirsty – Nasa discovers water flowing on Mars – an annotated infographic

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#Beagle2 wreckage found on Mars 12 years after disappearance – an annotated infographic

E&T magazine

Nasa scientists may have discovered the wreckage of the UK’s pioneering Mars lander Beagle 2 on the surface of Mars in a breakthrough development more than 12 years after the spacecraft’s disappearance. The fate of Beagle 2 has been a mystery ever since the closely watched failed landing attempt on Christmas Day 2003. In a rather secretive manner, the UK Space Agency said it would release new information about the lander, a brainchild of the late British planetary scientist Professor Colin Pillinger, later this week. It’s just a shame Professor Pillinger died in May 2014. Having endured years of jokes … Continue reading #Beagle2 wreckage found on Mars 12 years after disappearance – an annotated infographic

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#Nasa readies Orion spacecraft for its first unmanned test flight – an annotated infographic

E&T magazine

Nasa is preparing to launch its next-generation Orion spacecraft on an unmanned test flight. The capsule is designed to carry astronauts deeper into space than ever before, to an asteroid or even to Mars. E&T has covered Orion’s journey so far, from testing the capsule parachutes for a Martian landing to the day when Nasa engineers rolled the Orion capsule out of its processing hangar at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, having finished its assembly. E&T also has reams of space-related information gathered together on our dynamically updated Space news page, so you may wish to bookmark that page … Continue reading #Nasa readies Orion spacecraft for its first unmanned test flight – an annotated infographic

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ExoMars: Meet Bridget, Brian and Bruno

E&T magazine

One of the most exciting projects currently under way in the European space sector – ExoMars – a mission to land the first European rover on Mars. About a third of the size of Curiosity, its American older brother, ExoMars will search for signs of past and present life under the surface of the Red Planet. E&T Magazine’s reporter Tereza Pultarova visited the facilities of Airbus Defence and Space in Stevenage, the UK, where this fascinating project is being brought to life. The ExoMars engineers built a Mars Yard inside Airbus’s facilities in Stevenage, to test the rover in real-life … Continue reading ExoMars: Meet Bridget, Brian and Bruno

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Martian diary: how to pick crewmembers

E&T magazine

E&T reporter Tereza Pultarova is taking part in a simulated Mars mission in a Mars analog station in Utah, the USA. The crew has been on site for more than a week and has already settled into the daily routine. However, it has not been all plain sailing. Here is Tereza’s latest update: Going to Mars is not only about technical skills and scientific knowledge; the success or failure of any future mission would come down to psychological aspects – will the crew function as a team despite all the strains, discomforts and stresses, or will they start fighting? The … Continue reading Martian diary: how to pick crewmembers

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Testing Google Glass for Mars navigation

E&T magazine

‘OK glass, open the fridge,’ our cameraman Filip Koubek is standing in the kitchen area of our approximately 25 square metre living/working room with a pair of plastic shades on his nose, messing around. It was a couple of days ago when we first tested Google’s hottest innovation – the wearable Google Glass gadget – and the ‘OK, glass’ phrase, used for command confirmation, really stuck with us. Our crew’s commander and a Florida-Institute-of-Technology-based extreme environments architect Ondrej Doule brought a Google Glass set for an ergonomics study that would try to assess its usability when integrated into a space … Continue reading Testing Google Glass for Mars navigation

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Mars day 1: 60 gallons for 6 people?

E&T magazine

By Tereza Pultarova It must have been some time in August when I received an email from a friend of mine, a Florida- Institute-of-Technology-based extreme environments architect Ondrej Doule. He was putting together a research crew to apply for a two-week rotation at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, the USA. He needed a journalist aboard to manage the communications. I didn’t have to think twice. I knew immediately that this is going to be a pretty extraordinary experience. Mars Desert Research Station, run by the Mars Society, is a Mars analog habitat in the middle of a high … Continue reading Mars day 1: 60 gallons for 6 people?

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@NASA readies #MAVEN spacecraft for flight to Mars – an annotated graphic

E&T magazine

To paraphrase Jonathan King (not a sentence we ever thought we’d open a blog post with), everyone’s gone to the Mars. Earlier this week, it was India sending its Mangalyaan mission to the Red Planet. Next, it’s the turn of NASA, which intends to pitch its MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) spacecraft on a year-long mission to Mars. MAVEN’s raison d’etre is to help us understand what became of Mars’ historically thick, water-rich atmosphere. One theory is that as the planet’s magnetic field declined due to the planet’s core cooled, solar winds gradually stripped away the atmosphere. What a … Continue reading @NASA readies #MAVEN spacecraft for flight to Mars – an annotated graphic