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Curiosity

Curiosity Drills a Hole into Mars

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Curiosity drills a hole into a Rock on Mars
Curiosity drill site (Source: NASA, JPL-CalTech, MSSS)

The Mars rover Curiosity has drilled a small hole into a rock on the surface of the martian planet today. The hole is about 2cm deep and this “mini-drill” test is in preparation for a larger drilling operation to be performed later on.

The test was performed on a patch of flat rock called “John Klein.The team plans to use Curiosity’s laboratory instruments to analyze sample powder from inside the rock to learn more about the site’s environmental history. Eventually researchers plan to find out whether or not the environmental conditions for life ever existed on the red planet.

For the official post you can head to the NASA news site

Big NASA Discovery On Mars? Not So Much

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About a week ago we received news that NASA was possibly on the brink of a major discovery, in fact it was mentioned that it could be for the “History Books”. Well, unfortunately it doesn’t seem like were going to get that kind of news from Mars anytime soon.

This discovery that apparently never happened is being described as a “big misunderstanding”. Here is the original report that I read from NPR. Planet Mars Viewed From Space

“Grotzinger says they recently put a soil sample in SAM, and the analysis shows something remarkable. “This data is gonna be one for the history books. It’s looking really good.”

“Grotzinger can see the pained look on my face as I wait, hoping he’ll tell me what the heck he’s found, but he’s not providing any more information.”

This was from an interview between science correspondent Joe Palca and scientist John Grotzinger. Apparently, what were being told now is that John meant to say that the mission in it’s entirety is historical and that in the next couple of years we expect to make great discoveries.

Something sound a bit strange here? This was big news that made it’s way quickly around the world and that means NASA had to have heard it too. The big question here is if NASA did hear this report earlier then why didn’t they try to correct this earlier?

They were still sampling soil at the time of the interview and were anxiously waiting for results, but apparently they weren’t “History Worthy”. Either way you look at this, it’s still a bit of let down. I guess we will just have to keep our hopes up for future discoveries on Mars.

Possibly a Big Discovery on Mars

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We have been receiving a steady stream of updates from the Mars rover, Curiosity, ever since it left the Earth’s atmosphere and began it’s mission. However, one of the more recent updates, which is being called “earthshaking”, can not be shared at this time.  So what in the world is going on? or to be more precise, what in the Martian world is going on?

Mars
Mars (Source:NASA)

One of Curiosity’s instruments, known as SAM, is able to determine what’s inside a particular sample by analyzing it and then letting us know what it’s made up of. John Grotzinger, who is part of the rover team, has mentioned that they have recently gathered a bit of soil to test with SAM and it has yielded some “Earthshaking”, results.

Unfortunately, we won’t find out exactly what these earthshaking results are until they have confirmed them beyond a shadow of a doubt. After all they don’t want to deliver big news only to have to take it back later and say they were wrong.

The funny thing about scientific discovery is that everybody interprets these sort of things differently. We could very well hear news that a never before seen gas has been found trapped in the soil sample, which would be interesting but not necessarily “earthshaking” to those of us outside the scientific community, with the exception being some of our fellow geeks of course. Either way we remain in state of suspense until we can find out more about whats going on out there. I can’t even begin to speculate myself.

There’s no doubt in my mind that these scientists are basically freaking out about not being able to tell us, and to make things worse, it may be several weeks before we can know. For now we will just have to wait and see what these earthshaking results are and hopefully we are in for a big suprise.

Amazing New Photo From Mars

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One of the latest images from NASA is a self portrait of Curiosity and by far it is my favorite. Below I have featured a smaller version of the image, you can view the image in it’s full resolution, which I highly recommend, here.

You can see everything in amazing detail, including the logo for the Mars Science Laboratory. It’s hard to wrap your head around this picture. At first glance it’s just an awesome photo from Mars, but once you start to realize that this image is from a completely different planet, a planet which no human has ever set foot, you start to feel different about the martian image.

 

Curiosity Self Portrait
Curiosity Self Portrait (NASA)

 

When we seen landscapes like this we tend to look at it as if it were some random, desolate, place on Earth instead of a planet that at it’s closest known approach was 34.8 million miles (56 million km) miles away from us. Most of the time Mars is much further,  somewhere near 150 million miles (240 million km) away.

There are no cities beyond the mountains and no trees or animals to be found (unless NASA is keeping something from us). It’s not a picture of a volcanic land somewhere along the Pacific Ring of Fire, but rather the view we see photographed is a picture of alien world with human technology as it’s centerpiece. As desolate as it seems, it is still beautiful and inspiring as it stirs up our imagination.

As I look at the full resolution image, I can’t help but look at the ground below Curiosity and ponder the presence of life. It seems that one would only need to dig a hole or flip over a rock to find some type of martian worm or centipede. That red soil must contain some type of bacteria, right? How could it not?

This place looks familiar and in many ways it is. Mars has iron and sulfur core surrounded by molten rock, it also has an outer shell with a heavy coating of iron oxide and volcanic basalt. These are all properties and elements that that can be found on Earth. However, the differenses start to add up rather quickly and then were are reminded again that this is an alien planet, not one of science fiction but one that actually exists. Hopefully one day we will be able to explore this world in person but for now we can all continue to appreciate the efforts of NASA and the Curiosity mission.