From the International Planetology Congress in Geneva, Francesca Altieri and Maria Cristina De Sanctis of INAF tell us about the meaning and the latest news of the Exomars mission, both regarding the TGO probe already in orbit and the Rosalind Franklin rover, which is expected to leave for Mars in July 2020. Interviews by Caterina Boccato, INAF Padova; editing by Stefano Parisini, INAF Media. This… Read More »The point of the ESA Exomars mission
Your browser does not support HTML video. Il metano è un gas importante nell’atmosfera terrestre, rilasciato dai vulcani ed escreto da molti organismi viventi, compresi i microbi. Diverse missioni su Marte hanno trovato prove di metano nella sua atmosfera, incluso un recente pennacchio di metano di breve durata misurato dal rover Curiosity. In questo webinar del 18 settembre 2019, il dottor Paul Mahaffy, ricercatore principale… Read More »Measuring Methane on Mars
At 14:31:58 UTC the Mastcam Left has taken this beautiful picture of the second drilling just performed by Curiosity in the area called “Glen Etive 1”.To my knowledge, this is the first time that Curiosity performs a second drilling on the same rock and this is of great interest because it could mean that the preliminary results of the analysis made on the material excavated… Read More »Curiosity Sol 2527, Sept. 15, 2019
At 12:49:27 UTC the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) took this new photo of the drilling performed by Curiosity in the area called “Glen Etive 1” more than a month ago (see https://www.facebook.com/PianetaMarte.MdM/photos/a.1625578140858706/2337403693009477/). The photo was taken from a distance of 26.16 cm with a definition of 0.1005 mm/pixel, thus covering an area of 11.98 cm X 16.09 cm.This is one of the first color… Read More »Curiosity Sol 2523, Sept. 11, 2019
by Tilman Spohn, Chief Scientist for the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) experiment aboard NASA’s InSight mission(see https://www.dlr.de/blogs/en/authors/Tilman-Spohn.aspx) After some warm “happy summer” wishes, Tilman Spohn summarizes the successful removal of HP3’s Support and Assembly Structure (SSA) early last July in order to expose the MOLE penetrator and facilitate the restoration of its journey to the subsurface.It was thus seen that MOLE was… Read More »August 27, 2019 InSight mission diary update.
Chroococcidiopsis (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroococcidiopsis) are photosynthetic cyanobacteria that have been exposed for two and a half years to both open space conditions and conditions similar to those found on the Martian surface, surviving without too many problems in both situations.This experiment was performed on the International Space Station (ISS stands for International Space Station).The results of these experiments should make us think about the actual habitability… Read More »A thin layer of bacteria from the Chroococcidiopsis strain survived prolonged exposure to open space and Mars-like conditions in a low Earth orbit
On September 2 at 10:00 UTC (12:00 Italian time), Mars will be in “conjunction” with the Sun, i.e. at the minimum angular distance from it (1.08°).This circumstance will make impossible any communication with Mars for a period of about two weeks, probably from August 26 to September 9.In fact, since the Sun also emits a strong flux of radio waves, when the radio telescopes used… Read More »Imminent interruption of communications with Mars: the Red Planet is approaching conjunction with the Sun
At 15:44:02 UTC the Mastcam Right has captured this very particular rock, below which a small strip of darker material seems to come out, oriented to the right; also two small stones, much closer to the right edge, present the same phenomenon that perhaps is simply due to a small relief of sand.The rock in the center has a turquoise coloration, totally out of context… Read More »Curiosity Sol 2494, August 12, 2019
At the good time ESA publishes a statement about the failure of the Swedish parachute test of ExoMars, several days after the news was already given by the Russian media (see https://www.facebook.com/PianetaMarte.MdM/posts/2345021425581037). The test was performed on August 5 but it does not specify the altitude at which the module was released. In the same press release we read about a previous test that took… Read More »ExoMars parachute testing continues
If you remember, about a month ago came out a research in which, to explain the presence and sudden disappearance of methane on Mars, it used the phenomenon of “salting” and wind erosion of rocks (see https://phys.org/news/2019-07-methane-mars-mechanism-explanation.html). Well, this new research disproves all that with lots of data in hand!Another failed attempt to dismantle the hypothesis of biological origin.As you can see, even in this… Read More »Experts say methane on Mars is not released due to wind erosion