Tag: Mars
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Mars Colony Development: Mars One Supplier Update
All of the greatest explorations undertaken by humanity have been hindered by unexpected variables, the Mars One mission is no exception. The first settlers on Mars are currently projected to begin colonization in 2025, making homo sapiens an inter-planetary species. With so much progress and many promising suppliers to propel the mission there are plenty of reasons…
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What do Mars and Australia have in common?
If you’re expecting a punchline to that title, then guess again. It’s no joke. Surprisingly, Australia shares some remarkably similar geology to our neighbouring planet. Specifically the Red Centre, the arid heart of Australia, is the most Mars-like place on Earth! It’s possible that people may have mused on the similarities already. After all, with…
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Science Weekly Picks
Being responsible for picking the week’s most interesting science stories is a fun and fascinating challenge. It pushes to me to look beyond my own interests and explore what others find compelling. So I trust you find my ‘science making news’ selection of interest and delight; explore the quantum, human, off-world and mathematical highs of…
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Weekly Science Picks
Ah, the weekend! Time to kick back, relax, and look back over everything that’s happened over the past few days. And I’m rather happy to say that some quite interesting things have happened, including the Leonid meteor shower which peaked on Friday night (though if you step outside after dark and watch the sky, you…
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Interview: Keri Bean—Mars meteorologist, Curiosity Rover team member
Keri Bean is a meteorologist specialising in the atmospherics of other planets. She is on the team operating the Curiosity Rover for NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission. Prior to MSL, Keri has had roles in the missions for other Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, a prototype Moon rover, the Phoenix Mars Lander, and the Hubble…
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Weekly Science Picks
Doesn’t time fly? I don’t know about anyone else, but my week has absolutely flown past. As I take a moment to relax and consider picking a few favourite topics from this week’s news, I realise that perhaps this is because it’s been an exciting week, full of interesting discoveries and unusual events. In fact,…
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Weekly Science Picks
It’s been an interesting week for science news, and I’ve been lucky enough to be asked to give this week’s science picks! This made me spend a little while sipping contemplatively on a cup of vanilla iced coffee and wondering where to even start… The articles I’ve selected are, of course, slanted towards my own…
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Does my Science look big in this? August 2012 in review
August was a momentous month for science and technology. In my top five events are: NASA landed a car-sized rover on Mars; the first man to walk on the Moon, Neil Armstrong dies; Harvard scientist create a cyborg tissue; Swedish researchers detail how Parkinson’s disease spreads through the brain; and Voyager 2 turns 35. Without…
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It’s a wheel! It’s a wheel – a wheel on Mars!
NASA’s rover Curiosity was safely on Mars. It was a perfect landing. The novel sky-crane method had proved its detractors wrong and its designers right. What was needed then was signs that Curiosity was working as designed. NASA had said that the first pictures may be anything up to 2 hours after landing. A long…
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Gale Crater Vista on Mars
This is the first 360-degree panorama in color of the Gale Crater landing site taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover. The panorama was made from thumbnail versions of images taken by the Mast Camera. Scientists will take a closer look at several splotches in the foreground that appear gray. These areas show the effects of the…
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Mysterious Mars
Mars is full of secrets and mysteries. The classic definition of a desert world, our planet’s arid sibling is a parched wilderness of dunes and planetwide dust storms. With a thin carbon dioxide atmosphere and only 38% the gravitational pull of Earth, there are a lot of puzzles about this cold and frosty little planet,…
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First Color Image of the Martian Landscape from Curiosity
This view of the landscape to the north of NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on the afternoon of the first day after landing. (The team calls this day Sol 1, which is the first Martian day of operations; Sol 1 began on Aug. 6, 2012.) In the distance,…
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Interview with lead Mars Curiosity rover driver Matt Heverly
When the Mars Science Laboratory – Curiosity – touches down on Mars today, one of the people there ready to take control of it will be Matt Heverly. Matt is an engineer with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California and has been working on the design and build of Curiosity, as well as being…
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Where to land Mars Curiosity for the best science? Interview with Marion Anderson, who helped choose the landing site.
You’ve sunk more than $2 billion into a car-sized rover and you’re ready to send it to explore Mars. But where exactly on Mars do you send it? Of course you want it and its controllers back here to be able to do the best possible science. So apparently that is exactly what NASA did…