Tag Archives: Mars

Blocks of carbon dioxide ice appear to carve mysterious gullies on Mars as they melt along dunes and blast away sand — a process that looks eerily like the burrowing of fictional sandworms in the movie “Dune.” Planetary scientists have long puzzled over strange, sinuous trenches etched into desert dunes on the Red Planet. The channels look freshly dug, complete …

They’re Ready to Go to Mars  The New York Times Source link

We’re entering a new era of space. One defined not by exploration alone, but by the infrastructure that makes a sustained presence possible.  For decades, our presence in space has been limited to short-term missions: land, explore and return. But now that’s changing. Artemis is preparing the moon as a steppingstone to Mars, shifting the United States’ national space strategy …

That’s two in a row for Starship. SpaceX’s Starship , the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, aced a suborbital test flight today (Oct. 13), following up on a similar success in late August. Today’s mission, which lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase site in South Texas, was the 11th overall test flight for the Starship program. It was also …

In early October, astronomers spotted something ancient and mysterious gliding past Mars. It was not a spacecraft or satellite, but a visitor from beyond our Solar System – an interstellar comet. Comet 3I/ATLAS is only the third interstellar comet ever observed. These types of comets are true outsiders from deep space. They were born around a completely different star, long …

Time moves differently on Mars — not in the Tibetan philosophy sense of the word, but in a measurable, physics-will-ruin-your-mission kind of way that’s giving NASA engineers a real headache. As the agency maps out a future with boots on the red planet, it’s running into a fundamental problem. A clock on Mars ticks 477 microseconds faster per day than …

Terraforming is the theoretical process of transforming a planet or moon to make it habitable for humans and other Earth like life. The concept involves altering an alien world’s atmosphere, temperature, and surface conditions to resemble Earth’s environment, such as adding oxygen to the air, creating liquid water on the surface, and establishing a stable climate. Mars is the most …

A laboratory in Troitsk, Russia, may have just nudged humanity closer to interplanetary commuting. Scientists at Rosatom, the country’s state nuclear corporation, have revealed a working prototype of a plasma propulsion engine they claim could propel a spacecraft to Mars in roughly 30 to 60 days. The concept replaces fiery combustion with electromagnetically accelerated plasma, …

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express and ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter are excellent spacecraft that have provided insights into the Red Planet time and time again. They are also capable of doing things beyond their standard job. They recently looked at interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. They were also used to measure the winds on the surface of Mars, something that …

IN A NUTSHELL 🚀 Researchers demonstrate that bacterial spores can withstand the extreme conditions of space travel. The study highlights the resilience of Bacillus subtilis, a bacterium vital for human health. The findings are significant for the future of long-term human missions to Mars, ensuring astronaut health. This research could lead to biotechnology innovations on Earth, combating antibiotic-resistant bacteria. In …