Mars escapes!
It might seem as if everyone's trying to get some distance from the Kennedy Center these days: Issa Rae. More than a dozen staffers. Mars.
Yes, even the Red Planet — the one with a 24.6-hour solar day, the one orbiting the sun and orbited by Phobos and Deimos, that dusty obsession of scientists and sci-fi writers — appeared on Thursday to be fed up with all the drama at the performing arts center. Sort of.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Yahoo
Haunting Image Shows The Moon Deimos From The Surface of Mars
There's not much hustle and bustle on Mars. The red planet is inhabited by no-one that we know of, except the robotic rovers toiling away to excavate its secrets. The only sound you'd hear is the whispering of the wind. There are no crowds, not much in the way of turmoil (unless you happen to get caught in one of Mars's wild, global sandstorms). Nevertheless, a new image taken by Perseverance from its lonely vantage point in the Jezero Crater seems to convey the serenity possible on Mars like no other. It was taken in the liminal pre-dawn darkness, at 4:27 am local time on 1 March 2025. The rover aimed its left Navcam above the horizon, and for a total exposure time of 52 seconds, stared at the sky – specifically, Deimos, the smaller and more distant of the two Martian moons. At just 16 kilometers (10 miles) across, and orbiting at an average distance of around 20,000 kilometers from the Martian surface, Deimos is quite small when viewed from Perseverance's perspective. It looks like a bright star in the sky. Mars has two moons; the other is Phobos. They were named for the sons of god of war Ares, the Greek counterpart for the Roman god Mars; their names mean fear (Phobos) and dread (Deimos). There are lots of mysteries about these little potato-moons. Scientists want to know where they came from, and where they are going. Simulations suggest that Phobos, which orbits Mars closer than any other moon in the Solar System, and whose orbit is shrinking, will one day be torn asunder by the gravity of Mars and become a faint ring around its equator. Deimos, at a much safer distance, is likely to escape this carnage; its fate, however, is not clear. Observations such as this haunting image captured by a lonely robot on the Martian surface are the tiny puzzle pieces scientists use to conduct their painstaking investigations thereon. Stunning Images Reveal The Sun's Surface in Unprecedented Detail The Universe's Most Powerful Cosmic Rays May Finally Be Explained China's Tianwen-2 Launches to Grab First 'Living Fossil' Asteroid Samples
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Yahoo
Japan tests its Mars moon sample-return probe ahead of 2026 launch (photo)
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Japan is putting its Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) spacecraft through a series of tests ahead of its launch to Mars next year. MMX is a complex mission to collect samples from the moon Phobos and deliver them to Earth to solve the riddle of the origin of the tiny Martian satellite. The spacecraft has been put into a vacuum chamber to test its readiness for deep space, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced on May 15 via its official mission channel on the social media platform X. "MMX is undergoing a thermal vacuum test, in which the spacecraft is placed in a vacuum chamber where the environment simulates outer space and the operation for each of the onboard instruments is checked," JAXA stated. The image shows the spacecraft's return and exploration modules, while MMX's little IDEFIX rover can be seen in the center, attached to the exploration module. The 55-pound (25 kilograms) IDEFIX rover was developed by the German Aerospace Center (known by the German acronym DLR) and the French space agency Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES). Related stories: — New Japanese spacecraft aims to explore the mysterious moons of Mars — Mars: Everything you need to know about the Red Planet — Mars moons: Facts about Phobos and Deimos A main objective of MMX is to determine whether Phobos and the smaller companion moon Deimos are captured asteroids, or formed from fragments blown into orbit after a giant impact struck Mars. The mission also aims to provide new insights into the history of the Red Planet and planetary formation in general across the wider solar system. MMX is due to be launched on Japan's flagship H3 rocket from Tanegashima Space Center during the next Mars launch window, in November-December 2026. It was earlier scheduled to launch in the previous launch window in 2024, but this was delayed due to issues with the H3 rocket. If all goes well, MMX will arrive in orbit around Mars in 2027 to begin mapping and analyzing Phobos and Deimos and search for a landing site. MMX will then land on Phobos in 2029 to collect around 0.35 oz (10 grams) of samples. These are expected to be delivered to Earth in 2031.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Yahoo
A NASA Mars rover looked up at a moody sky. What it saw wasn't a star.
In the hours just before dawn, NASA's Perseverance rover adjusted its gaze toward the heavens and saw a brilliant point of light. That bright sparkle wasn't a morning star beaming from distant space, but something more mysterious — Mars' shiest moon, Deimos. The rover used one of its navigation cameras at a long-exposure setting to capture the new image. "It's definitely a mood," NASA said of the rare photo in a post on X. SEE ALSO: NASA rover captures an aurora from Mars surface for the first time Because the rover took the image in the dark with an almost one-minute exposure time, the scene appears hazy. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, but scientists know relatively little about them — especially Deimos, the smallest of the two. Both moons are "blacker than coal and look like battered potatoes," according to the European Space Agency, which has studied the pair with its Mars Express spacecraft. Right now researchers aren't sure where the moons came from, and it remains a source of scientific debate. Some believe they could have been asteroids captured in orbit around the Red Planet. Others think they could be chunks of Mars itself, blown out by a giant collision billions of years ago. Nearly all of the images of Deimos, a city-sized moon at roughly 7.5 miles wide, have been taken just like this new one, from the Martian surface by rovers. Because the moon is tidally locked — meaning one full spin matches the amount of time it takes to complete its orbit of Mars — only one of its sides has been seen on the Red Planet. NASA's Perseverance rover was on its way to a new exploration site on the rim of Jezero crater, dubbed Witch Hazel Hill, when it conducted the Deimos photoshoot. Though Perseverance took the image on March 1, NASA just released it to the public. Because the rover took the image in the dark with an almost one-minute exposure time, the scene appears hazy. Many of the white dots in the sky likely aren't distant stars but digital noise. Some others could be cosmic rays, space particles traveling close to the speed of light, according to NASA. Two of the brighter specks are Regulus and Algieba, stars about 78 and 130 light-years away from the solar system respectively, in the constellation Leo. Though little is known about Deimos, another European spacecraft recently captured unprecedented views of the moon's far side. The Hera mission, which will study the asteroid NASA intentionally crashed into three years ago, flew by the Red Planet on March 12, just 11 days after the rover looked up. Hera's flyby wasn't a detour but a necessary maneuver to put the spacecraft on the right trajectory toward its ultimate asteroid destination. Swinging within 625 miles of Deimos, Hera used Martian gravity to adjust its course. Queen cofounder Brian May, who is an astrophysicist when he isn't playing guitar, is among the team that processed the Deimos images. "You feel like you're there, and you see the whole scene in front of you," he said during a news conference in March. "The science that we get from this is colossal, and I think we're all like children."
