Latest news with #MAVEN
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
NASA has sparked a race to develop the data pipeline to Mars
For decades, NASA built and flew its own relay orbiters and spacecraft to ferry valuable data back to Earth. Now, the agency is shifting to buying connectivity as a service, much like it does for launch and astronaut transport. That pivot has sparked a race, with major contenders pitching ways to keep Mars missions online. What's at stake isn't a single contract: it's the data pipe to Mars. This new approach, which will mix NASA assets and commercial infrastructure, would gradually replace the patchwork relay network the agency relies on today. Generally, that works by orbiters like Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and MAVEN that pickup data from rovers and landers, and transmit it to the Deep Space Network's (DSN) giant antennas on Earth. NASA's relay spacecraft are still healthy, but they were never meant to be a permanent backbone. The agency's latest senior review on planetary missions calls out MAVEN's critical role as a relay and provides steps to keep it available into the early 2030s. But eventually, this hardware will decay. At the same time, NASA's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program, which manages the DSN, is looking for solutions to augment these aging assets. The aim, according to an RFP released in July and due today, is to create an interoperable marketplace where NASA can be one of many customers instead of the owner-operator. The current request is specifically for capability studies, not immediate hardware buys. The ask is two-fold: a 'lunar trunkline' between the Moon and Earth, and end-to-end Mars communications that move data from assets on the surface, through Mars orbit, and to operations centers on Earth. It's a formidable challenge. Any architecture must contend with the vast distance between Earth and the Moon and Mars, long latency, periodic solar interference and Earth visibility windows, and high requirements for fault-tolerant systems. That's why NASA is asking for plans, to gauge how industry might solve these puzzles, rather than immediately jumping to procurement. While TechCrunch can't confirm which companies are submitting concept proposals, a handful have already staked their place in the race. Blue Origin just unveiled a Mars Telecommunications Orbiter built on its Blue Ring platform, pitched as maneuverable, high-performance spacecraft to support NASA missions to Mars as soon as 2028. Rocket Lab has touted its own Mars telecom orbiter concept, which the company says is a core element of its proposed architecture for the Mars Sample Return campaign. In 2024, NASA's Mars Exploration Program separately funded 12 short commercial services studies, including a trio of studies for next-gen relay services, to SpaceX, Lockheed Martin, and Blue Origin. SpaceX's proposal to 'adapt Earth-orbit communication satellites for Mars' will likely be derived from its Starlink internet satellite constellation. The long-term goal is to transform the agency's planetary exploration agenda from pure-science missions to a permanent human presence on the moon and, eventually, Mars. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
TechCrunch
3 days ago
- Business
- TechCrunch
NASA has sparked a race to develop the data pipeline to Mars
For decades, NASA built and flew its own relay orbiters and spacecraft to ferry valuable data back to Earth. Now, the agency is shifting to buying connectivity as a service, much like it does for launch and astronaut transport. That pivot has sparked a race, with major contenders pitching ways to keep Mars missions online. What's at stake isn't a single contract: it's the data pipe to Mars. This new approach, which will mix NASA assets and commercial infrastructure, would gradually replace the patchwork relay network the agency relies on today. Generally, that works by orbiters like Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and MAVEN that pickup data from rovers and landers, and transmit it to the Deep Space Network's (DSN) giant antennas on Earth. NASA's relay spacecraft are still healthy, but they were never meant to be a permanent backbone. The agency's latest senior review on planetary missions calls out MAVEN's critical role as a relay and provides steps to keep it available into the early 2030s. But eventually, this hardware will decay. At the same time, NASA's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program, which manages the DSN, is looking for solutions to augment these aging assets. The aim, according to an RFP released in July and due today, is to create an interoperable marketplace where NASA can be one of many customers instead of the owner-operator. The current request is specifically for capability studies, not immediate hardware buys. The ask is two-fold: a 'lunar trunkline' between the Moon and Earth, and end-to-end Mars communications that move data from assets on the surface, through Mars orbit, and to operations centers on Earth. It's a formidable challenge. Any architecture must contend with the vast distance between Earth and the Moon and Mars, long latency, periodic solar interference and Earth visibility windows, and high requirements for fault-tolerant systems. That's why NASA is asking for plans, to gauge how industry might solve these puzzles, rather than immediately jumping to procurement. Techcrunch event Tech and VC heavyweights join the Disrupt 2025 agenda Netflix, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Sequoia Capital, Elad Gil — just a few of the heavy hitters joining the Disrupt 2025 agenda. They're here to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don't miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch Disrupt, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech — grab your ticket now and save up to $600+ before prices rise. Tech and VC heavyweights join the Disrupt 2025 agenda Netflix, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Sequoia Capital — just a few of the heavy hitters joining the Disrupt 2025 agenda. They're here to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don't miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch Disrupt, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech — grab your ticket now and save up to $675 before prices rise. San Francisco | REGISTER NOW While TechCrunch can't confirm which companies are submitting concept proposals, a handful have already staked their place in the race. Blue Origin just unveiled a Mars Telecommunications Orbiter built on its Blue Ring platform, pitched as maneuverable, high-performance spacecraft to support NASA missions to Mars as soon as 2028. Rocket Lab has touted its own Mars telecom orbiter concept, which the company says is a core element of its proposed architecture for the Mars Sample Return campaign. In 2024, NASA's Mars Exploration Program separately funded 12 short commercial services studies, including a trio of studies for next-gen relay services, to SpaceX, Lockheed Martin, and Blue Origin. SpaceX's proposal to 'adapt Earth-orbit communication satellites for Mars' will likely be derived from its Starlink internet satellite constellation. The long-term goal is to transform the agency's planetary exploration agenda from pure-science missions to a permanent human presence on the moon and, eventually, Mars.
Yahoo
03-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
The secret of why Mars grew cold and dry may be locked away in its rocks
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The discovery by the Mars rovers of carbonate in sedimentary rock on the Red Planet has enabled planetary scientists to rewind the clock and tell the tale of how Mars' warmer, watery climate 3.5 billion years ago changed to the barren, dry and cold environment that it is today. We know that, in the distant past, Mars was warmer than it is today and had liquid water on its surface. We can see evidence for this in the form of ancient river channels, deltas, lakes and even the eroded coastlines of a large sea in the north. Sometime in the past 3.5 billion years, Mars' atmosphere thinned and its water either froze or was lost to space. The question is, how did that happen? NASA's MAVEN – Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN – mission arrived at the Red Planet in 2014 charged with studying the loss rate of Mars' atmospheric molecules to space. However, scientists know that the carbon in Mars' atmosphere, mostly in the form of carbon dioxide, cannot have been mostly lost to space. That's because the lighter carbon-12 would preferentially escape rather than the marginally heavier carbon-13 (the difference between the two being one extra neutron), but we don't see an excess of carbon-13 in Mars' atmosphere today. The alternative is that Mars' atmospheric carbon must have rained out of the atmosphere and subsequently been locked away in the ground, in the form of carbonates embedded in sedimentary rock. The trouble is, searches for carbonates on Mars had always found nothing, until relatively recently. Both current Mars rover missions – Curiosity climbing Mount Sharp in Gale crater and Perseverance exploring the river delta in Jezero Crater – have discovered carbonates, in the sedimentary rock that form Mount Sharp, and stretching tens of kilometers along the rim of Jezero. Because carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, it can therefore regulate a planet's climate. Losing that carbon dioxide as it transforms into carbonate rocks would have had a drastic effect on Mars' climate. To determine just how drastic, planetary scientists led by Edwin Kite of the University of Chicago modeled how losing its atmospheric carbon in carbonate rocks has affected how Mars' climate has changed over the past 3.5 billion years. This is coupled with the increase in solar luminosity as the sun brightens with age (in just over a billion years' time the sun will be too luminous and hot for life on Earth to survive). As the sun grew hotter, it breathed more heat onto Mars, increasing the planet's average temperature. This led to more precipitation, causing the carbon dioxide to rain out and become locked away as carbonate. With the loss of the carbon dioxide's greenhouse effects, Mars cooled and grew drier. Intermittent spells of high temperatures and shallow liquid water were caused by orbital variations, similar to the Milankovitch cycles on Earth, which are periodic variations in the shape of Earth's orbit and the tilt of our planet's axis caused by the gravitational forces of the other planets, and which affect our long-term climate. The difference between Earth and Mars is that our planet has been able to manage a continuous outgassing of carbon dioxide, mostly from volcanism, to maintain its presence in our atmosphere. Mars, which is about half the diameter of Earth, lost heat from its core more rapidly, which slowed down and ultimately – as far as we can tell – stopped Mars' volcanic activity. With no active volcanoes, or at least very few, there was nothing to replenish the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. These findings help explain the geological evidence of subsequent but increasingly less frequent bursts of liquid water on the surface of Mars during the past 3.5 billion years. RELATED STORIES — Early visions of Mars: Meet the 19th-century astronomer who used science fiction to imagine the Red Planet — Is the US forfeiting its Red Planet leadership to China's Mars Sample Return plan? — NASA's Curiosity rover takes a closer look at 'spiderwebs' on Mars | Space photo of the day for July 1, 2025 There is one caveat, which is that the study assumes that the abundance of carbonates at Gale crater is typical of the entire Red Planet. Carbonate samples need to be identified in many locations before we can say for sure that this was how Mars lost its greenhouse gas. The research is published in Nature.
Yahoo
02-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
The secret of why Mars grew cold and dry may be locked away in its rocks
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The discovery by the Mars rovers of carbonate in sedimentary rock on the Red Planet has enabled planetary scientists to rewind the clock and tell the tale of how Mars' warmer, watery climate 3.5 billion years ago changed to the barren, dry and cold environment that it is today. We know that, in the distant past, Mars was warmer than it is today and had liquid water on its surface. We can see evidence for this in the form of ancient river channels, deltas, lakes and even the eroded coastlines of a large sea in the north. Sometime in the past 3.5 billion years, Mars' atmosphere thinned and its water either froze or was lost to space. The question is, how did that happen? NASA's MAVEN – Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN – mission arrived at the Red Planet in 2014 charged with studying the loss rate of Mars' atmospheric molecules to space. However, scientists know that the carbon in Mars' atmosphere, mostly in the form of carbon dioxide, cannot have been mostly lost to space. That's because the lighter carbon-12 would preferentially escape rather than the marginally heavier carbon-13 (the difference between the two being one extra neutron), but we don't see an excess of carbon-13 in Mars' atmosphere today. The alternative is that Mars' atmospheric carbon must have rained out of the atmosphere and subsequently been locked away in the ground, in the form of carbonates embedded in sedimentary rock. The trouble is, searches for carbonates on Mars had always found nothing, until relatively recently. Both current Mars rover missions – Curiosity climbing Mount Sharp in Gale crater and Perseverance exploring the river delta in Jezero Crater – have discovered carbonates, in the sedimentary rock that form Mount Sharp, and stretching tens of kilometers along the rim of Jezero. Because carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, it can therefore regulate a planet's climate. Losing that carbon dioxide as it transforms into carbonate rocks would have had a drastic effect on Mars' climate. To determine just how drastic, planetary scientists led by Edwin Kite of the University of Chicago modeled how losing its atmospheric carbon in carbonate rocks has affected how Mars' climate has changed over the past 3.5 billion years. This is coupled with the increase in solar luminosity as the sun brightens with age (in just over a billion years' time the sun will be too luminous and hot for life on Earth to survive). As the sun grew hotter, it breathed more heat onto Mars, increasing the planet's average temperature. This led to more precipitation, causing the carbon dioxide to rain out and become locked away as carbonate. With the loss of the carbon dioxide's greenhouse effects, Mars cooled and grew drier. Intermittent spells of high temperatures and shallow liquid water were caused by orbital variations, similar to the Milankovitch cycles on Earth, which are periodic variations in the shape of Earth's orbit and the tilt of our planet's axis caused by the gravitational forces of the other planets, and which affect our long-term climate. The difference between Earth and Mars is that our planet has been able to manage a continuous outgassing of carbon dioxide, mostly from volcanism, to maintain its presence in our atmosphere. Mars, which is about half the diameter of Earth, lost heat from its core more rapidly, which slowed down and ultimately – as far as we can tell – stopped Mars' volcanic activity. With no active volcanoes, or at least very few, there was nothing to replenish the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. These findings help explain the geological evidence of subsequent but increasingly less frequent bursts of liquid water on the surface of Mars during the past 3.5 billion years. RELATED STORIES — Early visions of Mars: Meet the 19th-century astronomer who used science fiction to imagine the Red Planet — Is the US forfeiting its Red Planet leadership to China's Mars Sample Return plan? — NASA's Curiosity rover takes a closer look at 'spiderwebs' on Mars | Space photo of the day for July 1, 2025 There is one caveat, which is that the study assumes that the abundance of carbonates at Gale crater is typical of the entire Red Planet. Carbonate samples need to be identified in many locations before we can say for sure that this was how Mars lost its greenhouse gas. The research is published in Nature.
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Solar 'cannonballs' may have stripped Mars of its water, long-awaited study reveals
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. After nearly a decade in orbit, NASA's MAVEN spacecraft has, for the first time, directly observed the process that scientists had long suspected was responsible for stripping Mars of its atmosphere. The findings, published May 28 in the journal Science Advances, could help answer a longstanding question about how Mars transformed from a potentially habitable world with rivers and lakes into the mostly-frozen desert we see today. Although Mars today is dry, cold and virtually airless, its surface is carved with unmistakable evidence of a wetter past. Features resembling ancient river valleys, lake beds, and minerals that only form in the presence of water point to long-lived lakes, possibly even shallow seas, that flowed on Mars' surface billions of years ago. For liquid water to persist, however, Mars would have needed a much denser atmosphere to trap heat and sustain higher surface pressure. Understanding when and how that atmosphere vanished is essential to reconstructing Mars' climate evolution, and to determining how long the planet may have remained habitable. Over the past decade, scientists have gathered mounting evidence that solar wind — the constant stream of ionized particles emitted from the sun — and radiation stripped away much of the Martian atmosphere. Among the most significant mechanisms behind this erosion is a process called sputtering, where high-energy particles from solar wind collide with the planet's upper atmosphere. These collisions, in principle, transfer enough energy to neutral atoms and help break them free from the planet's gravitational pull, flinging them into space. "It's like doing a cannonball in a pool," Shannon Curry, the principal investigator of the MAVEN mission at the University of Colorado Boulder who led the new study, said in a statement. "The cannonball, in this case, is the heavy ions crashing into the atmosphere really fast and splashing neutral atoms and molecules out." While sputtering had long been suspected as a key player in Mars' climate evolution, this is the first time the process has been observed directly. Using nine years of data from the MAVEN spacecraft, Curry and her colleagues captured present-day sputtering on Mars. Related: NASA rover discovers out-of-place 'Skull' on Mars, and scientists are baffled By combining data from three of MAVEN's instruments, the researchers created a detailed map of argon, a noble gas, in Mars' upper atmosphere. Argon is an ideal tracer for this kind of atmospheric escape because it is chemically inert, heavy, and resistant to becoming charged. This makes it unlikely to interact with other atmospheric processes, meaning any significant loss of argon serves as a clear tracer of sputtering. Indeed, MAVEN detected the highest concentrations of argon at altitudes where solar wind particles collide with the Martian atmosphere, the new study reports. Its presence was much higher than where scientists would expect it to naturally waft under the planet's gravity, so the findings provide direct evidence that sputtering is actively lifting and removing the molecules from Mars, according to the new study. This process may even have been the driving force behind the loss of Mars' once-thick atmosphere and, with it, its ability to host liquid water on the surface, the study notes. MAVEN's data also revealed that this process occurs at a rate four times higher than previously predicted by models, according to the new study. It became more pronounced during solar storms, potentially offering a glimpse into how much more intense the process might have been during Mars' early history when the planet was more vulnerable to the sun's energy. RELATED STORIES —Scientists find hint of hidden liquid water ocean deep below Mars' surface —Lights on Mars! NASA rover photographs visible auroras on Red Planet for the first time —Perseverance rover rolls onto 'Crocodile' plateau on Mars to hunt for super-old rocks Scientists suspect this process was especially intense billions of years ago, when the sun was more active and Mars had already lost its protective magnetic field. Without that magnetic shield, the Martian atmosphere was left vulnerable to the full force of the solar wind, accelerating its erosion and pushing the planet past a tipping point where liquid water could no longer persist. "These results establish sputtering's role in the loss of Mars' atmosphere and in determining the history of water on Mars," Curry said in the statement. To fully determine whether sputtering was indeed the primary driver of Mars' long-term climate change, scientists will need to peer billions of years into the past using models, isotopic data, and ancient climate clues. Only then can they judge whether sputtering merely grazed the edges of Mars' atmosphere — or stripped it bare.
