Latest news with #MarsOrbit
Gizmodo
11 hours ago
- Science
- Gizmodo
Mars Orbiter Captures Rare View of Ancient Volcano Poking Above the Clouds
Floating in orbit above Mars, NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter captured a panorama of the Red Planet's biggest volcanoes, Arsia Mons, peeking over a sea of clouds. The picturesque moment offers an exceptionally rare view of a Martian volcano, showing the landform at an angle in space that captures the planet's horizon. 'We picked Arsia Mons hoping we would see the summit poke above the early morning clouds. And it didn't disappoint,' Jonathon Hill, the operations lead for Odyssey's camera and a mission planner at Arizona State University's Mars Space Flight Facility, called the Thermal Emission Imaging System, or THEMIS, said in a statement. THEMIS can view Mars in both visible and infrared light. Launched in 2001, Odyssey has been circling around Mars for over two decades, studying the Martian surface. But in 2023, the orbiter began taking breathtaking panoramic views of the Martian horizon. Because THEMIS can't pivot to get these stunning views, the orbiter flips on its side, rotating a full 90 degrees. That way, it captured Mars' 'limb,' the edge of the planet's horizon. This is THEMIS' fourth limb observation since 2023. Odyssey captured the image on May 2, just before dawn. In it, Arsia Mons stands 12 miles (20 kilometers) high and measures 70 miles (450 km) in diameter. For comparison, Earth's tallest volcano, Mauna Loa, stands 6 miles (9 km) above the seafloor and measures 75 miles (121 km) in diameter. Arsia Mons is also one of Mars' cloudiest volcanoes and the southernmost of the three Tharsis volcanoes that form Tharsis Montes, or Tharsis Mountains. These mountains are often surrounded by water ice clouds, particularly early in the morning. The clouds form when air expands as it blows up the sides of the mountain and then rapidly cools. This view also allows scientists to study Martian weather and phenomena like dust clouds and how they change over the course of the seasons. Odyssey might be able to capture a few more of these panoramas before its eventual retirement, likely at the end of this year.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- 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.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Space photo of the day for May 16, 2025
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. NASA's Perseverance rover captured this pre-dawn view of Mars' moon Deimos hanging over a dimly-lit Martian vista. Unlike Earth's moon, which is roughly one-fourth the planet's size, Deimos is less than 1/500th the size of Mars. That means when seen in the night sky — as spotted here at 4:27 a.m. local time on March 1, 2025, the 1,433rd Martian day, or sol, of Perseverance's mission — it appears more like a star than it does a celestial measures only 7.8 miles (12.6 kilometers) across. Deimos completes one orbit around Mars every 30 hours and 17 minutes at an average distance of 14,576 miles (23,458 kilometers) from the Martian surface. At the time this photo was taken, the Perseverance rover was making its way to a location called "Witch Hazel Hill." Another feature, "Woodstock Crater," at center right, is roughly a half-mile (750 meters) away from the rover. This vista is the product of 16 individual shots, which Perseverance assembled into a single photo that it then transmitted to Earth. In the dark before dawn, the rover's left navigation camera needed to use its maximum long-exposure time of 3.28 seconds for each of the 16 snaps. In total, the image represents an exposure time of about 52 image is hazy because the low light and long exposures can add digital noise to Perseverance's images. Many of the white specks in the sky are likely noise, with others the effects of cosmic rays. Two of the brighter white specks are Regulus and Algieba, stars that are part of the constellation Leo. You can read more about Deimos and NASA's Perseverance Mars can also read about another sight in the Martian sky, as Perseverance has become the first spacecraft to spot auroras from the surface of another world.
