Latest news with #PerseveranceRover
Chicago Tribune
a day ago
- Health
- Chicago Tribune
Event challenges students to come up with ideas that innovate
When Alejandro Muniz asked his audience if they like money and they enthusiastically responded 'Yes,' he had a sobering reminder ready. 'So does the government.' Maintaining space vehicles is an expensive endeavor in the best of times, especially the Mars Rovers, which eventually run out of power during their missions, Muniz explained during the ECIER Foundation's Innvovation Showcase on May 29. If the rovers could self-maintain, however — perhaps by having self-cleaning solar panels, for example — the wear-and-tear could be lessened, and NASA could save itself — and therefore taxpayers — millions. With his remote-control Perseverance Rover replica in tow, Muniz wowed the judges and took first place — with an award of $750 — in the showcase held at the Center for Visual and Performing Arts in Munster. Thirteen students ranging from 8th grade to 12th grade brought a wide range of solutions to compete, ranging from Muniz's space solution to a wearable health device that would alert people to changes in their blood indicating blood cancers. Meleah Holloway, a senior at Israel School of Excellence in Gary, created a functioning website explaining her idea, which is geared toward hospitals and medical professionals, and would cost them $249. 'I've always had a passion for medical sciences, and I've lost people to cancer, so I zoned into (how it's treated),' Holloway said. 'I started out wanting to be a neurologist, but I went to Maryland and worked with other students on the Chemo Bot.' Timerah Moore, an 8th grader at Israel School of Excellence, tapped into the fashion market with Knitting Gritty, crocheted handbags with a tight weave that make it impossible for your items to fall out. She offers the bag in two sizes and is able to whip one out in 30 minutes, she said. 'My little cousin taught me how; she came to stay over one time and brought her stuff, and I thought, 'That was crazy cool,' so I let my mind go with the flow and put my mind to work,' she told the audience. 'I love to see the smile on people's faces (when they purchase a bag) — especially since you don't want to spend $85.' Marianna Owens and Autumn Staples partnered up and pitched a full-length 'virtual assistant' mirror that would scan a person's health and choose their outfits for the day, among other amenities. The two had blast working together. 'Communication is important, as is showing up for your partner,' Owens, a senior at West Side Leadership Academy, said. She and Staples placed second, while Braylen Chafen, a junior at East Chicago Central placed third. Judges graded the students on their preparedness, presentation and product. Earlier in the evening, the following ECIER students earned several thousand dollars worth of scholarships: Chafen, $4,000; Kennedi Edgington, $4,000; Cheyenne Whitt, $4,000; Holloway, $3,000; Jaydon Phillips, $3,000; Staples, $3,500.00; and Owens, $3,500.
South China Morning Post
22-05-2025
- Science
- South China Morning Post
Nasa's Mars Perseverance snaps a selfie as a Martian dust devil blows by
The latest selfie by Nasa's Perseverance rover at Mars has captured an unexpected guest: a Martian dust devil. Resembling a small pale puff, the twirling dust devil popped up 5km (three miles) behind the rover during this month's photo shoot. Released on Wednesday, the selfie is a composite of 59 images taken by the camera on the end of the rover's robotic arm, according to Nasa. It took an hour to perform all the arm movements necessary to gather the images, 'but it's worth it,' said Megan Wu, an imaging scientist from Malin Space Science Systems, which built the camera. 03:06 Babies on Mars? Dutch firm conducts space sex research Babies on Mars? Dutch firm conducts space sex research 'Having the dust devil in the background makes it a classic,' Wu said in a statement.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists find subtle clues ancient Mars had rainy days, too
For the past four years, NASA's Perseverance rover has rambled over a region of Mars where scientists say a strong river once emptied into a crater, creating a large delta. But for that to have happened, a lot of water would have gushed — something difficult to explain if the Red Planet were always frozen. Computer simulations show that ancient Mars likely experienced regular rain and snow, which helped shape vast networks of river valleys and lakes. The distribution of these land features lines up better with precipitation models than merely the effects of melted ice caps, according to a new paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets. The research, performed by geologists at the University of Colorado in Boulder, argues that our planetary neighbor, on average 140 million miles away in space, was warm and wet billions of years ago, challenging a long-held belief that early Mars was mostly cold and icy. Most scientists agree that at least some water existed on the surface during a period about 4 billion years ago, but where the water came from has been up for debate, said Amanda Steckel, who led the study as a doctoral student. "We see these valleys beginning at a large range of elevations," Steckel said in a statement. "It's hard to explain that with just ice." SEE ALSO: A NASA rover just exposed something on Mars that eluded orbiters NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft created this topographical map of a region near the planet's equator with its Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter. Credit: NASA The researchers created a digital version of part of Mars and tested different climate scenarios. In some computer simulations, they added widespread rain or snow. For others, they only tried melting down polar ice. Then, they used the software to simulate what would happen if that water flowed for thousands of years. Their goal was to determine whether ancient Mars may have had a more Earth-like climate, at least for a while. The results showed when precipitation was part of the climate, valleys and streams formed in many different regions at varying elevation points. When water came only from melted ice, the valleys mostly formed in the highlands, in close proximity to where the ice caps would have been. The team compared the simulation data to real images from NASA spacecraft that have observed Mars from orbit. The patterns created by rain or snow more closely matched what is actually seen on the Martian surface. Mars' oldest terrains appear to have eroded into branching valleys, similar to regions of Earth where rain and snow have caused runoff. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Univ. of Arizona "Water from these ice caps starts to form valleys only around a narrow band of elevations," Steckel said. "Whereas if you have distributed precipitation, you can have valley heads forming everywhere." Today, snow occasionally falls on Mars, but only in the coldest extremes, according to NASA: at the poles and under cloud cover at night. So far there's no photographic evidence of Martian snowfall — clouds obscure the cameras on spacecraft — but other instruments are capable of detecting it. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, for example, has the Mars Climate Sounder, which has collected data on carbon dioxide snow — aka dry ice — as it fell to the ground. The Phoenix lander also used a laser-based tool to spot snow made of water near the Martian north pole in 2008. The team still doesn't fully grasp how Mars could have stayed warm enough for rain or snow, especially since the young sun was about 25 percent dimmer than it is today. Despite the mystery, geologist and study coauthor Brian Hynek says without rain, landforms like Perseverance's Jezero Crater just don't make sense. The dried delta, for example, features scattered boulders. "You'd need meters deep of flowing water to deposit those kinds of boulders," he said.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
NASA rover captures an aurora from Mars surface for the first time
NASA's Perseverance rover has captured an aurora in the night sky for the first time from the Martian ground. Scientists have known for two decades that Mars' skies have auroras, too, but these curtains of undulating light had only been detected in ultraviolet — light that is invisible to the naked eye — until now. All previous Martian auroras were observed from orbiters in space. The result is a grainy portrait, shown farther down in this story, reminiscent of the snow one might remember seeing on an old television when it lost a signal. But it represents a monumental achievement, said Elise Wright Knutsen, first author of the research from the University of Oslo in Norway. A paper on the unprecedented observation was published in the journal Science Advances on May 14. "The photo was taken with an instrument not necessarily optimized for nighttime imagery, and so it isn't like the spectacular aurora images we have from Earth," Knutsen told Mashable. "But hopefully people will appreciate the softly glowing green sky, regardless of the image being rather pixelated." SEE ALSO: Watch how an old Venus spacecraft tumbled before crashing to Earth The actual images taken by Perseverance, whose instruments are not optimized for nighttime viewing, were not as glamorous as this artist's depiction, but the detection was a monumental achievement, researchers said. Credit: Alex McDougall-Page illustration When the sun releases radiation during a solar storm, charged particles travel along a planet's invisible magnetic field lines. When these particles strike gases in the atmosphere, they heat up and glow. The side effects are colorful light displays known as auroras. On Earth, the colors differ depending on the type of atmospheric gas and its altitude. Oxygen glows red or blue, while nitrogen can create green, blue, or pink. The recent strong solar storm conditions — a by-product of the sun being at solar maximum — are causing auroras around the North Pole, known as the Northern Lights, to sprawl, allowing people who live farther south to see them. Mars' magnetic field is different from Earth's, and so the auroras are quite exotic. They aren't tethered to the polar regions of the planet. Instead, the Red Planet's auroras can be found in a hodgepodge of places and come in at least four varieties: localized discreet auroras, global diffuse auroras, proton auroras on the side facing the sun, and a large wormlike aurora stretching to the nightside of the planet. Some of the auroras sprout from the ground, thought to form around what's left of the ancient magnetic field in the planet's crust. Perseverance, which is exploring Jezero crater, where a river once emptied into a delta, spotted the aurora on March 18, 2024. The sun had blasted a torrent of energy expected to reach Mars, said UC Berkeley's Rob Lillis, who isn't an author on the new paper, in a 2024 Mashable interview. NASA's Perseverance rover took the first image of an aurora, left, from the surface of Mars on March 18, 2024. The image, right, is the sky without an aurora for comparison. Credit: Knutsen et al. / Sci. Adv. 11 / eads1563 (2025) But no one was sure of what exactly the rover would see, given there were so many variables, including timing and weather: Getting one of these night sky displays would be like catching lightning in a bottle. "We actually told the rover team to point their camera upwards and see if they could see an aurora," he said, "and they got the word just barely in time to send the command to go and look up." Perseverance used a special camera, called Mastcam-Z, and a laser tool, known as SuperCam, to observe the faint green haze. Though the glow was dim, the detection suggests that, under better viewing conditions, astronauts could one day see such a light display with their own eyes. In fact, that's one crucial reason why scientists bother studying these extraterrestrial auroras. In order for astronauts to land on Mars and explore one day, they'll need navigation and communication systems that pass signals through the planet's upper atmosphere. The more accurate scientists' models are of Mars' ionosphere, the layer of charged particles surrounding the planet, the better those technologies will work. Twin orbiters built for the Escapade mission will attempt to take the first global images of Martian auroras in visible light. Credit: Rocket Lab Scientists are planning more ways to capture Martian auroras. A NASA-funded robotic mission, called Escapade, will seek to get to the bottom of how solar radiation strips away the tattered Martian atmosphere. The mission will involve two orbiters built by Rocket Lab, said Lillis, the principal investigator. Though the United Arab Emirates' orbiter Hope has already obtained global images in ultraviolet light, with any luck, the Escapade probes will take the first global snapshots of Martian auroras in visible light. After several previous failed attempts, the rover's detection last year was a boon, said Knutsen, who personally longs to explore space. She even applied to the European Space Agency's astronaut program a few years ago. "I would give my left foot to have been there to see it myself," she said, "but I hope one day I can retire under a softly glowing green Martian sky."
India Today
23-04-2025
- Science
- India Today
Did it rain and snow on Mars like Earth?
Did it rain and snow on Mars like Earth? 23 Apr, 2025 Credit: Nasa A new study suggests that billions of years ago, Mars experienced snow or rain, creating rivers and lakes—indicating a much warmer and wetter planet than today. Rain & Rivers Led by Amanda Steckel, the research was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets and uses new simulations to understand Mars' ancient climate. New Research The study supports the idea that Mars had widespread precipitation, challenging the long-standing theory that it was always cold and dry with only occasional ice melt. Cold-and-Dry Theory Satellite data show valley networks on Mars similar to Earth's, especially places like Utah, suggesting formation through flowing water—not just melting ice. Earth-Like Valley Researchers simulated both melting ice caps and precipitation. Rainfall scenarios created more realistic valley formations across varied elevations, closely matching Mars' real terrain. Rainfall Hypothesis Mars' Jezero Crater, currently explored by NASA's Perseverance rover, is an example of an ancient lake fed by a strong river—likely requiring meters-deep water flow. Perseverance Rover Hunts While the study strengthens the warm-and-wet theory, scientists still don't fully understand how early Mars stayed warm enough for liquid water. The planet may be a snapshot of what early Earth once looked like. Still a Mystery
