Latest news with #PlanetaryScience
Bloomberg
6 days ago
- Science
- Bloomberg
Novo Nordisk Foundation and the Evolution of Quantum Computing: Tech Disruptors
Professor Lene Oddershede Chief Scientific Officer, Planetary Science & Technology at the Novo Nordisk Foundation talks about the applications of quantum computing at the tech disruptors podcast. She discusses the timeline of adoption, roadblocks, standards, benchmarks and the convergence with classic computing.
Yahoo
17-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Dust devils on Mars leave 'fingerprints' that can guide future Red Planet missions
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Martian dust devils are fleeting, but the footprints they leave behind can endure for months. Now, researchers have used those tracks to learn about the whirlwinds and potentially guide future mission planning. As wind swirls across the landscape on both Mars and Earth, it sweeps up ground particles that reveal the dry columns. The whirlwinds dance across the landscape, leaving a path revealed by excavated particles. On the active surface of Earth, such paths are hard to spot. But on the nearly inactive surface of Mars, they can remain for months, long after the devils' minutes-long lifetimes. "Dust devils themselves are difficult to capture in images because they are so short-lived," Ingrid Daubar, a planetary scientist at Brown University and lead author of the study, told by email. "The tracks they leave behind last longer, so we are able to observe them more thoroughly." Dusting off the fingerprints On warm, windy days in Earth's deserts, vortices of sand and debris can form suddenly and move unpredictably. (This author distinctly recalls being "chased" by one such devil in the Mojave Desert as a child in 1990.) Similar conditions on Mars can also produce dust devils. But the whirls on the Red Planet tend to be both wider and taller than their counterparts on Earth, and scientists aren't sure why. Questions like these led Dauber and her colleagues to study images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter — the highest-resolution photos of the planet snapped from space. HiRISE can capture features as small as 3 feet (1 meter). But its detailed perspective comes at a price: Its images cover only a small percentage of the Martian surface and are taken by request, though most latitudes and longitudes are well sampled. Dauber's team studied 21,475 HiRISE images taken between January 2014 and April 2018 — roughly a quarter of the snapshots captured by the instrument as of autumn 2024. Tracks appear in only 798 of those, or just under 4%. Dust devil tracks (DDTs) suggest dust devils are more common at high northern and southern latitudes and are especially active in each hemisphere's summer, peaking in the southern hemisphere's summer. According to the researchers, Mars' significant orbital eccentricity, or deviation from a perfect circle, causes the atmosphere in the southern summer to circulate more energetically, creating conditions ideal for vortex formation. That, combined with less dust accumulation in the North, makes the southern hemisphere summer an almost perfect storm for dust devils. The observations reflect peak DDT preservation more than dust devil formation, the researchers cautioned, but the culmination coincides with the peak observed by NASA's Spirit rover at Gusev crater, along with global observations of the sand spouts. The researchers also realized that DDTs most commonly form and are preserved in regions of mixed sand, rocks and bedrock, with little bright dust, the most common surface type identified on Mars. Bright dust scooped up from the surface leaves behind trails that are dark from the underlying landscape. "The material on the ground is critical to the formation of the DDTs," Dauber said. Dusty missions The first Martian dust devil tracks appeared in images sent back from NASA's Mariner 9 mission in 1972 (although they weren't discovered until the images were analyzed in 2014). But it wasn't until 1998, when higher-resolution images were captured by Mars Global Surveyor, that the tracks could be seriously analyzed. RELATED STORIES —Dust devils on Mars may spark lightning — possibly threatening NASA's Perseverance rover —NASA's Perseverance rover watches as 2 Mars dust devils merge into 1 (video) —Perseverance Mars rover figures out how devils and winds fill the Red Planet's skies with dust Dust has hindered past ground missions. Mars rovers take their energy from the sun via solar panels. Over time, dust builds up on the panels, limiting their efficacy. The blockage has shuttered missions like NASA's Opportunity rover, which explored the surface for 14.5 years. NASA's InSight lander also succumbed to a dust-related death after four years. The high winds that birth dust devils can also revitalize robots, however. Opportunity's twin, Spirit, got a second lease on life after a Martian whirlwind cleaned its solar arrays back in 2005. Understanding where dust devils are most active can help in the selection of landing sites for future missions. High-latitude bands where DDTs and their progenitors occur more frequently could help to scour solar panels and thus enable a more enduring exploration. "It depends on the mission — every mission is unique," Daubar said. There are many requirements for landing sites and exploration, including regions that will allow for a safe touchdown, alongside complex scientific goals. "It could be that there are only a few places where the specific science goals can be achieved, and then perhaps this could be a deciding factor between those sites," she said. A new study of dust devils on Mars was published in May 2025 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Solve the daily Crossword
Gizmodo
15-07-2025
- Science
- Gizmodo
An Iconic NASA Probe Is at Threat of Being Shut Down Due to Trump Cuts
On July 14, 2015, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto, revealing unprecedented close-up views of the complex icy world. The iconic mission is still returning data from the far reaches of the solar system, but a lack of funding now threatens to end the mission prematurely. As NASA celebrates the 10th anniversary of the historic Pluto flyby, the space agency is also bracing for budget cuts that threaten the historic New Horizons probe. The White House's budget proposal, released in May, reduces NASA's upcoming budget by $6 billion compared to 2025. Under the proposed budget, NASA's planetary science budget would drop from $2.7 billion to $1.9 billion. The severe drop in funding would kill dozens of active and planned missions, including New Horizons. New Horizons launched on January 19, 2006, and traveled 9 billion miles in nine and a half years to become the first spacecraft to reach Pluto. Its journey through the harsh space environment wasn't the only challenge; members of the space community advocated for nearly 20 years for the approval of the spacecraft, according to The Planetary Society. At the time, NASA missions to Pluto were deemed not worth the cost. As a result, New Horizons was nearly canceled on multiple occasions due to budgeting conflicts. In 2002, the White House tried to kill the mission after NASA had already started developing it, but a massive backlash forced Congress to step in and restore New Horizons' funding. Despite its rocky start, New Horizons is now hailed as one of the most successful planetary missions. Following its close encounter with Pluto, the mission revealed that the icy planet and its moons are far more complex than scientists had initially assumed. New Horizons imaged a giant, heart-shaped icy plain on Pluto, which may sit above a subsurface ocean. It also revealed cryovolcanoes, indicating a geologically active body and not a dead, frozen world. The mission also explored Pluto's icy, chaotic moons, which rotate chaotically. Beyond Pluto, New Horizons continues to explore the outer reaches of the solar system. The spacecraft is shedding light on the mysterious planets and smaller objects of the outer solar system. In January 2019, New Horizons conducted the most distant flyby of a Kuiper Belt object when it explored Arrokoth, a frozen relic in the icy region beyond Neptune. The double-lobed object serves as a relic from the early solar system. The successful Arrokoth flyby earned New Horizons a mission extension, allowing the spacecraft to continue exploring until it exits the Kuiper Belt in 2029. 'The New Horizons mission has a unique position in our solar system to answer important questions about our heliosphere and provide extraordinary opportunities for multidisciplinary science for NASA and the scientific community,' Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in a statement at the time. New Horizons has enough fuel to carry out another flyby of a Kuiper Belt object, and mission teams are currently searching for its next possible target. If the current budget proposal is approved, New Horizons will be turned off long before its expiration date, which would cost us years of valuable data. After Voyager 1 and 2, the New Horizons spacecraft is the third most distant human-built object from Earth. It would take years for another spacecraft to reach that distance. 'We're the only spacecraft out there,' Alan Stern, principal investigator for New Horizons, told The Planetary Society. 'There's nothing else planned to come this way.'
Yahoo
08-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists Say There's Over a Trillion Dollars of Platinum Waiting to Be Extracted From the Moon's Craters
Researchers say there could be over $1 trillion worth of platinum lurking under the surface of the Moon — a major lunar bounty waiting to be mined. As detailed in a paper published in the journal Planetary and Space Science, independent researcher Jayanth Chennamangalam and his team determined that out of around 1.3 million craters lining the Moon's surface with diameters greater than 0.6 miles across, almost 6,500 were created by asteroids that contain commercial quantities of platinum, among other valuable ores like palladium or iridium. To the researchers, the draw isn't just the promise of immense wealth; the proceeds of mining these ores could be used to explore space. "Today, astronomy is done to satiate our curiosity," Chennamangalam told New Scientist, a surprisingly cynical statement that's bound to raise eyebrows among researchers. "It has very few practical applications and is mostly paid for by taxpayer money, meaning that research funding is at the mercy of governmental policy." "If we can monetise space resources — be it on the Moon or on asteroids — private enterprises will invest in the exploration of the solar system," he added. Chennamangalam, who holds a PhD in astrophysics and was a postdoc at the University of Oxford, found that there could be a "lot more craters on the moon with ore-bearing asteroidal remnants than there are accessible ore-bearing asteroids." Mining these craters would be significantly simpler than traveling to distant asteroids, which most of the time don't have enough gravity for mining operations. But whether plundering the Moon for profit would even be legal remains a far murkier question. As New Scientist points out, the Outer Space Treaty, which was signed in 1967, sets strict rules for space resource mining, stopping any nation from claiming or occupying the "Moon and other celestial bodies." However, experts say those rules could still allow for governments to find loopholes and still claim licensing rights to extract resources. In an effort to ratify international rules, the US established the Artemis Accords, a non-binding framework. However, neither China nor Russia has signed it, leaving its authority murky. In short, the race to the surface of the Moon is on — a tight competition that could be decided between the US and China by the end of this decade, especially if a fortune in precious metals is at play. More on the Moon: Elon Boasts of Huge Starship Improvements Immediately Before It Blows Up Spectacularly
CBS News
07-06-2025
- Science
- CBS News
Mars volcano twice as big as Earth's tallest one seen poking through clouds in first-of-its-kind image
A dazzling image taken by NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter shows an unprecedented view of a 12-mile-high volcano poking through clouds at dawn on the Red Planet. Arsia Mons, which dwarfs Earth's tallest volcanoes, and its two neighboring volcanoes are often surrounded by water ice clouds, especially in the early morning. The image released Friday marks the first time one of the volcanoes has been imaged on the planet's horizon, NASA said. Odyssey has previously captured high-altitude images of the Martian horizon, and to do so, it rotates 90 degrees while in orbit so that its camera can take the picture, NASA said. The spacecraft typically focuses on the upper atmosphere but also studies surface features. The latest image, captured on May 2, focuses on Arsia Mons, which is roughly twice as tall as Earth's largest volcano, Hawaii's Mauna Loa, which rises 6 miles above the seafloor. The 2001 Odyssey spacecraft captured a first-of-its-kind look at Arsia Mons, which dwarfs Earth's tallest volcanoes. NASA Arsia Mons is the cloudiest of the three volcanoes in the area -- collectively called the Tharsis Mountains -- and the clouds are especially thick when the Red Planet is farthest from the sun, a period called aphelion. The new snapshot clearly shows the cloud canopy across the Red Planet's equator. "We picked Arsia Mons hoping we would see the summit poke above the early morning clouds. And it didn't disappoint," said Jonathon Hill, the operations lead for Odyssey's camera, called the Thermal Emission Imaging System, or THEMIS. The angle of the camera allows scientists to see dust and water ice cloud layers, enabling them to observe changes over the course of seasons. "We're seeing some really significant seasonal differences in these horizon images," said planetary scientist Michael D. Smith of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "It's giving us new clues to how Mars' atmosphere evolves over time." Launched in 2001, Odyssey has the distinction of being the longest-running spacecraft orbiting another planet. NASA's Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars in 2021, is collecting samples for an eventual return to Earth from Jezero Crater, an ancient lakebed and river delta that could hold clues to any past microbial life. Last month, Perseverance took a selfie that captured an image of a dust devil popping up about 3 miles behind the rover.
