posted 04-10-2014 04:58 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Solarplexus:
Images taken by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on April 2 and April 3, 2014 include bright spots...

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posted 04-10-2014 05:01 PM            

Rather than emanating from an underground Martian disco, the bright spots are probably caused by cosmic rays colliding with the rover's camera or by glinting rocks reflecting the Martian sunlight, said NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Justin Maki, lead imaging scientist for the Curiosity team.

posted 08-05-2016 01:12 PM               

NASA's Curiosity rover celebrates its Martian birthday on August 5 (PDT), the day that it landed on Mars. In honor of this special ocassion, engineers at Goddard Space Flight Center are using the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument to "sing" Happy Birthday to Curiosity.

posted 06-20-2017 05:12 PM               

NASA Mars Orbiter Views Rover Climbing Mount Sharp

Using the most powerful telescope ever sent to Mars, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter caught a view of the Curiosity rover this month amid rocky mountainside terrain.

The car-size rover, climbing up lower Mount Sharp toward its next destination, appears as a blue dab against a background of tan rocks and dark sand in the enhanced-color image from the orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera. The exaggerated color, showing differences in Mars surface materials, makes Curiosity appear bluer than it really looks.

The image was taken on June 5, 2017, two months before the fifth anniversary of Curiosity's landing near Mount Sharp on Aug. 5 PDT (Aug. 6, 2017, EDT and Universal Time).

When the image was taken, Curiosity was partway between its investigation of active sand dunes lower on Mount Sharp, and "Vera Rubin Ridge," a destination uphill where the rover team intends to examine outcrops where hematite has been identified from Mars orbit.

The rover's location that day is shown here as the point labeled 1717. Images taken that day by Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam) are here.

posted 01-28-2018 06:36 PM               

I was at a conference and a JPL worker told the story of the treads for the Mars rover initially had stamped "JPL" in the aluminum wheels, so could tell distance on the rotation and would leave JPL on the surface as moved. That plan was nixed, and instead they put square holes for the sighting, but didn't tell anyone that the holes were actually Morse code for "JPL."

posted 01-28-2018 06:45 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by denali414:
...couldn't find it here.

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posted 06-07-2018 01:08 PM               

The new findings – "tough" organic molecules in three-billion-year-old sedimentary rocks near the surface, as well as seasonal variations in the levels of methane in the atmosphere...

posted 09-07-2018 03:26 PM               

NASA's Curiosity rover surveyed its surroundings on Aug. 9, 2018, producing a 360-degree panorama of its current location on Mars' Vera Rubin Ridge. The panorama includes skies darkened by a fading global dust storm and a view from the Mast Camera of the rover itself, revealing a thin layer of dust on Curiosity's deck. In the foreground is the rover's most recent drill target, named "Stoer" after a town in Scotland near where important discoveries about early life on Earth were made in lakebed sediments.

posted 03-04-2020 07:04 PM               

NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover Snaps Its Highest-Resolution Panorama Yet

NASA's Curiosity rover has captured its highest-resolution panorama yet of the Martian surface. Composed of more than 1,000 images taken during the 2019 Thanksgiving holiday and carefully assembled over the ensuing months, the composite contains 1.8 billion pixels of Martian landscape. The rover's Mast Camera, or Mastcam, used its telephoto lens to produce the panorama; meanwhile, it relied on its medium-angle lens to produce a lower-resolution, nearly 650-million-pixel panorama that includes the rover's deck and robotic arm.

Both panoramas showcase "Glen Torridon," a region on the side of Mount Sharp that Curiosity is exploring. They were taken between Nov. 24 and Dec. 1, when the mission team was out for the Thanksgiving holiday. Sitting still with few tasks to do while awaiting the team to return and provide its next commands, the rover had a rare chance to image its surroundings from the same vantage point several days in a row. (Look closer: A special tool allows viewers to zoom into this panorama.)

It required more than 6 1/2 hours over the four days for Curiosity to capture the individual shots. Mastcam operators programmed the complex task list, which included pointing the rover's mast and making sure the images were in focus. To ensure consistent lighting, they confined imaging to between noon and 2 p.m. local Mars time each day.

"While many on our team were at home enjoying turkey, Curiosity produced this feast for the eyes," said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity's project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which leads the Curiosity rover mission. "This is the first time during the mission we've dedicated our operations to a stereo 360-degree panorama."

In 2013, Curiosity produced a 1.3-billion-pixel panorama using both Mastcam cameras; its black-and-white Navigation Cameras, or Navcams, provided images of the rover itself. Imaging specialists carefully assemble Mars panoramas by creating mosaics composed of individual pictures and blending their edges to create a seamless look.

Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego built and operates Curiosity's Mastcam. JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington and built the Navigation Cameras and the rover.

posted 11-12-2020 12:20 PM               

NASA's Curiosity Takes Selfie With 'Mary Anning' on the Red Planet

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has a new selfie. This latest is from a location named "Mary Anning," after a 19th-century English paleontologist whose discovery of marine-reptile fossils were ignored for generations because of her gender and class. The rover has been at the site since this past July, taking and analyzing drill samples.

Made up of 59 pictures stitched together by imaging specialists, the selfie was taken on Oct. 25, 2020 - the 2,922nd Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's mission.

Above: NASA's Curiosity Mars rover took this selfie at a location nicknamed "Mary Anning" after a 19th century English paleontologist. Curiosity snagged three samples of drilled rock at this site on its way out of the Glen Torridon region, which scientists believe preserves an ancient habitable environment. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

Scientists on the Curiosity team thought it fitting to name the sampling site after Anning because of the area's potential to reveal details about the ancient environment. Curiosity used the rock drill on the end of its robotic arm to take samples from three drill holes called "Mary Anning," "Mary Anning 3," and "Groken," this last one named after cliffs in Scotland's Shetland Islands. The robotic scientist has conducted a set of advanced experiments with those samples to extend the search for organic (or carbon-based) molecules in the ancient rocks.

Since touching down in Gale Crater in 2012, Curiosity has been ascending Mount Sharp to search for conditions that might once have supported life. This past year, the rover has explored a region of Mount Sharp called Glen Torridon, which likely held lakes and streams billions of years ago. Scientists suspect this is why a high concentration of clay minerals and organic molecules was discovered there.

Above: This close-up shot shows the three drill holes created by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover at the "Mary Anning" location. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

It will take months for the team to interpret the chemistry and minerals in the samples from the Mary Anning site. In the meantime, the scientists and engineers who have been commanding the rover from their homes as a safety precaution during the coronavirus pandemic have directed Curiosity to continue its climb of Mount Sharp. The rover's next target of exploration is a layer of sulfate-laden rock that lies higher up the mountain. The team hopes to reach it in early 2021.

Curiosity took the selfie using a camera called the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), located on the end of its robotic arm. (Videos explaining how Curiosity's selfies are taken can be found here.)

posted 05-21-2021 04:09 PM               

That super-powerful High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera onboard the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has imaged the Curiosity Mars rover climbing Mount Mercou in Gale Crater.

The rover is currently ascending “Mount Mercou,” a broad outcrop of rocks on the northern flank of “Mount Sharp” near the center of the crater.

Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

posted 07-16-2021 10:31 AM               

To calculate the unknown methane source, researchers at the California Institute of Technology modeled the methane gas particles by splitting them into discrete packets. Taking into account the wind speed and direction at the time of their detection, the team traced their parcels of methane back through time to their possible points of emission. By doing this for all of the different detection spikes, they were able to triangulate regions where the methane source is most likely located — with one being just a few dozen miles away from the rover.

"[The findings] point to an active emission region to the west and the southwest of the Curiosity rover on the northwestern crater floor," the researchers wrote in their paper. "This may invoke a coincidence that we selected a landing site for Curiosity that is located next to an active methane emission site."

The researchers published their findings June 3 on the preprint server Research Square, so their study has yet to be peer-reviewed.

posted 01-18-2022 07:15 AM               

While the finding is intriguing, it doesn't necessarily point to ancient life on Mars, as scientists have not yet found conclusive supporting evidence of ancient or current biology there, such as sedimentary rock formations produced by ancient bacteria, or a diversity of complex organic molecules formed by life.

"We're finding things on Mars that are tantalizingly interesting, but we would really need more evidence to say we've identified life," said Paul Mahaffy, who served as the principal investigator of the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) chemistry lab aboard Curiosity until retiring from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in December 2021. "So we're looking at what else could have caused the carbon signature we're seeing, if not life."