Tag: Mars
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Mars may have captured and split a comet to create its two moons
[ad_1] Mars has two irregularly shaped moons, an inner moon named Phobos and an outer moon named Deimos NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC/Univ. of Arizona The two moons of Mars may once have been a single comet that was ensnared and split by the planet – and an upcoming mission could find out for certain. How Mars got its…
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A single meteorite smashed into Mars and created 2 billion craters
[ad_1] The Martian surface is heavily cratered Stocktrek Images, Inc. / Alamy When a single small meteorite struck Mars a few million years ago, it didn’t just create one crater. It ultimately created billions of them. The main crater, called Corinto, is just under 14 kilometres across, but the debris from that meteorite collision formed…
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Mars’s gravitational pull may be strong enough to stir Earth’s oceans
[ad_1] The planets are in a gravitational dance around the sun Shutterstock/Johan Swanepoel The gravitational tug of Mars may be strong enough to stir up Earth’s ocean, shifting its sediments as part of a 2.4-million-year climate cycle, researchers claim. It has long been accepted that wobbles in Earth’s orbit around the sun influence the planet’s…
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The moons of Mars may have been formed in an icy planetary collision
[ad_1] How did Mars acquire its moons? NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems/Texas A&M University The mystery of where Mars’s two moons came from may finally be solved. If Phobos and Deimos were formed when an icy object smashed into Mars, it could explain their contradictory properties, which have long baffled researchers. Measurements of the geological makeup…
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It’s 20 years since a Mars rover took this historic image | Digital Trends
[ad_1] This is the first image taken of Earth from the surface of another planet. It was captured by NASA’s Mars rover, Spirit, one hour before sunrise on the 63rd martian day, or sol, of its mission in 2004. NASA/JPL/Cornell/Texas AM Twenty years ago, on March 8, a NASA Mars rover made history when it…
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The Ingenuity helicopter’s Mars mission is over, but it left a legacy
[ad_1] The Ingenuity helicopter’s flying days are over. After an astonishing 72 flights over the course of nearly three years, the drone has sustained damage to one of its rotors and can no longer take to the Martian skies. After it landed on Mars along with the Perseverance rover in 2021, Ingenuity’s mission was to…
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Mysterious patch on Mars appears to be enormous lump of ice
[ad_1] A massive deposit near the equator of Mars may be made up of water ice Paopano / Alamy Stock Photo A colossal slab of ice may be hiding at Mars’s equator. The composition of this deposit, called the Medusae Fossae Formation, has long been debated, but new data indicates that it contains enough water…
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Japan is sending a rover to Mars’s moon Phobos in 2024
[ad_1] The Martian Moons eXploration mission is slated to launch for Phobos in September 2024 – once it gets there, it will drop off a rover, pick up some samples and head home [ad_2] Source link
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Robotic chemist discovers how to make oxygen from Martian minerals
[ad_1] A robotic chemist working autonomously in a lab has developed an oxygen-producing catalyst from minerals found in Martian meteorites. The same procedure could one day be used to provide oxygen for astronauts on Mars. Sending supplies to a future Martian colony by spacecraft would be extremely expensive, which makes producing materials with Mars’s natural…
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Searching for life on Mars isn’t worth the risk to Earth
[ad_1] IN THE past few months, the wheels started to fall off NASA’s Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission. The project aims to bring 500 grams of Martian rock and soil to Earth in 2033 to look for signs of existing or extinct life forms, but a litany of budget overruns and technology blunders have put…