NASA's Perseverance rover snapped a view of this odd rock on March 28. If you look closely just to the right of center, you can see a series of tiny marks where the rover's laser zapped it.
The rover team said the rock is about 6 inches (15 centimeters) long and told space fans to look closely at the image to "spot the row of laser marks where I zapped it to learn more."
The team has formulated many different hypotheses about this one -- is it something weathered out of the local bedrock? Is it a piece of Mars plopped into the area from a far-flung impact event? Is it a meteorite? Or something else?
Not to change the topic here:
We're already colonizing Mars.
Sometime in April, the Ingenuity helicopter will take to the Martian air, making it, in NASA's words , "the first attempt at powered, controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet." Or, to put it in more mundane terms, Mars will have become another airport. Of course, many crafts have already landed on Mars—the most recent carrying the rover Perseverance, with the Ingenuity copter nested inside.
That landing spot was named by the NASA team "Octavia E. Butler Landing." (Official site christenings throughout the solar system must be bestowed by the International Astronomical Union.) At first blush, this seems like a deserved homage to Butler as a visionary artist (for her contributions to the genre of speculative fiction) and as a pathbreaking figure (as the first sci-fi author to receive a MacArthur Fellowship).
Researchers discover new type of ancient crater lake on Mars | Brown University
An ancient crater lake in the southern highlands of Mars appears to have been fed by glacial runoff, bolstering the idea that the Red Planet had a cold and icy past.
Raised ridges spidering across the floor of a Martian crater were likely created by runoff from a long-lost glacier that once draped the planet's southern highlands. Credit: NASA
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Researchers from Brown University have discovered a previously unknown type of ancient crater lake on Mars that could reveal clues about the planet's early climate.
Mars Spiders Form as Spring Arrives on Mars. But why? - Universe Today
For a long time, there has been a theory about where araneiforms came from. That theory, known as Keiffer's hypothesis, named after Hugh Kieffer formerly of the US Geological Survey , centered on the idea that the sun would cause the ground under blocks of dry ice to heat up, eventually sublimating the dry ice it is in contact with. Pressure would then build up in the ice block, eventually rupturing it and allowing the gas to escape.
The only problem with this theory, which has been widely accepted in the scientific community, is that it was never demonstrated experimentally. Coverage of the Martian surface is not continuous enough to be able to catch an ice block in the act of sublimating. Therefore, the theory, though widely accepted, was never truly proven.
In case you are keeping track:
NASA exchanged data with China on Mars orbiters - SpaceNews
WASHINGTON — NASA sought congressional approval to talk with Chinese counterparts and obtain information on the orbit of China's new Mars spacecraft, a move intended to lower the risk of a collision with other Mars orbiters.
NASA Acting Administrator Steve Jurczyk revealed the rare, but not unprecedented, discussions with China during a question-and-answer session after a March 23 speech at a meeting of the Federal Aviation Administration's Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee, when a committee member asked him about what insight the agency had about Chinese space activities.
NASA's Mars Helicopter Prepares for Its First Flight - The New York Times
Before heading off to search for signs of long ago Martian microbes, NASA's Perseverance rover will first undertake what may be the most technologically exciting part of its mission: flying a helicopter.
Packed under the belly of Perseverance, a car-size robotic vehicle that landed on Mars last month, is Ingenuity, a four-pound mini-helicopter intended to demonstrate that flying on another planet is possible .
NASA officials announced on Tuesday that they had selected the site for this demonstration of extraterrestrial hovering — just north of where it landed.
Scientists have measured the core of Mars - BBC Science Focus Magazine
Scientists have, for the first time, directly measured the core of another planet. NASA's InSight mission on Mars has discovered the Red Planet's core is considerably bigger than expected.
Instruments on the spacecraft have listened to seismic energy deep within the planet. The data suggests a measurement of 1,810-1,860km in diameter, roughly half the size of the Earth's core. It's larger than some predictions, which means the Martian core is less dense than previous estimates, probably due to the presence of lighter elements such as oxygen.
Mars' dark streaks are probably caused by dry landslides | Space
Those streaks, known as recurring slope lineae, were discovered in 2011 by scientists studying imagery captured by the powerful High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
As their name suggests, recurring slope lineae , or RSL for short, are found on Red Planet slopes. The marks creep down steep inclines, especially in Mars' southern hemisphere, during warm times of the year and fade away as the weather cools.
Happening on Twitter
NASA's Mars helicopter is slowly unfolding beneath the Perseverance rover https://t.co/LO9k4E8EFo https://t.co/qOQTJy1GYB SPACEdotcom (from NYC) Tue Mar 30 23:34:33 +0000 2021
Watch NASA's Mars helicopter unfold like a butterfly (video) https://t.co/CZiR4laWni https://t.co/mSZ3penRN2 SPACEdotcom (from NYC) Wed Mar 31 14:27:03 +0000 2021
La NASA compartió la imagen de la semana capturada por el rover Perseverance en Marte. https://t.co/b3Jn3pmGdX CNNEE (from En todas partes) Tue Mar 30 11:45:05 +0000 2021
Cuando el rover Perseverance llegue a un lugar adecuado que se pueda usar como helipuerto, soltará al Ingenuity par… https://t.co/B9tQGPdFSb CNNEE (from En todas partes) Tue Mar 30 21:20:35 +0000 2021
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