What I post on this blog, mostly anything and everything. I am going to try and post more personal things as that is the purpose of a blog after all.
Photo reblogged from The Science of Reality with 782 notes
Is there life on mars?
A meteorite found in the Sahara, one of the oldest meteorites ever found, gives further evidence to support the theory of extra terrestrial life on mars. The 0.7-pound fragment, NWA 7034, contains more water than any pre-discovered martian meteorites. “It’s about 6,000 parts per million of water,” said Carl B. Agee, director of the institute of Meteoritics, Curator of meteorites and Professor of the department of earth and planetary sciences in New mexico, who led the study. In comparison, there are over 100 martian meteorites discovered, which mostly have 30 times less water content per million. This 320 gram meteorite fragment is currently the most substantial evidence we have of water-based organic life existing on another planet. Using evidence from water molecules locked in the mineral structure, it has been estimated that life could have been supported on mars up to 2 billion years ago. It is suggested that the meteorite exploded from a volcano in the crust of the planet, the water locked in the basalt came from an underground water source near the source of the explosion.
Source: thisweekinscience
Photoset reblogged from Cozy Dark with 2,976 notes
NASA Rover Finds Old Streambed On Martian Surface
PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s Curiosity rover mission has found evidence a stream once ran vigorously across the area on Mars where the rover is driving. There is earlier evidence for the presence of water on Mars, but this evidence — images of rocks containing ancient streambed gravels — is the first of its kind.
Scientists are studying the images of stones cemented into a layer of conglomerate rock. The sizes and shapes of stones offer clues to the speed and distance of a long-ago stream’s flow.
“From the size of gravels it carried, we can interpret the water was moving about 3 feet per second, with a depth somewhere between ankle and hip deep,” said Curiosity science co-investigator William Dietrich of the University of California, Berkeley. “Plenty of papers have been written about channels on Mars with many different hypotheses about the flows in them. This is the first time we’re actually seeing water-transported gravel on Mars. This is a transition from speculation about the size of streambed material to direct observation of it.”
via itsfullofstars
Source: twitter.com
Photoset reblogged from CWL with 1,255 notes
Mars: Adrift On The Hourglass Sea
A mind-bending series of photographic works commissioned by NASA. From Kahn and Selesnick.
These samples represent the caves of Martian mountain Arsia Mons, and the “southern” ice cap, Planum Australe. Check out the whole series here.
Source: jtotheizzoe
Photoset reblogged from Cozy Dark with 307 notes
Mars Science Laboratory |
Sol 2 of Curiosity’s mission Check out the Full 360 experience here
(via michaelveetheii)
Source: 360cities.net
Photo reblogged from National Post with 129 notes
The Curiosity rover’s mission to Mars will feed our hunger to know more about the Red Planet, once viewed as home to lost civilizations and canals but now seen as a desert planet that might be colonized. As we await more images and data from Curiosity, illustrated below is what we’ve learned from previous voyages to the fourth planet from the sun.
Video reblogged from Omnomnomasaurus with 180 notes
First Video of Curiosity Rover Shows Its Exciting Descent to Mars
This video covers the last two and a half minutes of Curiosity’s descent from her point of view. It’s made of 297 frames captured during the landing. You can see the thermal shield being jettisoned and the wheel of the rover as it’s being dropped by the skycrane.
There’s a lot of dust at the end, but you get the idea. Spectacular images and awesome success by NASA.
Source: physicsphysics
Photo reblogged from localcreature with 644 notes
This is a great photo. The newest Mars rover is nearly the size of a Mini Cooper!
In honor of Curiosity’s successful landing, I present “Three Generations,” courtesy of John Klose , JPL employee since 2002. It shows the Mars landers
Spirit (foreground), Sojourner (foreground), Opportunity (middle), and Curiosity (background) taken in front of JPL building 180, aka the Directors building.
Source: spytap
Photo reblogged from BLOGGING via TYPEWRITER. with 267 notes
And now we know that NASA likes their entendres doubled.
(h/t The Colbert Report)
Photo reblogged from BLOGGING via TYPEWRITER. with 636 notes
NASA’s Curiosity rover and its parachute were spotted by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as Curiosity descended to the surface on Aug. 5 PDT (Aug. 6 EDT). The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera captured this image of Curiosity while the orbiter was listening to transmissions from Curiosity.
Curiosity and its parachute are in the center of the white box; and a separate image is a smaller cutout of MSL stretched to avoid saturation. The rover is landing on the etched plains just north of the sand dunes that fringe “Mt. Sharp.”The coolest.
Source: hirise.lpl.arizona.edu
Photo reblogged from BLOGGING via TYPEWRITER. with 162 notes
But seriously, it’s completely mind-blowing that all of this happened the way it was supposed to. I mean, SKY CRANE.
Link reblogged from The Science of Reality with 146 notes
Ships & Dodecahedrons: Does anyone ever stop to think just how amazing this Mars Curiosity rover is? →
I mean…
We engineered this incredible piece of technology to great precision, with state-of-the-art robotics and scientific instruments.
We put the thing, unmanned, on top of a giant tube of highly combustible fuel, which itself is a marvel of engineering and power, and shot it out of the atmosphere and toward a tiny point of light millions of miles from Earth.
We waited over 8 months while this small craft traversed the vacuum of space at great speed, getting ever closer to our planetary neighbor, the whole time keeping on a precise course after being launched from and heading toward constantly-moving planets to ensure it reaches just the right location in a fairly small window of space and time.
And soon, our craft, aiming for a relatively small area on the surface of the planet, is going to slam into the Mars atmosphere at high velocity and endure intense heat that would melt the craft if it weren’t for its heat shield.
In the span of several minutes, it will then have to engage in a number of precisely-timed maneuvers and functions as it hurtles toward the surface of Mars; deploying a parachute, firing boosters, bringing it practically to a hover over the surface, before finally lowering the rover itself to the surface with a sky crane.
Assuming that all goes off without a hitch, our curious not-actually-so-little rover will robotically wander and study the sands of an alien world, possibly bringing forth wondrous new discoveries.
Isn’t that amazing?
Give NASA ALL OF THE MONEY, I say!
Space exploration ftw!!
Source: bouncingdodecahedrons
Photoset reblogged from Cozy Dark with 84 notes
Stunning Photos of Mars |
NASA has released a new panorama from its Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, showing the terrain where the robot spent the four-month Martian winter.
The full-circle scene combines 817 images shot by the panoramic camera (Pancam). You can download the complete image and learn more about the expedition on NASA’s website.
Photo reblogged from CWL with 133 notes
Huge Mars Rover One Month from Red Planet Landing
Image: This artist’s concept depicts a sky crane lowering NASA’s Curiosity rover onto the Martian surface. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The biggest rover ever launched to another planet is just one month away from its target: the Red Planet, Mars.
NASA’s huge Curiosity rover is hurtling toward a planned late-night landing on Mars on Aug. 5 PDT (early Aug. 6 EDT), and the anticipation on the science team is high. The reasons are clear: At 1 ton, Curiosity is the largest rover ever aimed at Mars. It will land in a completely new way, using a giant parachute and a rocket-powered sky crane. And it is carrying a sophisticated set of tools to find out if its Martian drop zone could once have been home for life.
But that’s all in the future. First Curiosity has to reach Mars in one piece.
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