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posted Apr 4, 2013, 12:35 PM by Mars Society - PR
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updated Apr 4, 2013, 12:36 PM
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By Markus Hammonds, Discovery News, 04.04.13 As you read this, you’re one of nearly 7 billion human beings on this planet. And that number is likely to increase massively. In fact, if the population of Earth continues to increase at its current rate, there will be over 10 billion people in the world by the year 2050. As we start to run out of space on Earth, there's one particular audacious possible solution. What if we could shape another planet into a second Earth? Terraforming is the hypothetical process through which we could engineer the surface of an entire planet to make it habitable for our own planet’s life to thrive. We’ve certainly proven that we can influence and alter the environment of a whole planet, even though in the case of Earth the results weren’t exactly beneficial. Or desirable. The difficult part is, given a blank canvas, we aren’t entirely sure how to even begin. In science fiction, the concept of terraforming is quite widespread; it features prominently in cult titles like Firefly, Cowboy Bebop, and Star Trek. Don’t let that make you think the idea is pure fiction though. Many scientists and engineers have given serious thought to the puzzle of how to terraform a planet, and NASA has even hosted meetings and debates on the topic. As you might expect, the whole operation is far from straightforward. To read the full article, please click here. [Image: Daein Ballard/Wikimedia Commons] |
posted Mar 7, 2013, 7:10 PM by Mars Society - PR
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updated Mar 7, 2013, 7:10 PM
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By Irene Klotz, Discovery News, 03.07.13
Relatively recently, water blasted out from an underground aquifer on Mars, carving out deep flood channels in the surface that were later buried by lava flows, radar images compiled from an orbiting NASA probe shows. The channels are at least twice as deep as previous estimates for Marte Vallis, an expanse of plains just north of the Martian equator that is the youngest volcanic region on the planet. Most outflow channels on Mars date back billions of years, when the planet was believed to be warmer and wetter than the cold, dry desert it is today. Marte Vallis is the exception. Channels still visible on the surface cut through very young lava flows, indicating liquid water was present in the relatively recent past. But a key piece of the story has been hidden below ground. To read the full article, please click here. [Image: NASA/MOLA TEAM/SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION] |
posted Feb 9, 2013, 10:35 AM by Mars Society - PR
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updated Mar 7, 2013, 2:52 PM
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By Mike Wall, Space.com, 02.05.13
Though asteroids are viewed as stepping stones in NASA's manned march to Mars, sending humans to a space rock may actually be a bigger challenge than putting boots on the Red Planet. Mars is farther away than any near-Earth asteroid that NASA would target, but this disadvantage may be outweighed by the greater knowledge scientists have gained of the Red Planet thanks to the many Mars missions that have launched over the years, experts say. Further, mapping out an asteroid mission is nearly impossible at this point, since NASA does not yet know where it's going. "There are still no good asteroid targets for such a mission, a necessary prerequisite for determining mission length and details such as the astronauts’ exposure to radiation and the consumables required," states a December 2012 report from the U.S. National Research Council (NRC). To read the full article, please click here. [Image: NASA] |
posted Jan 23, 2013, 9:18 AM by Mars Society - PR
By Planetary Science Institute (Release), 01.23.13
The subsurface environment on Mars may hold clues to the origin of life, scientists argue in a recently published research article led by Planetary Science Institute’s Joseph Michalski. A large fraction of the life on Earth may exist as microbes deep underground on our home planet. The same could have been true in the past on Mars. “Recent results produced by several authors using data from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars instrument aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have shown that the subsurface of Mars was widely altered by subsurface water” Michalski said. “Here, we argue that all of the ingredients for life existed in the subsurface, and it may have been the most habitable part of Mars.”
[Image: HRSC/Mars Express] |
posted Jan 3, 2013, 5:23 PM by Mars Society - PR
By Nancy Atkinson, Wired.com, 01.03.13
A 2-billion-year-old rock found in the Sahara desert has been identified as a meteorite from Mars’ crust, and it contains ten times more water than any other Martian meteorite found on Earth. It also contains organic carbon. The age of the rock, called NWA 7034, would put its origins in the early era of the most recent geologic epoch on Mars, the Amazonian epoch. While its composition is different from any previously studied Martian meteorite, NASA says it matches surface rocks and outcrops that have been studied by Mars rovers and Mars-orbiting satellites.
“The contents of this meteorite may challenge many long held notions about Martian geology,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “These findings also present an important reference frame for the Curiosity rover as it searches for reduced organics in the minerals exposed in the bedrock of Gale Crater.”
[Image: NASA]
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posted Dec 8, 2012, 3:19 PM by Mars Society - PR
Planetary Science Institute Release, 12.08.12
An international research team led by the Planetary Science Institute has found evidence that indicates that approximately 2 billion years ago enormous volumes of catastrophic flood discharges may have been captured by extensive systems of caverns on Mars, said PSI research scientist J. Alexis Palmero Rodriguez.
Rodriguez and the research team came to this conclusion after studying the terminal regions of the Hebrus Valles, an outflow channel that extends approximately 250 kilometers downstream from two zones of surface collapse.
The Martian outflow channels comprise some of the largest known channels in the solar system. Although it has been proposed their discharge history may have once led to the formation of oceans, the ultimate fate and nature of the fluid discharges has remained a mystery for more than 40 years, and their excavation has been attributed to surface erosion by glaciers, debris flows, catastrophic floodwaters, and perhaps even lava flows, Rodriguez said.
[Image: Rodriguez et al., 2012] |
posted Oct 3, 2012, 1:49 PM by Mars Society - PR
Press Release (Astrobiology Magazine/University of Hawaii-Manoa, 10.03.12)
Curiosity, the NASA rover that landed on Mars last month, is sending us remarkable weather observations from the Martian surface that are attracting interest from scientists. “From a weather point of view, Mars is the most ‘Earth-like’ of the other planets in our solar system, and many features of the weather there are similar to Earth,” says Kevin Hamilton, a pioneer in the area of computer modeling of the Martian atmosphere.
Hamilton, who is Director of UH Manoa’s International Pacific Research Center and a Professor of Meteorology, noted that Curiosity is the fifth ‘Weather Station’ on Mars. Over the last 35 years, a total of four NASA probes had reached the martian surface and returned weather data.
“These earlier observations had shown a large daily cycle in temperature and air pressure on Mars. The atmospheric temperature near the surface of Mars generally varies by more than 100°F between day and night because of the overall thinner martian atmosphere and lack of oceans and their moderating influence,” says Hamilton.
[Image: NASA/JPL] |
posted Sep 28, 2012, 1:15 PM by Mars Society - PR
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updated Sep 28, 2012, 1:15 PM
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By Irene Klotz, Discovery News, 09.28.12
Scratch water off NASA's Mars rover Curiosity's list of things to find in a two-year quest to learn if the planet most like Earth in the solar system could have supported microbial life. Less than two months after touching down inside a giant impact basin near the planet's equator, Curiosity has returned clear evidence of flowing water, scientists told reporters during a conference call Thursday. The proof comes from analysis of pictures of a jagged slab of rock taken with a telephoto camera on the rover's mast. The rock, which resembles a jackhammered chunk of broken sidewalk, is flecked with rounded pieces of gravel -- too big to have been carried by Martian winds. To read the full article, please click here. [Image: NASA/JPL] |
posted Sep 11, 2012, 3:46 PM by Mars Society - PR
By DailyGalaxy.com, 09.11.12
Observations over the last decade suggest that methane clouds form briefly over Mars during the summer months. The discovery has left many scientists scratching their heads, since it doesn't fit into models of the martian atmosphere. The image above shows a map of methane concentrations in Autumn (first martian year observed) overlayed on true color map of Mars. It's a debate of long-standing that the Mars' Curiosity rover might soon answer.
"The reports are extraordinary," said Kevin Zahnle of NASA Ames Research Center. "They require methane to have a life time of days or weeks in the martian atmosphere, which disagrees with the known behavior of methane by at least a factor of 1000."Zahnle and his colleagues have expressed some serious doubts about the existence of methane on Mars in a paper that appeared in December 2010 in the journal Icarus. "What we say is that the evidence is not nearly strong enough for us to suspend our trust in the known chemical behavior of methane," he said.
[Image: NASA] |
posted Aug 29, 2012, 8:52 PM by Mars Society - PR
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updated Sep 11, 2012, 3:46 PM
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By Interfax/Voice of Russia, 08.28.12
Mars will become a major target for human space exploration in the next 50 years, experts from the Energia Rocket and Space Corporation say.
According to Energia's President and Chief Designer Vitaly Lopota, Mars is the only planet in the solar system that is suitable for colonization.
During his
speech at the International Aerospace Congress in Moscow on Tuesday,
Lopota said that unlike Venus, the conditions on Mars are fairly
comfortable as it provides a sufficient supply of water and its
atmospheric pressure makes up one hundredth of the Earth’s. In contrast, Venus’ pressure is twice higher than the Earth’s, and its surface temperature is about 500 degrees centigrade. Since the planets surrounding Mars are ice planets, their colonization is impossible, Lopota said. [Image: Voice of Russia]
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