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By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 5 min read
Sols 4518-4519: Thumbs up from Mars
This image was taken by Front Hazard Avoidance Camera (Front Hazcam) onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 4516. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Susanne Schwenzer, Planetary Geologist at The Open University
Earth planning date: Monday, 21st April 2025
It is Easter Monday, a bank holiday here in the United Kingdom. I am Science Operations Working Group Chair today, a role that is mainly focused on coordinating all the different planning activities on a given day, and ensuring all the numbers are communicated to everyone. And with that I mean making sure that everyone knows how much power we have and other housekeeping details. It’s a fun role, but on the more technical side of the mission, which means I don’t get to look at the rocks in the workspace as closely as my colleagues who are planning the activities of the instruments directly investigating the rocks. It’s a lot of fun to see how planning day after planning day things come together. But why am I doing this on a bank holiday, when I could well be on my sofa? I just was reminded in the hours before planning how much fun it actually is to spend a little more time looking at all the images – and not the usual hectic rush coming out of an almost complete work day (we start at 8 am PDT, which is 4 pm here in the UK!). So, I enjoyed the views of Mars, and I think Mars gave me a thumbs up for it, or better to say a little pointy ‘rock up’ in the middle of a sandy area, as you can see in the image above!
I am sure you noticed that our team has a lot to celebrate! Less than a month after the publication about alkanes made headlines in many news outlets, we have another big discovery from our rover, now 4518 sols on Mars: in three drill holes, the rover instruments detected the mineral siderite, a carbonate. That allowed a group of scientists from our team to piece together the carbon cycle of Mars. If you want to know more, the full story is here. I am looking forward to our next big discovery. Who knows that that is? Well, it would not be exploration, if we knew!
But today’s workspace looks intriguing with all its little laminae (the very fine layers) and its weathering patterns that look like a layered cake that little fingers have picked the icing off! (Maybe I had too many treats of the season this weekend? That’s for you to decide!) But then Mars did what it did so many times lately: we did not pass our slip risk assessment and therefore had to keep the arm stowed. I think there is a direct link between geologists getting exciting about all the many rocks, and a wheel ending up on one of them, making it unsafe to unstow the arm. There was a collective sigh of disappointment – and then we moved on to what we actually can do.
And that is a lot of imaging. As exciting as getting an APXS measurement and MAHLI images would be, Mastcam images, ChemCam chemistry and RMI images are exciting, too. The plan starts with three Mastcam activities to document the small troughs that form around some of the rocks. Those amount to 15 frames already, then we have a ten-frame mosaic on a target called “West Fork,” which is looking at rocks in the middle ground of the scenery and display interesting layering. Finally, a 84 frame mosaic will image Texoli, one of the large buttes in our neighbourhood, in all its beauty. It shows a series of interesting layers and structures, including some that might be akin to what we expect the boxwork structures to look like. Now, did you keep count? Yes, that’s 109 frames from Mastcam – and add the one for the documentation of the LIBS target, too, and Mastcam takes exactly 110 frames!
ChemCam is busy with a target called “Lake Poway,” which represents the bedrock around us. Also in the ChemCam activities is a long distance RMI upwards Mt Sharp to the Yardang unit. After the drive – more of that later – ChemCam as an automated observation, we call it AEGIS, where ChemCam uses a clever algorithm to pick its own target.
The drive will be very special today. As you may have seen, we are imaging our wheels in regular intervals to make sure that we are keeping track of the wear and tear that over 34 km of offroad driving on Mars have caused. For that, we need a very flat area and our rover drivers did locate one due West of the current rover positions. So, that’s where we will drive first, do the full MAHLI wheel imaging and then return to the originally planned path. That’s where we’ll do a MARDI image, post drive imaging to prepare the planning for the next sols, and the above mentioned AEGIS.
In addition to all the geologic investigations, there is continuous environmental monitoring ongoing. Curiosity will look at opacity and dust devils, and REMS will switch on regularly to measure wind speeds, humidity, temperature, ultraviolet radiation and pressure throughout the plan. Let’s not forget DAN, which monitors water and chlorine in the subsurface as we are driving along. It’s so easy to forget the ones that sit quietly in the back – but in this case, they have important data to contribute!
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By NASA
Explore This Section Perseverance Home Mission Overview Rover Components Mars Rock Samples Where is Perseverance? Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Mission Updates Science Overview Objectives Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Perseverance Raw Images Images Videos Audio More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 2 min read
Origins Uncertain: ‘Skull Hill’ Rock
Written by Margaret Deahn, Ph.D. Student at Purdue University
Last week, NASA’s Mars 2020 rover continued its journey down lower ‘Witch Hazel Hill’ on the Jezero crater rim. The rover stopped along a boundary visible from orbit dividing light and dark rock outcrop (also known as a contact) at a site the team has called ‘Port Anson’. In addition to this contact, the rover has encountered a variety of neat rocks that may have originated from elsewhere and transported to their current location, also known as float.
This image from NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover, taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument’s right eye, shows the ‘Skull Hill’ target, a dark-toned float rock. The rover acquired this image while driving west downslope towards lower ‘Witch Hazel Hill’. Perseverance acquired this image on April 11, 2025, or sol 1472 of the Mars 2020 mission NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU Pictured above is an observation named ‘Skull Hill’ taken by the rover’s Mastcam-Z instrument. This float rock uniquely contrasts the surrounding light-toned outcrop with its dark tone and angular surface, and it features a few pits in the rock. If you look closely, you might even spot spherules within the surrounding regolith! See Alex Jones’ recent blog post for more information on these neat features: https://science.nasa.gov/blog/shocking-spherules/. The pits on Skull Hill may have formed via the erosion of clasts from the rock or scouring by wind. We’ve found a few of these dark-toned floats in the Port Anson region, and the team is working to better understand where these rocks came from and how they got here.
Skull Hill’s dark color is reminiscent of meteorites found in Gale crater by the Curiosity rover: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/curiosity-mars-rover-checks-odd-looking-iron-meteorite/. Chemical composition is an important factor in identifying a meteorite, and Gale’s meteorites contain significant amounts of iron and nickel. However, recent analysis of SuperCam data from nearby similar rocks suggests a composition inconsistent with a meteorite origin.
Alternatively, ‘Skull Hill’ could be an igneous rock eroded from a nearby outcrop or ejected from an impact crater. On Earth and Mars, iron and magnesium are some of the main contributors to igneous rocks, which form from the cooling of magma or lava. These rocks can include dark-colored minerals such as olivine, pyroxene, amphibole, and biotite. Luckily for us, the rover has instruments that can measure the chemical composition of rocks on Mars. Understanding the composition of these darker-toned floats will help the team to interpret the origin of this unique rock!
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover sees its tracks receding into the distance at a site nicknamed “Ubajara” on April 30, 2023. This site is where Curiosity made the discovery of siderite, a mineral that may help explain the fate of the planet’s thicker ancient atmosphere.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS New findings from NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover could provide an answer to the mystery of what happened to the planet’s ancient atmosphere and how Mars has evolved over time.
Researchers have long believed that Mars once had a thick, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere and liquid water on the planet’s surface. That carbon dioxide and water should have reacted with Martian rocks to create carbonate minerals. Until now, though, rover missions and near-infrared spectroscopy analysis from Mars-orbiting satellites haven’t found the amounts of carbonate on the planet’s surface predicted by this theory.
Reported in an April paper in Science, data from three of Curiosity’s drill sites revealed the presence of siderite, an iron carbonate mineral, within the sulfate-rich rocky layers of Mount Sharp in Mars’ Gale Crater.
“The discovery of abundant siderite in Gale Crater represents both a surprising and important breakthrough in our understanding of the geologic and atmospheric evolution of Mars,” said Benjamin Tutolo, associate professor at the University of Calgary, Canada, and lead author of the paper.
To study the Red Planet’s chemical and mineral makeup, Curiosity drills three to four centimeters down into the subsurface, then drops the powdered rock samples into its CheMin instrument. The instrument, led by NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, uses X-ray diffraction to analyze rocks and soil. CheMin’s data was processed and analyzed by scientists at the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) Division at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“Drilling through the layered Martian surface is like going through a history book,” said Thomas Bristow, research scientist at NASA Ames and coauthor of the paper. “Just a few centimeters down gives us a good idea of the minerals that formed at or close to the surface around 3.5 billion years ago.”
The discovery of this carbonate mineral in rocks beneath the surface suggests that carbonate may be masked by other minerals in near-infrared satellite analysis. If other sulfate-rich layers across Mars also contain carbonates, the amount of stored carbon dioxide would be a fraction of that needed in the ancient atmosphere to create conditions warm enough to support liquid water. The rest could be hidden in other deposits or have been lost to space over time.
In the future, missions or analyses of other sulfate-rich areas on Mars could confirm these findings and help us better understand the planet’s early history and how it transformed as its atmosphere was lost.
Curiosity, part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program (MEP) portfolio, was built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California. JPL leads the mission on behalf of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
For more information on Curiosity, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity
News Media Contacts
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov
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Last Updated Apr 17, 2025 Related Terms
Ames Research Center Astromaterials Curiosity (Rover) General Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Explore More
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By USH
UVB-76, widely known by its nickname "The Buzzer," is a mysterious shortwave Russian radio station radio broadcasts in the world. It began broadcasting in the mid-1970s and is still active today, broadcasting cryptic signals at 4625 kHz.
This Russian shortwave station usual broadcast consists of a monotonous buzzing tone that occasionally breaks for cryptic voice messages in Russian. The station is widely believed to be operated by the Russian military, possibly as part of the Strategic Rocket Forces’ communication network.
The use of shortwave radio enables the signal to travel vast distances, potentially covering all of Russia and extending far beyond its borders.
Due to the high transmission power of UVB-76’s antenna, some theorize that the station’s signals could even reach outer space. This possibility opens the door to even more extraordinary speculation: that satellites might receive these signals and relay them to submarines, remote military units, or even unidentified aerial phenomena (UFOs). One theory even posits that UVB-76 could be part of an experimental system designed to scan or communicate with extraterrestrial life.
Under normal circumstances, UVB-76’s broadcasts are infrequent and minimal, just the repetitive buzz and the rare coded message. However, something highly unusual happened just ten hours ago. Within a single day, the station transmitted four coded voice messages, an event considered extremely rare and potentially significant.
These are the messages: NZHTI - 33 702 - NEPTUN - 66-52-20-75 NZHTI - 8002 361 - TIMUS - 56-85 NZHTI - 7000 0 8002 - LISOPLASH - 67-203-0808-0809 NZHTI - 62 505 - NUTOBAKS - 78 15 92 71
While the true meaning of these messages remains classified or unknown, some analysts believe they could be activation codes, operational signals, or test messages for military units. The repeated prefix "NZHTI" could be a call sign or an authentication marker. The names—NEPTUN, TIMUS, LISOPLASH, and NUTOBAKS, might refer to code-named operations, geographic regions, or military assets. The numeric sequences could represent coordinates, timestamps, or identification numbers.
Given the timing and unusual frequency of these messages, some suspect that UVB-76 is ramping up activity in preparation for a significant event. While there's no confirmation of any immediate threat, the sudden uptick in coded communications suggests that something serious could be developing.
Many experts believe UVB-76 is maintained as a wartime contingency channel, ready to relay commands in the event of nuclear war or a catastrophic loss of national communications. Its consistent presence, even during peacetime, supports the theory that it serves as an emergency or fail-safe communication method for defense forces.
The sudden surge of messages within one day suggests that something serious is happening, or about to. But who are they intended for? And more importantly, what comes next?" View the full article
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By European Space Agency
Video: 00:02:14 On 12 March 2025, ESA’s Hera spacecraft soared just 5000 km above Mars and passed within 300 km of its distant moon, Deimos. Captured by Hera’s 1020x1020 pixel Asteroid Framing Camera, this video sequence offers a rare view of the red planet and its enigmatic moon. The original greyscale images have been colour-enhanced based on known surface features.
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