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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 More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions The Solar System The Sun Mercury Venus Earth The Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets Asteroids, Comets & Meteors The Kuiper Belt The Oort Cloud 3 min read
Sols 4302-4303: West Side of Upper Gediz Vallis, From Tungsten Hills to the Next Rocky Waypoint
This photo taken by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity of ‘Balloon Dome’ covers a low dome-like structure formed by the light-toned slab-like rocks. This image was taken by Left Navigation Camera aboard Curiosity on Sol 4301 — Martian day 4,301 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — on Sept. 11, 2024, at 09:14:42 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2024
The rover is on its way from the Tungsten Hills site to the next priority site for Gediz Vallis channel exploration, in which we plan to get in close enough for arm science to one of the numerous large dark-toned “float” blocks in the channel and also to one of the light-toned slabs. We have seen some dark blocks in the channel that seem to be related to the Stimson formation material that the rover encountered earlier in the mission, but some seem like they could be something different. We don’t think any of them originated in the channel so they have to come from somewhere higher up that the rover hasn’t been, and we’re interested in how they were transported down into the channel.
We aren’t there yet, but the 4302-4303 plan’s activities include some important longer-range characterization of the dark-toned and light-toned materials via imaging. Context for the future close-up science on the dark-toned blocks will be provided by the Mastcam mosaics named “Bakeoven Meadow” and “Balloon Dome.” The broad Balloon Dome mosaic also covers a low dome-like structure formed by the light-toned slab-like rocks (pictured). Smaller mosaics will cover a pair of targets that include contacts where other types of light-toned and dark-toned material occur next to each other in the same block: “Rattlesnake Creek” which appears to be in place, and “Casa Diablo Hot Springs,” which is a float.
The rover’s arm workspace provided an opportunity for present-day aeolian science on the sandy-looking ripple, Sandy Meadow. Mastcam stereo imaging will document the shape of the ripple, while a suite of high-resolution MAHLI images will tell us something about the particle size of the grains in it. The modern environment will also be monitored via a suprahorizon observation, a dust devil survey, and imaging of the rover deck to look for dust movement.
The workspace included small examples of the dark float blocks, so the composition of one of them will be measured by both APXS and ChemCam LIBS as targets “Lucy’s Foot Pass” and “Colt Lake” respectively.
In the meantime, the Mastcam Boneyard Meadow mosaic will provide a look back at the Tungsten Hills dark rippled block along its bedding plane to try to narrow down the origin of the ripples and the potential roles of water vs. wind in their formation.
Communication remains a challenge for the rover in this location. During planning, the rover’s drive was shifted from the second sol to the first sol in order to increase the downlink data volume available for the post-drive imaging, thereby enabling better planning at the science waypoint we expect to reach in the weekend plan. However, maintaining communications will require the rover to end its drive in a narrow range of orientations, which could make approaching our next science target a bit tricky. We’ll find out on Friday!
Written by: Lucy Lim, Planetary Scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Edited by: Abigail Fraeman, Planetary Geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Last Updated Sep 13, 2024 Related Terms
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Tests on Earth appear to confirm how the Red Planet’s spider-shaped geologic formations are carved by carbon dioxide.
Spider-shaped features called araneiform terrain are found in the southern hemisphere of Mars, carved into the landscape by carbon dioxide gas. This 2009 image taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows several of these distinctive formations within an area three-quarters of a mile (1.2 kilometers) wide. NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona Dark splotches seen in this example of araneiform terrain captured by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2018 are believed to be soil ejected from the surface by carbon dioxide gas plumes. A set of experiments at JPL has sought to re-create these spider-like formations in a lab. NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona Since discovering them in 2003 via images from orbiters, scientists have marveled at spider-like shapes sprawled across the southern hemisphere of Mars. No one is entirely sure how these geologic features are created. Each branched formation can stretch more than a half-mile (1 kilometer) from end to end and include hundreds of spindly “legs.” Called araneiform terrain, these features are often found in clusters, giving the surface a wrinkled appearance.
The leading theory is that the spiders are created by processes involving carbon dioxide ice, which doesn’t occur naturally on Earth. Thanks to experiments detailed in a new paper published in The Planetary Science Journal, scientists have, for the first time, re-created those formation processes in simulated Martian temperatures and air pressure.
Here’s a look inside of JPL’s DUSTIE, a wine barrel-size chamber used to simulate the temperatures and air pressure of other planets – in this case, the carbon dioxide ice found on Mars’ south pole. Experiments conducted in the chamber confirmed how Martian formations known as “spiders” are created.NASA/JPL-Caltech “The spiders are strange, beautiful geologic features in their own right,” said Lauren Mc Keown of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “These experiments will help tune our models for how they form.”
The study confirms several formation processes described by what’s called the Kieffer model: Sunlight heats the soil when it shines through transparent slabs of carbon dioxide ice that built up on the Martian surface each winter. Being darker than the ice above it, the soil absorbs the heat and causes the ice closest to it to turn directly into carbon dioxide gas — without turning to liquid first — in a process called sublimation (the same process that sends clouds of “smoke” billowing up from dry ice). As the gas builds in pressure, the Martian ice cracks, allowing the gas to escape. As it seeps upward, the gas takes with it a stream of dark dust and sand from the soil that lands on the surface of the ice.
When winter turns to spring and the remaining ice sublimates, according to the theory, the spiderlike scars from those small eruptions are what’s left behind.
These formations similar to the Red Planet’s “spiders” appeared within Martian soil simulant during experiments in JPL’s DUSTIE chamber. Carbon dioxide ice frozen within the simulant was warmed by a heater below, turning it back into gas that eventually cracked through the frozen top layer and formed a plume.NASA/JPL-Caltech Re-Creating Mars in the Lab
For Mc Keown and her co-authors, the hardest part of conducting these experiments was re-creating conditions found on the Martian polar surface: extremely low air pressure and temperatures as low as minus 301 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 185 degrees Celsius). To do that, Mc Keown used a liquid-nitrogen-cooled test chamber at JPL, the Dirty Under-vacuum Simulation Testbed for Icy Environments, or DUSTIE.
“I love DUSTIE. It’s historic,” Mc Keown said, noting that the wine barrel-size chamber was used to test a prototype of a rasping tool designed for NASA’s Mars Phoenix lander. The tool was used to break water ice, which the spacecraft scooped up and analyzed near the planet’s north pole.
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This video shows Martian soil simulant erupting in a plume during a JPL lab experiment that was designed to replicate the process believed to form Martian features called “spiders.” When a researcher who had tried for years to re-create these conditions spotted this plume, she was ecstatic. NASA/JPL-Caltech For this experiment, the researchers chilled Martian soil simulant in a container submerged within a liquid nitrogen bath. They placed it in the DUSTIE chamber, where the air pressure was reduced to be similar to that of Mars’ southern hemisphere. Carbon dioxide gas then flowed into the chamber and condensed from gas to ice over the course of three to five hours. It took many tries before Mc Keown found just the right conditions for the ice to become thick and translucent enough for the experiments to work.
Once they got ice with the right properties, they placed a heater inside the chamber below the simulant to warm it up and crack the ice. Mc Keown was ecstatic when she finally saw a plume of carbon dioxide gas erupting from within the powdery simulant.
“It was late on a Friday evening and the lab manager burst in after hearing me shrieking,” said Mc Keown, who had been working to make a plume like this for five years. “She thought there had been an accident.”
The dark plumes opened holes in the simulant as they streamed out, spewing simulant for as long as 10 minutes before all the pressurized gas was expelled.
The experiments included a surprise that wasn’t reflected in the Kieffer model: Ice formed between the grains of the simulant, then cracked it open. This alternative process might explain why spiders have a more “cracked” appearance. Whether this happens or not seems dependent on the size of soil grains and how embedded water ice is underground.
“It’s one of those details that show that nature is a little messier than the textbook image,” said Serina Diniega of JPL, a co-author of the paper.
What’s Next for Plume Testing
Now that the conditions have been found for plumes to form, the next step is to try the same experiments with simulated sunlight from above, rather than using a heater below. That could help scientists narrow down the range of conditions under which the plumes and ejection of soil might occur.
There are still many questions about the spiders that can’t be answered in a lab. Why have they formed in some places on Mars but not others? Since they appear to result from seasonal changes that are still occurring, why don’t they seem to be growing in number or size over time? It’s possible that they’re left over from long ago, when the climate was different on Mars— and could therefore provide a unique window into the planet’s past.
For the time being, lab experiments will be as close to the spiders as scientists can get. Both the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers are exploring the Red Planet far from the southern hemisphere, which is where these formations appear (and where no spacecraft has ever landed). The Phoenix mission, which landed in the northern hemisphere, lasted only a few months before succumbing to the intense polar cold and limited sunlight.
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On Sept. 10, 2009, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched its first cargo delivery spacecraft, the H-II Transfer Vehicle-1 (HTV-1), to the International Space Station. The HTV cargo vehicles, also called Kounotori, meaning white stork in Japanese, not only maintained the Japanese Experiment Module Kibo but also resupplied the space station in general with pressurized and unpressurized cargo and payloads. Following its rendezvous with the space station, Expedition 20 astronauts grappled and berthed HTV-1 on Sept. 17, and spent the next month transferring its 9,900 pounds of internal and external cargo to the space station and filling the HTV-1 with trash and unneeded equipment. They released the craft on Oct. 30 and ground controllers commanded it to a destructive reentry on Nov. 1.
Left and middle: Two views of the HTV-1 Kounotori cargo spacecraft during prelaunch processing at the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan. Right: Schematic illustration showing the HTV’s major components. Image credits: courtesy JAXA.
The HTV formed part of a fleet of cargo vehicles that at the time included NASA’s space shuttle until its retirement in 2011, Roscosmos’ Progress, and the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Automated Transfer Vehicle that flew five missions between 2008 and 2015. The SpaceX Cargo Dragon and Orbital (later Northrup Grumman) Cygnus commercial cargo vehicles supplemented the fleet starting in 2012 and 2013, respectively. The HTV weighed 23,000 pounds empty and could carry up to 13,000 pounds of cargo, although on this first flight carried only 9,900 pounds. The vehicle included both a pressurized and an unpressurized logistics carrier. Following its rendezvous with the space station, it approached to within 33 feet, at which point astronauts grappled it with the station’s robotic arm and berthed it to the Harmony Node 2 module’s Earth facing port. Space station managers added two flights to the originally planned seven, with the last HTV flying in 2020. An upgraded HTV-X vehicle will soon make its debut to carry cargo to the space station, incorporating the lessons learned from the nine-mission HTV program.
Left: Technicians place HTV-1 inside its launch protective shroud at the Tanegashima Space Center. Middle left: Workers truck the HTV-1 to Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). Middle right: The HTV-1 atop its H-II rolls out of the VAB on its way to the launch pad. Right: The HTV-1 mission patch. Image credits: courtesy JAXA.
Prelaunch processing of HTV-1 took place at the Tanegashima Space Center, where engineers inspected and assembled the spacecraft’s components. Workers installed the internal cargo into the pressurized logistics carrier and external payloads onto the External Pallet that they installed into the unpressurized logistics carrier. HTV-1 carried two external payloads, the Japanese Superconducting submillimeter-wave Limb Emission Sounder (SMILES) and the U.S. Hyperspectral Imager for Coastal Ocean (HICO)-Remote Atmospheric and Ionospheric detection System (RAIDS) Experiment Payload (HREP). On Aug. 23, 2009, workers encapsulated the assembled HTV into its payload shroud and a week later moved it into the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), where they mounted it atop the H-IIB rocket. Rollout from the VAB to the pad took place on the day of launch.
Liftoff of HTV-1 from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan. Image credit: courtesy JAXA.
Left: The launch control center at the Tanegahsima Space Center in Japan. Middle: The mission control room at the Tsukuba Space Center in Japan. Image credits: courtesy JAXA. Right: The HTV-1 control team in the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
On Sept. 10 – Sept. 11 Japan time – HTV-1 lifted off its pad at Tanegashima on the maiden flight of the H-IIB rocket. Controllers in Tanegashima’s launch control center monitored the flight until HTV-1 separated from the booster’s second stage. At that point, HTV-1 automatically activated its systems and established communications with NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System. Control of the flight shifted to the mission control room at the Tsukuba Space Center outside Tokyo. Controllers in the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston also monitored the mission’s progress.
Left: HTV-1 approaches the space station. Middle: NASA astronaut Nicole P. Stott grapples HTV-1 with the station’s robotic arm and prepares to berth it to the Node 2 module. Right: European Space Agency astronaut Frank DeWinne, left, Stott, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Robert Thirsk in the Destiny module following the robotic operations to capture and berth HTV-1.
Following several days of systems checks, HTV-1 approached the space station on Sept. 17. Members of Expedition 20 monitored its approach, as it stopped within 33 feet of the orbiting laboratory. Using the space station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm, Expedition 20 Flight Engineer and NASA astronaut Nicole P. Stott grappled HTV-1. Fellow crew member Canadian Space Agency astronaut Robert Thirsk berthed the vehicle on the Harmony Node 2 module’s Earth-facing port. The following day, the Expedition 20 crew opened the hatch to HTV-1 to begin the cargo transfers.
Left: Canadian Space Agency astronaut Robert Thirsk inside HTV-1. Middle: NASA astronaut Nicole P. Stott transferring cargo from HTV-1 to the space station. Right: Stott in HTV-1 after completion of much of the cargo transfer.
Over the next several weeks, the Expedition 20 and 21 crews transferred more than 7,900 pounds of cargo from the pressurized logistics carrier to the space station. The items included food, science experiments, robotic arm and other hardware for the Kibo module, crew supplies including clothing, toiletries, and personal items, fluorescent lights, and other supplies. They then loaded the module with trash and unneeded equipment, altogether weighing 3,580 pounds.
Left: The space station’s robotic arm grapples the Exposed Pallet (EP) to transfer it to the Japanese Experiment Module-Exposed Facility (JEM-EF). Right: Canadian Space Agency astronaut Robert Thirsk and NASA astronaut Nicole P. Stott operate the station’s robotic arm to temporarily transfer the EP and its payloads to the JEM-EF.
Left: The Japanese robotic arm grapples one of the payloads from the Exposed Pallet (EP) to transfer it to the Japanese Experiment Module-Exposed Facility (JEM-EF). Right: European Space Agency astronaut Frank DeWinne, left, and NASA astronaut Nicole P. Stott operate the Japanese robotic arm from inside the JEM.
Working as a team, NASA astronauts Stott and Michael R. Barratt along with Thirsk and ESA astronaut Frank DeWinne performed the transfer of the external payloads. On Sept. 23, using the station’s robotic arm, they grappled the Exposed Pallet (EP) and removed it from HTV-1’s unpressurized logistics carrier, handing it off to the Japanese remote manipulator system arm that temporarily stowed it on the JEM’s Exposed Facility (JEM-EF). The next day, using the Japanese arm, DeWinne and Stott transferred the SMILES and HREP experiments to their designated locations on the JEM-EF. On Sept. 25, they grappled the now empty EP and placed it back into HTV-1’s unpressurized logistics carrier.
Left: Astronauts transfer the empty Exposed Pallet back to HTV-1. Middle: NASA astronaut Nicole P. Stott poses in front of the now-closed hatch to HTV-1. Right: European Space Agency astronaut Frank DeWinne, left, and Stott operate the station’s robotic arm to grapple HTV-1 for release.
Left: The space station’s robotic arm grapples HTV-1 in preparation for its unberthing. Middle: The station’s robotic arm has unberthed HTV-1 in preparation for its release. Right: The arm has released HTV-1 and it begins its separation from the space station.
Following completion of all the transfers, Expedition 21 astronauts aboard the space station closed the hatch to HTV-1 on Oct. 29. The next day, Stott and DeWinne grappled the vehicle and unberthed it from Node 2. While passing over the Pacific Ocean, they released HTV-1 and it began its departure maneuvers from the station. On Nov. 1, the flight control team in Tsukuba sent commands to HTV-1 to execute three deorbit burns. The vehicle reentered the Earth’s atmosphere, burning up off the coast of New Zealand, having completed the highly successful 52-day first HTV resupply mission. Eight more HTV missions followed, all successful, with HTV-9 completing its mission in August 2020.
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By NASA
NASA research mathematician Katherine Johnson is photographed at her desk at NASA Langley Research Center with a globe, or “Celestial Training Device,” in 1962. Credit: NASA / Langley Research Center NASA Administrator Bill Nelson will represent the agency during a Congressional Gold Medal ceremony at 3 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Sept. 18, recognizing the women who contributed to the space race, including the NASA mathematicians who helped land the first astronauts on the Moon under the agency’s Apollo Program.
Hosted by House Speaker Mike Johnson, the Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony will take place inside Emancipation Hall at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. Nelson is expected to be among the speakers.
The event will stream live on the speaker’s YouTube channel. The agency will share a direct link on this advisory in advance of the event.
Media without current congressional credentials on the Hill interested in participating in the event must RSVP by Sept. 13, to Abby Ronson at: abby.ronson@mail.house.gov.
Medal Information
Introduced by Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson on Feb. 27, 2019, H.R.1396 – Hidden Figures Congressional Gold Medal Act – was signed into law later that year. Awards will include:
Congressional Gold Medal to Katherine Johnson, in recognition of her service to the United States as a mathematician Congressional Gold Medal to Dr. Christine Darden, for her service to the United States as an aeronautical engineer Congressional Gold Medals in commemoration of the lives of Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, in recognition of their service to the United States during the space race Congressional Gold Medal in recognition of all the women who served as computers, mathematicians, and engineers at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and NASA between the 1930s and the 1970s. For more information about NASA missions, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov
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Meira Bernstein / Cheryl Warner
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