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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 5 min read
Sols 4304-4006: 12 Years, 42 Drill Holes, and Now… 1 Million ChemCam Shots!
In celebration of ChemCam’s milestone, here is a stunning image from its remote micro imager, showing details in the landscape far away. This image was taken by Chemistry & Camera (ChemCam) onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 4302 — Martian day 4,302 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — on Sept. 12, 2024, at 09:20:51 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Friday, Sept. 13, 2024
Today, I need to talk about ChemCam, our laser and imaging instrument on the top of Curiosity’s mast. It one of the instruments in the “head” that gives Curiosity that cute look as if it were looking around tilting its head down to the rocks at the rover’s wheels. On Monday, 19th August the ChemCam team at CNES in France planned the 1 millionth shot and Curiosity executed it on the target Royce Lake on sol 4281 on Mars. Even as an Earth scientist used to really big numbers, this is a huge number that took me a while to fully comprehend. 1 000 000 shots! Congratulations, ChemCam, our champion for getting chemistry from a distance – and high-resolution images, too. If you are now curious how Curiosity’s ChemCam instrument works, here is the NASA fact sheet. And, of course, the team is celebrating, which is expressed by those two press releases, one from CNES in France and one from Los Alamos National Laboratory, the two institutions who collaborated to develop and build ChemCam and are now running the instrument for over 12 years! And the PI, Dr Nina Lanza from Los Alamos informs me that the first milestone – 10000 shots was reached as early as Sol 42, which was the sol the DAN instrument used its active mode for the first time. But before I am getting melancholic, let’s talk about today’s plan!
The drive ended fairly high up in the terrain, and that means we see a lot of the interesting features in the channel and generally around us. So, we are on a spot a human hiker would probably put the backpack down, take the water bottle out and sit down with a snack to enjoy the view from a nice high point in the landscape. Well, no such pleasures for Curiosity – and I am pretty sure sugar, which we humans love so much, wouldn’t be appreciated by rover gears anyway. So, let’s just take in the views! And that keeps Mastcam busy taking full advantage of our current vantage point. We have a terrain with lots of variety in front of us, blocks, boulders, flatter areas and the walls are layered, beautiful geology. Overall there are 11 Mastcam observations in the plan adding up to just about 100 individual frames, not counting those taken in the context of atmospheric observations, which are of course also in the plan. The biggest mosaics are on the targets “Western Deposit,” “Balloon Dome,” and “Coral Meadow.” Some smaller documentation images are on the targets “Wales Lake,” “Gnat Meadow,” and “Pig Chute.”
ChemCam didn’t have long to dwell on its milestone, as it’s busy again today. Of course, it will join Mastcam in taking advantage of our vantage point, taking three remote micro imager images on the landscape around us. LIBS chemistry investigations are targeting “Wales Lake,” “Gnat Meadow,” and “Pig Chute.” APXS is investigating two targets, “College Rock” and “Wales Lake,” which will also come with MAHLI documentation. With all those investigations together, we’ll be able to document the chemistry of many targets around us. There is such a rich variety of dark and light toned rocks, and with so much variety everywhere, it’s hard to choose and the team is excited about the three targeted sols … and planning over 4 hours of science over the weekend!
The next drive is planned to go to an area where there is a step in the landscape. Geologists love those steps as they give insights into the layers below the immediate surface. If you have read the word ‘outcrop’ here, then that’s what that means: access to below the surface. But there are also other interesting features in the area, hence we will certainly have an interesting workspace to look at! But getting there will not be easy as the terrain is very complex, so we cannot do it in just one drive. I think there is a rule of thumb here: the more excited the geo-team gets, the more skills our drivers need. Geologists just love rocks, but of course, no one likes driving offroad in a really rocky terrain – no roads on Mars. And right now, our excellent engineers have an extra complication to think about: they need to take extra care where and how to park so Curiosity can actually communicate with Earth. Why? Well, we are in a canyon, and those of you liking to hike, know what canyons mean for cell phone signals… yes, there isn’t much coverage, and that’s the same for Curiosity’s antenna. This new NASA video has more information and insights into the planning room, too! So, we’ll drive halfway to where we want to be but I am sure there will be interesting targets in the new workspace, the area is just so, so complex, fascinating and rich!
And that’s after Mars for you, after 12 years, 42 drill holes, and now 1 Million ChemCam shots. Go Curiosity go!!!
Written by Susanne Schwenzer, Planetary Geologist at The Open University
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Last Updated Sep 13, 2024 Related Terms
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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 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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By NASA
The Moon is pictured on Dec. 7, 2022, the day before its Full Moon phase from the International Space Station as it orbited above the southern Indian Ocean.Credit: NASA NASA will coordinate with U.S. government stakeholders, partners, and international standards organizations to establish a Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC) following a policy directive from the White House in April. The agency’s Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) program is leading efforts on creating a coordinated time, which will enable a future lunar ecosystem that could be scalable to other locations in our solar system.
The lunar time will be determined by a weighted average of atomic clocks at the Moon, similar to how scientists calculate Earth’s globally recognized Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Exactly where at the Moon is still to be determined, since current analysis indicates that atomic clocks placed at the Moon’s surface will appear to ‘tick’ faster by microseconds per day. A microsecond is one millionth of a second. NASA and its partners are currently researching which mathematical models will be best for establishing a lunar time.
To put these numbers into perspective, a hummingbird’s wings flap about 50 times per second. Each flap is about .02 seconds, or 20,000 microseconds. So, while 56 microseconds may seem miniscule, when discussing distances in space, tiny bits of time add up.
“For something traveling at the speed of light, 56 microseconds is enough time to travel the distance of approximately 168 football fields,” said Cheryl Gramling, lead on lunar position, navigation, timing, and standards at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “If someone is orbiting the Moon, an observer on Earth who isn’t compensating for the effects of relativity over a day would think that the orbiting astronaut is approximately 168 football fields away from where the astronaut really is.”
As the agency’s Artemis campaign prepares to establish a sustained presence on and around the Moon, NASA’s SCaN team will establish a time standard at the Moon to ensure the critical time difference does not affect the safety of future explorers. The approach to time systems will also be scalable for Mars and other celestial bodies throughout our solar system, enabling long-duration exploration.
As the commercial space industry grows and more nations are active at the Moon, there is a greater need for time standardization. A shared definition of time is an important part of safe, resilient, and sustainable operations,” said Dr. Ben Ashman, navigation lead for lunar relay development, part of NASA’s SCaN program.
NASA’s SCaN program serves as the office for the agency’s space communications operations and navigation. More than 100 NASA and non-NASA missions rely on SCaN’s two networks, the Near Space Network and the Deep Space Network, to support astronauts aboard the International Space Station and future Artemis missions, monitor Earth’s weather and the effects of climate change, support lunar exploration, and uncover the solar system and beyond.
Learn more about NASA’s plan to return to the Moon at:
https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/artemis
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By USH
The Colares UFO incidents refer to a series of unusual sightings and encounters that took place in 1977 on the Brazilian island of Colares. During this period, numerous residents from the Amazon River community of Colares reported being attacked by UFOs.
These mysterious objects allegedly descended from the sky, and in some cases, emerged from the water, emitting intense beams of light. The beams caused physical harm, including burn marks, puncture wounds, fatigue, and memory loss, affecting as many as 2,000 people.
In response to the alarming situation, the Brazilian Air Force initiated a thorough investigation. Years later, their findings were made public, revealing details of this bizarre chapter in UFO history.
Weaponized hosts Jeremy and George speak with Thiago Ticchetti, Brazil's leading UFO investigator and author, to discuss the Colares case and the once-classified military files.
According to Thiago, the Brazilian military captured remarkably clear film footage and photographs of the UFOs. However, he claims that this evidence was sent to the U.S. and has never been released to the public.
In this episode, they also explores various conspiracy theories and recent debunking efforts surrounding the topic of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP).
The discussion on the Colares UFO incidents begins at the 37-minute mark in the video.
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By NASA
5 min read
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.
News Media Contacts
Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Sep 11, 2024 Related Terms
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